Did Elon Musk Suspend Pro-Kamala Group to Help Trump Win?

Elon Musk, a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” has been accused of suspending the account of a group organizing voters to support Vice President Kamala Harris.

Leaders of the newly formed Democratic outreach group “White Dudes for Harris” hit back at technocrat Musk after the group’s X (formerly Twitter) account was temporarily suspended Monday night, following a wildly successful fundraiser earlier that evening.

More than 190,000 people tuned into a massive virtual call, reportedly raising more than $4 million for Harris’s campaign. The group had originally hoped for a turnout of 10,000 people, and to raise $50,000, a milestone they passed before the call even began, according to the organizers.

There were appearances from a few white guys who are reportedly in contention to be Harris’s vice presidential nominee, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

Shortly after the call ended, the group’s organizers said they had received notice that their account on X, which Musk owns, had been suspended for supposedly “violating our rules against evading suspension.”

“Seems like @elonmusk might be a little scared,” wrote Ross Morales Rocketto, one of the group’s organizers in a post on X, adding a screenshot of the email.

Mike Nellis, another organizer, also posted a screenshot of the email. “We scared @elonmusk and @DonaldJTrumpJr so much tonight they suspended our account and won’t let us back in,” he wrote. “These guys are running scared of the success we’ve had tonight, but we’re not going to quit. More coming tomorrow (unless they shut down my account too!)”

The group’s account was restored by Tuesday morning.

It’s not clear that Musk was involved in the account’s suspension, but Rocketto and Nellis aren’t all that crazy to think that the X CEO might be behind it.

Musk endorsed Trump earlier this month and has since been increasingly outspoken about the presidential race online, repeatedly claiming that President Joe Biden has been “importing” immigrants into the country to illegally vote for Harris. Last week, Musk posted a parody ad for Harris, which used an A.I.-generated version of her voice to call Harris the “ultimate diversity hire,” raising concerns about the use of A.I. in political campaigns.

While Musk boosted the conspiracy theory that Google was suppressing answers about Donald Trump, many have accused him of making it difficult to follow Harris’s campaign’s X account in the days after she became the presumptive nominee.

Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees Tuesday, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate revealed new details on a social media account believed to belong to Trump’s attempted assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks.

In his opening remarks, Abbate said that the FBI has not yet determined Crooks’s motive, but investigators have discovered a social media account “believed to be associated with the shooter in about the 2019–2020 timeframe,” when Crooks would have been roughly 15–17 years old.

The activity of the account, which posted over 700 comments, Abbate said, “appear[s] to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes, to espouse political violence, and [is] described as extreme in nature.”

While stressing that investigators are still working to confirm that the account belonged to Crooks, Abbate said, “We believe it important to share and note it today, particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter’s potential motive and mindset.”

If verified, the indications of Crooks’s political extremism would shed light on the would-be assassin’s yet obscure politics; Crooks made a $15 donation to a progressive organization in 2021 but was a registered Republican.

Donald Trump couldn’t come up with a single coherent explanation for why his supporters should also back J.D. Vance.

During an interview on Fox News Monday, host Laura Ingraham pushed Trump to explain his decision to tap Vance despite widespread criticism from Republicans, whom she readily dismissed as longing for “the days of open borders and perpetual war.”

“How do you expect to use him in this campaign, and what can you say to our viewers tonight to reassure them that this was an excellent pick?” Ingraham asked.

“Well, first of all, he’s got tremendous support, and he really does among a certain group of people—people that like families. He made a statement having to do with families,” Trump said. “He’s not against anything, but he loves family. It’s very important to him. He grew up in a very interesting family situation, and he feels family is good.”

So, that’s Trump’s main selling point to the public on Vance: He was an “excellent pick” because he “feels family is good.”

Setting aside the fact that it’s a canned answer, Trump purposefully presented a gross mischaracterization of Vance’s incendiary comments.

While pronatalism is at the core of many of Vance’s outlandish policy ideas, the Ohio senator is currently facing the most backlash for his claim that Democrats are all “childless cat ladies,” which is presumably the statement Trump was referring to in his answer.

Vance later doubled down on this comment, saying that Democrats had become “anti-family,” and “anti-children.”

