Trump and Musk face growing scrutiny over election dodginess

  • Post last modified:November 11, 2024
  • Reading time:10 mins read


Since Donald Trump (and let’s be real, Elon Musk) won the 2024 US presidential election, people having been pushing back against the result from multiple angles. Amid suggestions of election interference, some are already gearing up to contest the results.

The fine print on Kamala Harris’ fundraising page has suggested that her team will be gearing up for a recount:

Clearly, the Democrats will not be walking away from this election too quickly. Over the last week, there has been much speculation on both X and TikTok over missing ballots. One woman’s burnt ballot turned back up at her house, after she had mailed it.

@lilyyyolson♬ original sound – lil o

Trump and Musk and the election: too many anomalies?

Previously, the Justice Department charged Trump himself with election interference. This time around though, his friendship with Elon Musk has raised a lot of suspicions.

Even Elon Musk’s own AI tool on X, Grok, called him out for election interference:

Polling stations even used Starlink, and whilst there is no evidence supporting that theory, its not completely out of the realm of possibility given everything we know about both Trump and Musk. Trump even bragged about his and Musk’s ‘little secret’:

@livenowfoxDonald Trump spoke about a “little secret” at his rally in Madison Square Garden in New York, mentioning it when he brought up winning congressional and senate races this election cycle♬ original sound – LiveNOW from FOX

Musk also joked that ‘if we lose, I’m fucked’ and ‘how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be’ in a video shared by The Express Tribune on YouTube.

Led By Donkeys, a UK based group released a nine minute video exposing all the ways Musk peddled right-wing conspiracy theories, gave a convicted sex offender a platform, and artificially inflated the numbers on his own tweets in the run up to the election:

Election interference

Back in 2018, the FBI released the names and photos of 12 Russian Military intelligence officers for their alleged roles in interfering with the 2016 US election. The charges against these individuals involved:

a computer hacking conspiracy involving gaining unauthorized access into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, stealing documents from those computers, and staging releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The indictment also charges these defendants with aggravated identity theft, false registration of a domain name, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The FBI also charged two defendants with:

 a separate conspiracy to commit computer crimes, relating to hacking into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of 2016 U.S. elections, such as state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections.

Special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russian interference operations against the US during the 2016 election were ‘vast and complex’.

The FBI proved interference in the 2016 election – albeit two years too late. If there was interference eight years ago, why is it so unhinged to suggest the same now?

Protecting Californians

Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, announced that he was calling an emergency special session to ‘safeguard the fundamental freedoms we all hold dear’:

As Politico reported:

Newsom said state lawmakers would convene to take immediate legislative action to counter Trump’s expected attacks on abortion, electric vehicles, immigration and federal disaster aid.

Moreover, as the outlet noted, he’s not the only blue state mobilising to protect their suite of more progressive policies.

Right now, there’s a lot of unproven conspiracy theories flying round about this – such as the stolen 20 million ballots. Instead, it’s just that 20 million people simply decided not to vote for two parties that do not speak for them. Turns out, genocidal, right-leaning Democrats aren’t exactly popular.

Of course, with a convicted felon who previously tried to overturn the result of the last election, and the history of Russian interference in 2016, it’s not out of the realms of possibility there was similar interference this time.

And with Musk calling the shots on X, Trump had outsized influence too. Plus, we know Musk set about spreading election misinformation to help secure him the Whitehouse.

So it’s not so farfetched that Trump (and Musk’s)  win – at least in part – may not have been all totally above board.

Feature image via MSNBC/Youtube





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