Billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday promised to give away US$1 million each day until the US presidential election on Nov. 5 to someone who signs his online petition supporting the US Constitution.
He wasted no time awarding a US$1 million check to an attendee of his event in Pennsylvania aimed at rallying supporters behind former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The winner was John Dreher, event staff said.
Photo: AP
“By the way, John had no idea. So anyway, you’re welcome,” the Tesla founder said as he handed Dreher the check.
The money is the latest example of Musk using his wealth to influence the tightly contested presidential race between Trump and his Democratic rival US Vice President Kamala Harris.
Musk started America PAC, a political action organization he founded in support of Trump’s presidential campaign. The group is helping mobilize and register voters in battleground states, but there are signs it is having trouble meeting its goals.
The Harrisburg event is the third in as many days in Pennsylvania, where Musk is painting next month’s election in stark terms and encouraging supporters to vote early and get others to do the same.
On Saturday, he said that if Harris wins, it would be “the last election,” suggesting that the US would no longer exist.
He also said the two assassination attempts against Trump prove he is ruffling feathers and upending the “status quo” in ways Harris would not.
He said that is why no one is trying to kill her.
“Assassinating a puppet is worthless,” Musk said, reiterating an argument he has made on social media.
The petition Musk is asking people to sign reads: “The First and Second Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. By signing below, I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments.”
Attendees of Saturday’s event had to sign the petition, which allows America PAC to garner contact details for more potential voters that it can work to get to the polls for Trump.
Musk, ranked by Forbes as the world’s richest person, so far has supplied at least US$75 million to America PAC, federal disclosures showed, making the group a crucial part of Trump’s bid to regain the White House.
The CEO of Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies Corp has increasingly supported Republican causes and this year became an outspoken Trump supporter.
Trump in turn has said that if elected he would appoint Musk to head a government efficiency commission.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS