Is Elon Musk Violating Federal Election Law?

Billionaire Elon Musk will host his first of several town halls Thursday at 4 p.m. in Folsom, Pennsylvania. The only people allowed to this event, put on by Musk’s America PAC, are registered voters in the state who have signed the PAC’s petition, “support the First and Second Amendments,” and have already voted in the election.

Musk says while he has three more “talks” scheduled on the calendar in Pennsylvania, he “will probably do half a dozen throughout the state” by Election Day. There’s just one problem: The events likely violate federal election law. As Popular Information reported on Thursday, “federal law prohibits making or offering to make ‘an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate.’” Musk’s requirement that attendees to his town halls be registered voters likely violates that provision.

This follows as Musk continues to increase his involvement in the Trump campaign, with his super PAC essentially running the Republican candidate’s flawed ground campaign with a poorly functioning app.

His America PAC is essentially entirely self-funded; according to new campaign finance data, Musk has poured $75 million into the fund since July. Prior to that report, the PAC only showed a measly $8 million from friends like Joe Lonsdale of Palantir and the Winklevoss twins.

Trump has hinted that this spending could earn Musk a spot in his Cabinet, mentioning the promise again to Latino voters at his Univision town hall on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Musk showcased his main-character syndrome, posting an embarrassing supercut of himself on the campaign trail at 1 a.m. on Thursday.

But Republicans worry that the billionaire might be blowing up Trump’s campaign as he has his randomly exploding Teslas. “We were upfront about our concerns,” an anonymous GOP operative close to Trump told Rolling Stone this week, speaking about the America PAC’s canvassing and voter turnout operation. At the moment, Musk’s PAC is also still hiring door knockers in swing states through X, begging the question from a Trump donor, “Why isn’t the army already in place?”

Fox News is desperately trying to spin Kamala Harris’s interview with Bret Baier Wednesday night and create the impression that the vice president bombed. 

The effort started right after the interview concluded, with Martha MacCallum telling Baier, “Bret, I thought you did a masterful job. This is the kind of interview that we should see a lot of on the campaign trail. 

“I thought you really asked the questions that a lot of Americans want answers to, which is, ‘How did you let all these millions of people come into the country, and do you have any regrets about it?’ and I think her answers were not good on that,” MacCallum said.

Sean Hannity covered for Baier on his evening show, saying, “He didn’t let Kamala off the hook; he pressed her, he pressed her repeatedly. Needless to say, I’d say the joy is gone in the Harris campaign tonight, and her obvious anger? That was on full display, the one she’s notorious for.” 

Baier went on Hannity’s show himself, and accused Harris of gamesmanship by coming out to begin the interview at 5:17 p.m. instead of earlier. He also accused the vice president of having a “mission” to find a viral moment.

“She came to Fox News and she wanted to have a ‘go after Donald Trump’ viral moment that plays on a lot of other channels and on social media, and I think she may have gotten that,” Baier said.  

Jesse Watters also took shots at Harris, saying, “She was roughed up so badly, Pelosi’s asking Joe to get back in,” saying that she had no good answers on immigration, praising Baier, and putting down her interviews with other news networks.

“This is what an actual Kamala Harris interview should look like. Bret gave her the same treatment as he gave Trump in the spring: respectful, firm, and persistent. We didn’t swap her answers to make her look better like CBS. We didn’t invite little Timmy along to hold her hand like CNN. This was a big girl interview. And she flopped,” Watters said.  

Fox News is the most important media organ for Republicans and conservatives, and it’s not surprising that its hosts would push the narrative that Harris messed up. In reality, though, Harris did not back down from the network’s bias, challenging Baier and fighting back against his interruptions, and outside observers, including former Fox employees, agreed. Watters’s contention that Fox treated Harris the same way as Trump is laughable, especially since the network made heavy edits to an interview with the former president in June and had aired a remarkably gentle and sanitized town hall with him earlier that day.

The network was always going to be a formidable opponent for the Democrats this election, and Wednesday’s interview is clear proof that Fox’s on-air personalities want to make Harris look bad and help their preferred candidate, Donald Trump. The question is whether their audience was convinced. 

Appealing to undecided Latino voters with bold-faced racism at a Univision town hall was a brazen strategy for Donald Trump. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to pay off.

The Republican presidential nominee’s favorability among Latino voters has been in flux, but a New York Times/Siena College poll published earlier this week found that Vice President Kamala Harris led the nationwide demographic by a 12-point margin, while Trump attracted just 40 percent of the coveted vote. But groups of Latinos in key swing states, such as Nevada, have become less shy in recent months about showing their support for the former president, particularly over the economy.

So when it came time to answer a question from Jorge Velazquez, a 64-year-old Mexican immigrant farmer, about his mass deportation plan and the thousands of arduous jobs it would leave empty in the agricultural industry, Trump had an opening to seal the deal. Instead, he dropped the bag.

“The problem we have is, we had people coming in under my administration, and they were coming in legally, they were coming in through a system we had which was great because I’m the best thing that ever happened to farmers, you know that. I was great,” Trump said.

“They’ve released hundreds of thousands of people that are murderers, drug dealers, terrorists—they’re coming in totally, nobody knows who they are, where they come from,” Trump continued as audience members shifted in their seats.

“The other thing I can say is that a lot of the jobs that you have and that other people have are being taken by these people that are coming in,” Trump continued, misunderstanding Velazquez’s question, which directly tasked Trump to answer how much America would pay for the “price of food” if immigrant labor was unavailable.

“The African American population and the Hispanic population in particular are losing jobs now because millions of people are coming in,” Trump said. “So, they’re coming in but they’re also coming in largely and tremendous numbers, coming in, out of mental institutions—they’re emptying out mental institutions—they’re emptying out insane asylums, that’s a step above a mental institution.… They’re emptying out jails.”