CNN reported Monday that Vance has made multiple disparaging remarks about childless Americans in the past, calling Democrats without kids “childless sociopaths.” On a podcast in 2020, Vance said that America’s “leadership class” was “more sociopathic” than those with children, resulting in a “less mentally stable” country.

The reason Trump actually picked Vance has nothing to do with families at all: According to Trump’s advisers, Vance was picked to appeal to white men.

Yet another video of Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has resurfaced, and unfortunately for him, he explicitly said in it that racism helped elect Donald Trump president.

Mother Jones reports that in February 2017, Vance gave a talk at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics as part of a series called “America in the Trump Era” after his book, Hillbilly Elegy, became a bestseller.

Discussing the 2016 presidential election, journalist Alex Kotlowitz asked Vance, “Where do you think race played into all this? Because I think the sort of myth is that all these Trump supporters are vehement racists and anti-immigrant. And so where do you think it played?”

Vance gave an answer that seems surprising today.

“Race definitely played a role in the 2016 election. I think race will always play a role in our country, It’s just sort of a constant fact of American life. And definitely some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons,” Vance responded.

Vance couched his answer by saying he didn’t think racism was the main motivator for Trump voters, but jobs were. But he did say that the 2016 election was “hyper-racialized,” and he blamed conservative extremists.

“The people that I blame for that are actually typically well-educated coastal elitists, people like Richard Spencer and the alt-right,” Vance said. “It’s telling that the alt-right is driven by primarily very well-educated, relatively smart, relatively stable people. It’s not driven by people in the Rust Belt who go on 4chan and talk about Michelle Obama in these really nasty ways.”

“Like Steve Bannon?” Kotlowitz asked.

“Right,” Vance replied, taking a shot at the Republican strategist who is now serving a prison sentence for contempt of Congress.

In an answer quite different from his present-day half-hearted defense of his Indian American wife, Usha, Vance addressed racism against his marriage head-on back then.

“There were all these alt-right people, and I’m in an interracial marriage, and I got a lot of stuff directed at me and my wife on online message boards and Twitter and so forth. So I definitely buy this was a racialized discourse unlike any that we’ve had in a really long time,” Vance said.

Vance’s political career soon ended his criticisms of Trump and the MAGA movement, as he quickly became one of its rising stars and ardent defenders. Ever since he was chosen as Trump’s running mate earlier this month, the Ohio senator has been on the defensive as Kamala Harris’s campaign has effectively landed attacks calling him “weird.” More and more videos from his past are resurfacing where he either criticizes Trump or embraces some kind of extremism. All of this is starting to have the GOP question whether he was the right choice at all.

As Republicans begin developing lines of attack against Vice President Kamala Harris, many on Team Trump worry that those on their side—including Trump himself—will make disparaging comments about Harris’s identity, alienating key voters.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s allies believe attacks on Harris’s political record are more effective than personal insults, but “they also worry that Trump and some of his more extreme supporters will be unable to refrain from deploying sexist and racially fraught language, which they fear will hurt him with crucial voting blocs.”

A source “familiar with the Trump campaign’s thinking” who spoke with the Post “on the condition of anonymity to share candid views,” seemed to think that it’s all but inevitable that Trump will make problematic comments toward Harris. “We hope he doesn’t act like a crazy racist and sexist person, but we can’t control him,” the source said. “There are probably dog whistles and racist and sexist tropes he’ll stumble into. His campaign is going to try to keep him out of that rhetoric, but it’s going to be difficult.”

This isn’t the first time that Republicans have fretted about the bigotry in their own ranks affecting their electoral prospects. Last week, Politico reported that leading House Republicans had to tell “lawmakers to focus on criticizing [Harris’s] record without reference to her race and gender,” following “a series of comments by their members that focused on Harris’ race as well as claims she is a ‘DEI’ pick.”

Over the weekend, several Republican lawmakers and Black Trump supporters told Reuters they worried about “demeaning racist and sexist attacks” and “whether the onslaught could harm Republicans at the ballot box.”

Earlier this week, a Republican pollster warned that Trump “taking shots at [Harris’s] race and her gender,” as “some of the irresponsible members of Congress” have, would be a political liability.

