Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spent over half a billion dollars on anti-EV political campaigns so far, with $276 million spent in just the last 3 months.
Even Tesla acknowledges that these campaigns have harmed its business, costing it billions, and has taken the extraordinary measure of asking its CEO to stop – yet he’s only accelerated his anti-EV influence in response.
During Tesla’s early years, the company made a deliberate effort to remain largely nonpartisan. It would explain the benefits of its products – lower emissions, energy independence, lower energy costs and so on – but wouldn’t directly involve itself in partisan marketing.
This is a common and expected tactic for companies, as political discussions can get highly charged and there’s little reason for a company to position itself around wedge issues that have nothing to do with its core business.
But Elon Musk couldn’t help but innovate new ways to turn off his buyers, and had to change the game.
Since 2024, he has been outwardly one-sided in politicking for the republican party, and mindlessly repeating its stance on basically every wedge issue that comes along in support of them, whether related to any of his businesses or not.
Musk’s bribes are accelerating
And a new FEC report shows that Musk’s bribes are accelerating. He has spent $366 million during the 2026 midterms, with $276 million spent since July. That’s even more than the $288 million he spent during the 2024 election. This makes him the single biggest issuer of political bribes during this election cycle.
In fact, just this last week, Musk intimated that James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Texas Senate, was in a mental hospital in Ohio… while Talarico was in public on the campaign trail in Texas. Talarico is running against the enormously unpopular and scandal-ridden current Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who nevertheless has been very accommodating to Musk personally.
But the main issue here is that the republican party, pretty much top to bottom, is openly anti-EV. Republican candidates opposed electric vehicles, promised to harm them, and then followed through on that promise, causing massive US job losses and making EV charging harder.
So, directing his political bribes solely to the republican party seems like a questionable decision for a CEO of an electric car company.
These actions have harmed Tesla’s reputation – and bottom line
Unsurprisingly, these bribes have damaged Tesla. Tesla is the only EV brand with negative perception, and it’s directly correlated to Musk’s political activities. His actions haven’t just harmed Tesla domestically, but abroad, where the company has lost business opportunities in Canada, Australia, Germany, and Denmark, and has seen falling sales in most territories, along with protests and embarrassed owners.
In addition to the lost sales which turned Tesla from a company that had consistently grown since its inception into one that is now fighting for profitability, Tesla itself acknowledges billions in lost revenue as a direct result of republican actions that Musk has monetarily supported. His spending has not just continued but accelerated since Tesla lost those billions of dollars.
It has gotten so bad that Tesla has had to acknowledge the damage Musk’s bribes have done multiple times, both in quarterly reports and government filings. Tesla knows that Musk’s politicking is harming it and harming shareholders, but shareholders and Tesla’s captured board continue to allow him to do it.
The harm isn’t limited to active Tesla shareholders, either. Given Tesla’s size – and the potential size of a SpaceX/Tesla chimera, which Musk is currently working towards – basically everyone’s retirement account has some exposure to Musk companies. The more Musk does to harm those companies, and to monopolize their stock and voting rights through shady self-deals, the more your retirement account gets diluted to satisfy Musk’s ego.
But it’s really all about avoiding the law
Musk’s shady self-dealing gives us a sense of why these bribes are happening. Musk’s politics clearly harm his company, Tesla, but the lack of oversight associated with the scam era brought on by having a felon in the White House still benefits Musk. He’s been able to get away with breaking the law as the criminals in the White House refuse to enforce it.
So in the end, Musk’s actions are to benefit him, not his company. And he acknowledged this publicly in 2024.
That’s all well and good from his perspective, but the fact that any shareholders would support this is the confusing part. It’s quite clear that he’s just trying to gather a larger part of a shrinking pie for himself, by diluting every other shareholder in his companies.
Yet those shareholders have still voted lock-step to support his mission to harm EVs and take more of their slice of the pie, despite that he already has more pie than anyone else on Earth.
And in doing so, they support a man who is the largest single monetary supporter of a party that is blocking renewables, slowing down American industry, making all of your costs higher, and starting dumb oil wars that EVs have nothing to do with. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but then again, what does in 2026?
For no particular reason, here’s the link to find out how to register to vote in your state. November’s just a few weeks away.
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