The Undeniable Impact of Elon Musk's Influence on the US Presidential Election

Published Dec 20, 2024, 11:12 AM

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Margaret Talev, Founding Director, Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism & Citizenship, discusses research on Elon Musk’s influence on US politics.
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Paul Brennan.

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You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol mess Here and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio. We also learned that presidentle like Donald Trump, has backed the latest House Republican package to avoid a US government shutdown. He said this in a post on truth Social Here's what he wrote. Quote, all Republicans, even the Democrats, should do what is best for our country and vote yes on this bill tonight.

Yeah.

I mean, I kind of want to see what's in the bill, like the the devil's in the details, as we like to say. All Right, so we're looking for more information on that.

Let's see what Margaret toll of us to say about this. She's director of the Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship at Syracuse University. She's also a former senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg News. Margaret joins us from Washington. Margaret, I know that you guys have this big report out about Elon Musk's influence. We're going to talk about that in just a minute, because you can't talk about funding and the debt limit without talking about Elon Musk, especially what he's done in recent days. But what's your view on the way that the President elect has driven the conversation about this weeks before he even takes office.

Yeah.

Well, first of all, it is great to be back with you guys, Carroll and Tim. Thank you for having me back on such a crazy, busy day with a three ring circus. You know, it's funny because it really doesn't matter on some level who the president is and who's in control of Congress. You can almost always count on a cliffhanger and chaos, like you know, the week before everyone's supposed to break for the holidays. This has been no exception. But it's been very interesting to see President elect Trump walk his own speaker, Mike Johnson, right to the edge of sort of well, let's say, extreme instability and risk of getting tossed over the edge by his own party, and then blow up the carefully negotiated earlier deal and he gets sort of a long runway on the debt ceiling. Maybe abolish it or maybe just give him a couple of years running room into the at least through the first midterms of his presidency, and that's what he wants. You've got several Republicans who don't want that because they're fiscal conservatives, and you have Democrats who don't want it because they think it would just hugely empower Trump with no accountability and that they would end up regretting doing it. So a lot of drama thrust into you know, the last forty eight hours or so, and to your point, Elon Musk has been at the center of it. I think months ago, back in the quaint days of the summer, when Jadie Vance was rolled out as Trump's running mate, everyone thought, well, if he becomes the vice president elect, we'll really see Trump and jd Vance partnership. But it's really been a Trump and Elon Musk partnership with jd Vance kind of running up to the hill from time to time, but it's been musked with the soapbox and the leverage and the immunition.

Margaret, I always think about this, You know, Congress works for we you meet tim like the American people, and so are we getting something here that's good for the American public?

These end of year negotiations to avert a government shut down, or by their very nature, no matter how many elements get sussed out, there are always elements that slip under the rug or between page one thousand and one ten. So it's this is nothing new, but it's not one of the most sunlit filled rooms in government. Is all the stuff that gets crammed into a bill. People voted it, they haven't read it yet. It creates a lot of consternation for members of Congress too, and then once it passes, it's past. But these budget stop gaps, they really don't resolve things for two years at a time. Typically they resolve things for a few months at a time, and that you've seen. Part of that is what the former and president elect Trump wants to avoid, is he doesn't want to have to keep dealing with these battles in the early months of his presidency while he's trying to do other things. But the partisan lines are so close, and there are so many fractures within the Republican Caucus itself, and it's very hard to get lasting, long term agreements, and it's very hard to get transparency in the final hours when they're trying to jam through a compromise.

You mentioned Elon Musks. That's where I want to go now, because according to The New York Times, Musk has made more than one hundred and fifty posts just in a short period of time, agitating for a government shutdown that happened yesterday is what. When he was making those posts, he spent hundreds of millions of dollars helping to elect Donald Trump. This morning, Ran Paul Republican Senator of Kentucky, tweeted that perhaps Elon Musk should be Speaker of the House. No question Elon is influential in washing Hington these days. But I do wonder how influential he is, Margaret, and you tried to actually quantify that at the Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship at Syracuse University. How do you measure it?

We've had this really cool year long project. In fact, the last time I was on with you, we talked about it a little bit, called the Election Graph Project. We were very lucky to receive a research grant from a company called neo Forge that develops graph technology. That's basically a technical way of saying they allow their software lets you see both hidden connections between a seemingly disconnected people and also commonalities in text and video. And we use their technology, and my colleague Jenny Stromer Galley built a research team at our institute for Democracy, journalism and citizenship to try to look for misinformation and basically patterns in the spread of information around ads on meta platforms related to the presidential campaign. And then I know it sounds super specific, but you have to draw some boundaries around it. Just looking at ads on meta we found more than six billion with a b ad impressions from the campaigns, just the Harris and Biden and Trump campaigns. Then another five billion impressions from outside groups. And among these outside groups that we looked at, we tried to understand these dark money groups that got money from Elon Musk but either had no accountability or really no accountability until after the election, how impactful were they. But we found that there were more than six million dollars spent in negative ads just from those groups that were backed by Musk that we're doing a lot of the work to undercut Kamala Harris in those closing days. Six million dollars doesn't buy you a whole lot on linear TV. Six million dollars buys you a lot on social media platforms in terms of ad impressions, which are basically views. How many times did people see an image or see the text of these ads coming through on their screens.

In that period of time. Elon Musk has bought well, he owned it, you know, over the last year, but he bought X a couple of years ago. But he's transformed it over the last year into something that's completely different I think many people would say than it was before. Certainly it's his preferred method of communication. How do you measure his influence just using that social platform, right?

I mean it's a fantastic question. Again, this election graph project with the IDJC and ufour J looked at meta platforms and part of the reason why is because the regulatory structure does not compel all the social media platforms to give researchers access to this information. So it's really hard to attach metrics to everything that he's doing. But we can all see this. It's been sort of a user and ideological shift, but also a gate keeper in a guardrail shift in terms of what kind of messaging is spread on formerly Twitter now X and who likes to use it. And I think we've seen a lot of movement from some users and some.

Margaret one last question just quickly, so, shame on social media velocity, Shame on social media companies, shame on all of us who read so much social media and kind of create that velocity, or shame on just the money in politics to the extreme level that it has become, and just quickly.

You know, money undoubtedly has an impact in politics, but it's also voter beware and consumer beware. There are a lot of efforts to manipulate you, whether it's to take advantage of financially, to misinform you, to bend your vote, to confuse you, or just to prod you in a certain direction. You have to understand when you're consuming information, it does the way you think about issues.

Eyes wide open. Margaret Tollivers is so nice to be checking in with you. Have a great holiday and happy new Year, Director of the Chute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship at Syracuse University. A former senior White House correspondent for our team here at Bloomberg News. So great to reconnect joining us from Washington, d C.