But the expectations of those close to Trump, not to mention his history of racism and misogyny, including toward Harris, suggest that he might be unable to help himself.

Senator J.D. Vance knows that Vice President Kamala Harris is a big threat. While he may not be willing to say it publicly, he’s certainly admitting it to donors.

In a new recording released Monday by The Washington Post, Vance spoke candidly at a fundraiser in Golden Valley, Minnesota, on Saturday, where the Ohio senator’s line to donors was far different from the about-face that he and former President Donald Trump had been presenting publicly.

“All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch,” said Vance. “The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.”

While Vance’s admission was not particularly surprising given Harris’s slate of high-profile Democratic endorsements and how successful her initial fundraising efforts have been, it was a tune that the public hasn’t heard Vance sing.

As CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pointed out Monday night, this line was extremely different from what Trump was saying concurrently, over on Fox News.

“I think she’s a worse candidate than him,” Trump said in an interview with Laura Ingraham. She’s far more radical left. She is younger, but I mean she’s 60 years old. A lotta people—I didn’t know she was 60 years old, I thought she was a little younger.”

In general, the “Kamala’s worse than Biden” line seems to be the main strategy for the Trump campaign, but it certainly isn’t the reality they’re facing.

In the leaked audio, Vance admitted that the Trump campaign had the “unique opportunity” to shape public perception of a candidate that voters are far less familiar with, trying out different lines of attack to see what has the most impact.

“Love ’em or hate ’em, everybody has an opinion about Donald Trump and Joe Biden after the past eight years,” Vance said to the room of donors. “But Kamala Harris, people don’t really know.”

But shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out, Vance acted like nothing had changed.

“I don’t think the political calculus changes at all,” Vance told reporters on July 22. “We were running against Joe Biden’s open border, Kamala Harris’s open border. Kamala Harris supported the Green New Scam. Kamala Harris, frankly, covered Joe Biden even though it was obvious he was mentally incompetent for a very long time.”

Vance spokesman Will Martin released a statement Monday in response to the leaked audio. “Poll after poll shows President Trump leading Kamala Harris as voters become aware of her weak, failed and dangerously liberal agenda,” Martin said. “Her far-left ideas are even more radioactive than Joe Biden, particularly in the key swing states that will decide this election like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.”

Donald Trump did little, if anything, in a Fox News interview Monday night to explain what he meant when he told a group of supporters on Friday, “You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Laura Ingraham asked Trump what he meant, and Trump gave a meandering answer that didn’t answer the question, talking instead about how much Christians support him and how Jewish people who don’t support him “should have their head examined.”

When he finally came back to the question at hand, he said “Christians are not known as a big voting group. They don’t vote, and I’m explaining that to ’em. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country; you won’t have to vote anymore. I won’t need your vote.”

Ingraham interjected to try to help the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee, saying, “You meant you don’t have to vote for you, because you’ll have four years in office.”

Trump still didn’t answer the question, talking about how gun owners don’t vote. When Ingraham pressed the matter again, Trump again came back to how Christians don’t vote and that they ought to this time, and then once again repeated his promise that people won’t have to vote in the future if he’s elected.

“Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore, I don’t care, because the country will be fixed, and we won’t even need your vote anymore because frankly, we will have such love if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK,” Trump said in one of his trademark run-on sentences.

It doesn’t make sense as to why Trump keeps repeating this statement. Is he hinting at some sort of authoritarian takeover where voting doesn’t matter? And why is he claiming that Christians don’t vote when devout, fundamentalist Christians have been involved in politics for most of America’s history?

Also, last week Trump told his followers, “We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” sending a weird message just before the election. While Democrats won’t mind, this might be another sign of Trump’s continued cognitive decline.

MAGA Representative Matt Gaetz accidentally threw some shade at former President Donald Trump on Monday while trying to weigh in on Venezuela’s contested presidential election.

Venezuela’s election authority declared Sunday that President Nicolás Maduro had won the country’s presidential election, having secured 51 percent of the popular vote, while his U.S.-backed opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez, earned only 44 percent, according to the Associated Press.

