Elon Musk Makes His First Political Hire—in Promise of Chaos to Come

Elon Musk is making a serious dive into politics, hiring a longtime Republican political adviser.

Chris Young, who has worked as a field organizer for former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the field director for the Republican National Committee, and most recently, a political official at a pharmaceutical trade association, will be helping with Musk’s political initiatives, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing three anonymous sources.

Part of Young’s job will be to help Musk with the pro-Trump America super PAC he founded. Young, who has experience leading Republicans’ voter registration efforts, is also expected to help with field organizing.

The hire is a big step for the billionaire and world’s richest person, whose political involvement has been limited and flaky in the past. Republicans have lamented Musk backing out of grand promises and spending pledges, seeing him as a potential meal ticket and inspiration that doesn’t follow through.

For example, The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Musk planned to donate $45 million per month to the America PAC in support of Donald Trump, raising the hopes of many in the GOP. But the tech mogul later denied that report, saying he’d actually be giving at “at a much lower level.” Musk has engaged in different ways, though, secretly lobbying Trump along with Tucker Carlson to choose J.D. Vance as his running mate, and allowing misinformation to run rife on his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), that benefits Trump.

Musk’s super PAC has also been collecting voters’ personal information under the guise of inviting them to register to vote, drawing the ire of state governments and putting the PAC under investigation. And although it’s not $45 million, the PAC has begun spending money, $5.8 million as of two weeks ago, to help Trump’s election efforts. X has been pushing Trump’s advertisements on the social media platform, coinciding with Trump’s buggy interview with Musk on the website.

The new hire suggests that Musk will be making more moves in politics, possibly getting his super PAC involved in political contests besides the presidency, and maybe taking advantage of Young’s field experience and trying to push Trump on a more local level. Either way, a billionaire engaging more in politics and spending a lot of money does not bode well for our democracy, particularly when it’s on behalf of a convicted felon who repeatedly attacks the electoral process.

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed a company run by the daughter of Justice Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush-money case, over faulty allegations of political bias.

Loren Merchan, the president of Authentic Campaigns, a political consulting group that has worked with Democrats, became a focal point of Trump’s attacks against New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan. The justice is expected to dole out the former president’s sentence for his hush-money trial on September 18.

In a letter sent Wednesday, the House Judiciary demanded that Authentic Campaigns provide any evidence regarding whether Loren Merchan’s company worked for Trump’s “political adversaries,” and whether she might’ve financially benefited from Trump’s trial and subsequent conviction.

House Republicans have been attempting to get their hands on documents from Authentic Campaigns for the past month, which they hope will prove Trump’s claims that Merchan’s company worked with Trump’s enemies, and therefore her father could be dismissed from the case for bias.

Mike Nellis, the founder of Authentic Campaigns, publicly shared his company’s response to Republicans’ first request for information earlier this month, criticizing the committee for wrongly “villainizing” his colleague.

“Authentic had no role, involvement, or influence whatsoever in those judicial proceedings,” Nellis wrote, claiming that his company had no contracts with Biden for President, Harris for President, or the Democratic National Committee since January 1, 2023.

Authentic Campaigns’ list of clients includes both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential campaigns, according to its website. In 2019, Harris’s campaign doled out $7.5 million to the firm for digital advertising and creative consulting, and more than $2.1 million in 2020, per CNN. Authentic has also touted Representative Adam Schiff as one of its biggest clients.

Nellis called Trump’s claims that Loren Merchan had raised tens of millions off of Trump’s trial “unequivocally false.” He also lambasted the committee for “using valuable time and taxpayer dollars to perpetuate a false right-wing conspiracy theory,” calling it a “disgraceful misuse of power.”

What started as a long-shot bid to oust Justice Merchan during Trump’s trial has become a quest by his staunchest defenders, such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, to see his conviction vacated. Trump claimed that Merchan was “totally compromised” because of his daughter’s work for Democrats, and escalated his rhetoric by naming her directly.

Trump’s personal attacks against Merchan’s daughter led to a political firestorm, causing crazed MAGA fanatics to harass and even send death threats to Loren and her colleagues, according to Nellis.

After Merchan placed a gag order on Trump, prohibiting him from making rampant, baseless accusations against the judge, courtroom staff, and family members, Fox News took up the task of claiming Loren’s work was grounds for her father’s dismissal from Trump’s trial.

Earlier this month, Trump’s team had once again requested to delay Trump’s sentencing, suggesting it would mitigate the “appearances of impropriety” created by Loren Merchan’s prior work for Harris, and Nellis’s donations to the Harris-Walz campaign.

Disinformation is already sinking its heavy hand into the 2024 election.

Several MAGA influencers with sizable followings have been revealed to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. One account, @Luna_2K24, accrued nearly 30,000 followers by posting suggestive selfies, including one of a woman in a white bikini captioned “Would You Support Trump Being The President forever?”

