TOI correspondent from Washington: In the minds of many American tech-bros, Elon Musk is the only man who can replicate for a free-falling America what his company SpaceX achieved recently — successfully “catching” a 20-storey tall super-heavy first-stage booster of its Starship rocket with a pair of robotic arms. But much as they would like Musk to do this job as Donald Trump‘s putative MAGA Republican successor, there’s one problem: Musk, although now an American citizen, was born in South Africa, and the US Constitution allows only a natural-born American citizen to be the President.
Still, Musk has jumped into the 2024 US election with more gusto than any other naturalized American tech mogul, putting both his considerable money and his X-powered mouth behind Trump. He is now the second most important figure after Trump in the MAGA movement, counting vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, and he looks set to make a formal political debut this week with an assured cabinet level position should Trump take the White House. On Wednesday, Musk announced that he will be “giving a series of talks” in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that could tip the scales for the winner, literally putting his mouth behind the latest $ 75 million political contribution he has made to get Trump elected.
Musk’s upcoming exertions in Pennsylvania comes amid a titanic struggle in the battleground state for two key demographics which could decide the elections: suburban white women, whose support for Kamala Harris, polls show, is growing; and urban black men, whose support for her is said to be diminishing. Harris will also be in Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania, at the same time Musk is in the state, pitting two unlikely opponents from California against each other in a split screen.
On Wednesday, the Harris campaign jumped on a typically blunt message from Donald Trump to minority voters at a rally in Georgia, where he said “any African American or Hispanic… that votes for Kamala” needs to have their “head examined” to remind the demographic of his stream of insults. “It’s him who should have his head examined – and he should man up and release his medical records so that voters can understand what exactly is going on with comments like this,” the campaign snapped back, taunting him to “stop hiding in his safe space and take his divisive rhetoric directly to Black media… they have plenty of unanswered questions.”
Harris meanwhile is jumping headlong into the “white media,” notably with Fox News interview on Wednesday night, as race takes centerstage in a Presidential race where a South African from the apartheid era is Trump‘s guiding force. With his 202 million followers on X, Musk needs no tv networks, and he has fully thrown his weight behind the many racist tropes Trump and his MAGA flock have drummed up, including dubious data and false stories aimed at demonizing asylum seekers and putting fear in the minds of white Americans.
Democrats have only now begun to push back at the bogus stories promoted by Trump and co even as early polling has opened in Georgia and Philadelphia three weeks before Election Day. Implicitly refuting reports of a rift between him and his vice-president, President Biden too came out to Philadelphia to pitch for Harris, calling out Trump for characterizing America as a failing nation, saying, “the only loser I know is Donald Trump.”
“401Ks (a retirement account) are strong, violent crime is down, murder is down and fewer people are crossing the border, and Trump calls that a hellscape? He talks about America being a failed nation, where the hell’s he from? It makes me angry. I say America’s winning, we’re the most powerful nation in the world, the most respected nation in the world,” Biden thundered, as Democrats closed ranks behind Harris, with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama campaigning elsewhere.
In contrast, Trump is waging a lone battle, with few surrogates besides him, forcing Starship Musk to come to his rescue.