The opposition party has disputed the results, claiming that Gonzalez had earned a whopping 70 percent of the vote and that they had the data to back it up. Venezuela’s voting authority delayed the release of the detailed vote tallies Monday as protests broke out across the country, and foreign leaders have been reluctant to recognize a winner. Not Gaetz though—he’s all in.

“Maduro lost the election in Venezuela badly, then simply declared victory anyway. He is an illegitimate dictator,” Gaetz wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Did that description not sound the least bit familiar to the Republican congressman, who has turned into one of Trump’s most devoted sycophants?

“We stand with the people of Venezuela and their diaspora throughout the world in calling for an end to his murderous regime. It is sad but true that a nation can vote its way into socialism, but almost always has to fight its way out,” Gaetz wrote.

A loyal Trump toady, Gaetz has repeatedly downplayed the January 6 insurrection, pushing the conspiracy theory that the FBI was involved in the attack. A year after the deadly riot, Gaetz referred to the rioters as “patriotic Americans … who had no intent of breaking the law and doing violence.”

“We’re ashamed of nothing,” Gaetz said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in January 2022. “We’re proud of the work we did on January 6 to make legitimate arguments about election integrity,” he added.

Republican Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, fellow Trump stooges, also posted their criticisms of Maduro to X, proving self-awareness is dead.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday shut down Vivek Ramaswamy’s attempt to fire back at the Kamala Harris campaign’s criticisms of Republicans as “weird.”

It started when Ramaswamy posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday night about how “this whole ‘they’re weird’ argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile.”

“This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest. It’s also a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches ‘diversity & inclusion.’ Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please,” the failed Republican presidential candidate said in his post.

On Tuesday morning, Ocasio-Cortez clapped back, pointing out how Republicans’ actual policies are the weird part.

“It’s an incel platform, dude. It’s SUPER weird. And people need to know,” Ocasio-Cortez posted.

It appears that the criticisms of Vance and Trump are starting to get to Republicans, which signals that they’re working. For the past week, Vance has been heavily mocked, as his campaign speeches fell flat and a false internet rumor circulated about him conducting a sex act with a couch. Old remarks where he compared Democrats to “childless cat ladies” resurfaced and drew criticism from celebrities as well as lawmakers.

Ramaswamy could hardly have expected his post to shut the criticism down. But then again, he’s not known for his powerful language actually working, as those who have heard him try to rap can attest. Tuesday’s post from AOC isn’t even the first time she’s shut him down this month, as she recently destroyed his RNC speech in which he tried to paint Republicans as “cool.” Unfortunately for Ramaswamy, it didn’t work.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has tapped a January 6 conspiracy theory-touting  Republican lawmaker to join a new bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.

Johnson unveiled his list of picks Monday, which included his fellow Louisiana Republican, MAGA Representative Clay Higgins.

Higgins subscribes to the outlandish far-right theory that “FBI informants” pretending to be Trump supporters descended on the U.S. capital the night before the deadly January 6 insurrection using “ghost buses.”

During a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee in November, Higgins raised this theory to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who “emphatically” denied his claims. As proof, Higgins pointed at a picture of buses parked outside of Union Station in Washington, D.C., the night before the attack, claiming that they were ghost vehicles, or vehicles with the windows painted over to keep their purpose secret.

“These buses are nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants dressed as Trump supporters, deployed onto our capital on January 6,” Higgins insisted, saying he had “extensive evidence” about the two vehicles. 

When the committee’s Chairman Mark Green pushed Higgins to wrap it up, the Louisiana Republican warned: “Your day is coming, Mr. Wray.”

Higgins released a statement Monday about his new appointment. “I am honored to serve on the bipartisan Task Force on the attempted assassination of President Trump,” he said. “The American people demand answers, and we will use every tool at our disposal to reveal granular detail of what led to the attempted assassination, ensure accountability, and identify security failures. I look forward to working with my bipartisan colleagues to deliver the truth.”

If his previous statements are any indication, Higgins might be vulnerable to believing the far-right conspiracy theories about Trump’s brush with death. In fact, he’s already shared one.

“American Patriots are united behind President Trump,” Higgins wrote in a post on X, shortly after the shooting at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The left will not stop MAGA Nation.”