In another sprawling and disturbing answer, Trump reinforced the baseless MAGA conspiracy that Haitian immigrants (who have legal temporary protected status) were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, lamenting that the sudden influx was preventing locals from accessing their basic needs.

“If you were a person that lived there, if you lived in Springfield, Ohio, and all of a sudden you couldn’t get into a hospital, you couldn’t get your children into a school, you wouldn’t be able to buy groceries. You could no longer pay the rent because the government’s paying rent, any of that. If any of that happened, it would be a disaster for you and you wouldn’t be happy. We want to make our people safe and secure, and we want to make them happy,” Trump said.

But the Haitian immigrants—who were attracted to the city due to its low cost of living and readily available work opportunities—are hardly why so many schools and government buildings in Springfield have shut down in recent weeks.

Instead, that fault lies with Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, who have drawn so much attention to the tiny city with their conspiracy that Springfield has endured at least 33 bomb threats, forcing it to evacuate and temporarily shutter several of its schools, colleges, festivals, and a significant portion of its government facilities.

Multiple city officials, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and even JD Vance himself have stated in no uncertain terms that the Haitian immigrant conspiracy is false.

No, it’s not 2016: Donald Trump is once again trying to pay to keep Stormy Daniels quiet ahead of the presidential election.

Just 11 days before the 2016 election, Trump had organized for Daniels to be paid $130,000 so that she would not speak publicly about their extramarital affair, illegally concealing the payment by laundering the money through Michael Cohen, his former attorney.

As a result, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in May, and awaits sentencing later in November. Apparently, Trump hasn’t learned from his mistakes at all. As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Wednesday night, Trump tried yet again to pay for Daniels’s silence.

Following Trump’s conviction, Daniels still had to pay some legal fees to his team related to some of their other disputes. While negotiating the fees and interest, Trump’s lawyer demanded $652,000 from Daniels, who was aiming for a number closer to $600,000.

When Daniels’s lawyer Clark Brewster called her to tell her what number they’d agreed on, Daniels was shocked to find that Trump’s team was trying their same, failed gambit as last time.

“They want to cut some kind of deal where they silence you,” Brewester said, in a video of the call Daniels had released to MSNBC.

“Don’t they know that shit won’t work?” Daniels scoffed.

“It’s not gonna happen, it’s not gonna happen,” Brewster replied.

Maddow was incredulous as she explained the situation. “Trump is trying to get another hush-money deal with Stormy Daniels ahead of this election,” she said. “Trump’s lawyer basically offered to take it off the bottom line; they would pretend that Stormy Daniels owed less money to Trump than they actually believed she owed, if she also signed an agreement not to talk about Trump.”

Maddow said that she had also received emails between Brewster and Trump’s lawyer Harry J. Ross, which confirmed Trump’s offer in exchange for Daniels’s silence.

“We disagree that a payment of 620,000.00 would be in full satisfaction of the three judgments,” read the offer from Ross. “However, we can agree to settle these matters for $620,000.00 provided that your client agrees in writing to make no public or private statements related to any alleged past interactions with President Trump, or defamatory or disparaging statements about him, his businesses and/or any affiliates or his suitability as a candidate for President.”

When Brewster refused Ross’s terms, he received another message, which dropped the bid for Daniels’s complicity. “I just spoke to my client and co-counsel,” the email read. “Case can be settled for 635,000.00 ALL IN.”

Daniels ended up paying $627,500 in fees to Trump, and did not agree to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

While Ross did not respond to MSNBC’s questions, the Trump campaign released a statement that … also did not answer any questions. “These purported documents were attained as part of an illegal, foreign hacking against President Trump and his team,” said Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung.

Of course, this is a lie, as Brewster had provided the emails to MSNBC.

Donald Trump’s latest play to attract undecided Latino votes did not go as planned.

Speaking at a Univision town hall on Wednesday, Trump was confronted with serious questions by Republicans and former Republicans who had not yet decided if they would support him in a few weeks.

But one question from Ramiro González, a 56-year-old construction worker from Tampa who had de-registered from the Republican Party, really seemed to throw him.

“I want to give you the opportunity to try and win back my vote,” González said. “Your action and maybe inaction, during your presidency and maybe the last few years, sort of, was a little disturbing to me.… What happened during January 6, and the fact that you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capital.”

Trump then launched into his usual diatribe about the events of the day, peeling himself away from the fact that thousands of his supporters had traveled to Washington that day to hear him speak before they were incited to storm the Capitol.

“You had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me, they came because of the election—they thought the election was a rigged election, and that’s why they came,” Trump said. “Some of those people went down to the Capitol. I said ‘peacefully and patriotically,’ nothing done wrong at all, nothing done wrong.”

But that’s when Trump completely stopped making sense.

“Action was taken, strong action,” Trump said. “Ashley Babbitt was killed. Nobody was killed.

“There were no guns down there, we didn’t have guns, the others had guns,” Trump said, apparently complaining that the Capitol Police were armed before quickly attempting to correct that he had simultaneously referred to himself and his rioting supporters as a collective unit.

The entire interaction didn’t go over well with other audience members, who were seen twisting their faces with concern and disgust while the former president drew out his response. And a later comment, in which Trump referred to January 6 as a “day of love,” pushed González to furrow his brow.

The Univision town hall was nothing like the Fox News one Trump participated in the day before, which featured softball questions from a small crowd of women who turned out to be Trump supporters—and whom the network had seemingly invited to offer a safe space for the Republican presidential nominee. Behind the scenes, some women openly admitted that they had received “personal invitations” from the network to appear.