But despite garnering the attention of some of the far right’s biggest bulldogs, including MAGA lobbyist Marty Irby, Luna isn’t real. Instead, the woman photographed is German fashion influencer Debbie Nederlof, who told CNN that she was shocked to find that her image was pushing pro-Trump propaganda.

“To be honest, ‘what the f**k?’ was my reaction. That was my reaction, because I have nothing to do with the United States. With Trump, the political things over there. What the hell do I—from a small place in Germany—care about U.S. politics?” Nederlof told CNN.

The X account, @Luna_2K24, was deleted by the time of publication.

At least 17 other European women—from the Netherlands to Russia—have had images of their faces and bodies stolen and artificially altered for use as digital assets to push pro-Trump messaging online, according to a CNN investigation in collaboration with the Centre for Information Resilience that assessed 56 MAGA accounts.

Many of the accounts reshare each others’ content with blatantly Trumpian hashtags, including #MAGAPatriots, #MAGA2024, and #IFBAP (I Follow Back All Patriots). The images they share feature beautiful young women with artificially altered clothing in order to make otherwise unbranded clothing sport Trump slogans. Some of the accounts’ captions also feature English language errors, which CNN reported could be indicative of “foreign interference.”

Trump himself has also been caught elevating fake images for the benefit of his campaign. Earlier this month, Trump posted a fabricated image of notoriously litigious pop star Taylor Swift clad in red, white, and blue, posing like Uncle Sam before an American flag emblazoned with the text: “Taylor wants YOU to vote for Donald Trump.”

“I accept!” Trump captioned the image.

Trump has also shared A.I.-generated content of himself and X owner Elon Musk dancing together.

When pressed on his apparent affinity for the doctored images, Trump brushed off any responsibility, telling Fox Business correspondent Gary Trimble that he simply “didn’t generate them.”

“Somebody came out. They said, ‘Oh look at this,’” Trump said after a campaign event in Asheboro, North Carolina. “These were all made up by other people. A.I. is always very dangerous in that way.”

On Wednesday morning, Donald Trump had some kind of meltdown on his Truth Social profile, all before 10 a.m.

His many posts and “ReTruths” were conspiracy laden, crude, and calling for the death or imprisonment of his enemies. One showed Harris, Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and other Democrats wearing orange jumpsuits captioned with: “HOW TO ACTUALLY ‘FIX THE SYSTEM.’” Multiple posts had QAnon themes, particularly the slogan “WWG1WGA.” Other posts called for a military tribunal for former President Barack Obama, and attacked the FBI, the Justice Department, and the House January 6 committee.

When his posts weren’t full on fascist, they were simply vulgar instead. One such post showed an old photograph of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton together, with a comment below reading “Funny how blowjobs impacted their careers differently…”

If Trump’s posting binge is a reflection of his state of mind, it’s not a good one. The Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon has experienced many setbacks as of late. On Tuesday, special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment against Trump for his role in trying to overthrow the 2020 federal election.

Meanwhile, polling shows him neck-and-neck with Harris in the pivotal state of North Carolina, which voted for Trump in the last two elections. A series of revelations from a new book by his former national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, have been particularly damaging. And he’s been whining about the debate coming up against Harris on September 10.

All of this bad news coupled with a conspiracy-laden, sycophantic social media feed cannot be healthy for Trump, particularly with his ongoing cognitive decline. Last week, he accidently praised Harris and Biden, saying they made the country “very safe.” Older voters, typically a reliable voting block for Republicans, reportedly think that he is in poor health, especially regarding his mental condition. And experts see patterns in his speech and behavior that have been worsening for years.

Trump’s campaign staff and his loved ones should be getting the former president to spend less time on social media, especially at his age. But they’re invested in seeing him be himself in the hopes that he will return to the White House. Plus, he’s not likely to heed a good piece of advice if it comes with the slightest threat to his ego.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to revive the Biden administration’s multibillion-dollar student debt relief plan. The decision from the court means Joe Biden’s student loan repayment (SAVE) program will remain stalled until the Eighth Circuit rules, leaving millions of borrowers in legal limbo.

The SAVE plan has been attacked and legally challenged by more than a dozen red states since it was announced one year ago. The Justice Department filed an emergency request to lift an appeals court order that blocked the program, but the justices’ unanimous ruling Wednesday leaves a nationwide injunction in place.

In an unsigned order, the court said the temporary pause will remain in place, as it expects the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”

Biden’s student loan repayment program lowered monthly undergraduate loan payments for low-income Americans and provided earlier loan forgiveness for borrowers with smaller initial loans.

Roughly 7.5 million people signed up for relief through the SAVE plan. In February, the administration announced they would erase $1.2 billion in student debt for over 150,000 borrowers through the SAVE plan. Over four million individuals have a $0 monthly payment under the plan, which would save the typical typical borrower around $1,000 a year, according to the White House.

The case is expected to return to the Supreme Court’s desk. In a decision in 2023, the Supreme Court ruled 6-to-3 that Biden could not implement a more wide ranging student debt relief plan without congressional approval.

“This is a recipe for chaos across the student loan system,” Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center told the Associated Press.

This story has been updated.