Elon Musk Is Backing the Shadiest GOP Dark Money Group This Election
Elon Musk is playing Jewish and Arab American voters against each other.
The tech billionaire is funding a super PAC, Future Coalition PAC, that is running digital ads that tout Kamala Harris’s support for Israel in Michigan, in areas heavily populated with Muslim and Arab voters. At the same time, the super PAC is running ads aimed at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania attacking Harris as promoting anti-Israel policies, HuffPost reports.
One of the ads in Michigan touts Harris and the Jewish identity of her husband Doug Emhoff, calling them “America’s pro-Israel power couple,” and mentions Israel’s “noble fight against the terrorists in Gaza.” A mailer paid for by the group also states that Harris leans on her “Jewish husband” to craft her policies on Israel. The ads’s focus on Emhoff to bolster a pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian message have been called antisemitic by Jewish Democrats.
Meanwhile, the super PAC’s ads in Pennsylvania send the opposite message, asking, for example, “Why did Kamala Harris support denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands? And why did Harris show sympathy for college protesters who are rabidly antisemitic?”
The aim of the two ads is to try to use the crisis in Gaza to undermine Harris’s support from two major communities in key battleground states.
The New York Times confirmed Tuesday, shortly before FEC filings became public, that Building America’s Future is the dark money group behind the PAC. And The Wall Street Journal had already reported that Musk is one of the group’s major contributors. The tech CEO has pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories on his social media platform X and curried favor with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deflect criticism.
The super PAC’s ads may prove to be effective with many Muslim and Arab American voters frustrated with President Biden and Harris’s stance over Israel’s brutal war in the Middle East, which has killed 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza and has expanded to include Lebanon. The Democratic National Convention snubbed opponents of Israel’s actions and refused to feature any Palestinian speakers. The Harris campaign has also refused to signal any change in U.S. policy towards Israel and Palestine.