Elon Musk says his $1 million giveaways are mainly about grabbing your attention
Scott Olson/Getty Images
- Elon Musk handed out $1 million checks to voters again, this time in Wisconsin.
- It's a controversial tactic that's drawn lawsuits multiple times.
- For Musk, that's the point, ensuring lots of free media coverage.
The world's richest man has plenty of money to spend, and he's using some of it explicitly to court controversy.
At a town hall-style event in Wisconsin on Sunday night, Elon Musk said as much as he handed out $1 million checks to two voters who had signed his super PAC's petition opposing "activist judges."
"I should say that the reason… for the checks, is that it's really just to get attention," the de-facto DOGE leader told the crowd in Green Bay. "It's like, we need to get attention."
Ahead of a high-stakes Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, Musk has been reprising a tactic he used in the 2024 presidential election, where he spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support President Donald Trump and other GOP candidates.
Wisconsin voters receive $100 for signing Musk's petition, and a lucky few of them win $1 million checks, all paid for by Musk himself.
It's one of the most audacious uses of money in politics in recent political memory, one that's drawn lawsuits and controversy along the way. It's illegal to pay people to register to vote, and prosecutors have argued that Musk's scheme breaks that law.
As Musk puts it, the checks are essentially an investment in free media coverage, even if that coverage is often negative.
"Somewhat inevitably, when I do these things, it causes the legacy media to, like, kind of lose their minds, and then they'll run it on every news channel," Musk told the crowd. "And I'm, like, I couldn't pay them to— it would cost, like, 10 times more to get the kind of coverage that we get."
Later on in the event, a woman in attendance specifically thanked Musk for "bringing attention to what's going on with our Supreme Court here."
"It's very important, and I think it would have gotten no attention, not even half of what it's getting now, if you hadn't stepped in. For good or bad, negative press and good press," the attendee said.