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We had an item yesterday about the three billionaires—Elon Musk, Richard Uihlein and Miriam Adelson—who are substantially funding Donald Trump's presidential campaign. There were a couple of related news stories yesterday worth noting as a follow up.
To start, the Trumpublicans might have some billionaires on their side, but so too do the Democrats. Indeed, there are probably more billionaire Democrats than billionaire Republicans. Among those billionaire Democrats is Mark Cuban, who actually leans somewhat libertarian, but who thoroughly despises Donald Trump. There's been no indication that Cuban is writing fat checks to Democratic PACs, but he is campaigning with Kamala Harris this week. Perhaps more importantly, he is serving as a media surrogate, and as a liaison to the business world, including to groups like Venture Capitalists for Kamala and Business Leaders for Harris. Interestingly, and we would not have guessed this, Cuban is particularly popular with... Latinos, especially Latinos over 50 (even though Cuban is not a Latino—his ancestors were Russian and Eastern European Jews, but not everyone knows that).
Meanwhile, Musk is both campaigning AND donating. The problem here is that, like his friend Trump, he doesn't care much about what the law says. As readers will likely know, Musk was offering $47 incentives to anyone who signed up a new voter. That's actually legal because it doesn't discriminate on the basis of party (or any other factor). However, from that, Musk moved on to a new scheme, where he gives out tickets to the rallies he's holding, but ONLY to people who sign a petition affirming that: (1) they support "free speech," (2) they support the right to bear arms, and (3) they have already voted in Pennsylvania.
The problem here is that the first two requirements are going to generate a subset of the population that skews Republican/Trumpy. Meanwhile, the third requirement is going to encourage those people to hurry up and cast their ballot, so they can attend a Musk speech/appearance. Tickets to a Musk speech/appearance have some cash value (not to us, but to many people), and so, as election law expert Rick Hasen points out, Musk is either buying votes, or coming dangerously close to doing so. Buying votes is, of course, illegal.
Readers may recall an item we wrote about a month ago, about Ben and Jerry giving out free ice cream to registered voters. Hasen actually made this same observation back then, and so Ben and Jerry started giving out free ice cream to everyone. Similarly, Musk can solve this potential legal problem by dropping the entry requirements, and offering the tickets on a first come, first served basis. Given that he is a stubborn man who tends to think he's above the law, we are not holding our breath.
And since we are on the subject anyhow, and since we imagine most folks could use a pick-me-up at the end of the workweek, how about another ten Donald Trump-Elon Musk band names?
Some of these were submitted by multiple readers; these just happen to be the first of each we read. Anyhow, look for another installment next week. (Z)