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Elon Musk makes major social media move after his record $474 million Republicans bet ended in disaster
Hours after the results of the Democrats' landslide victory in Tuesday's midterms began flooding in, tech mogul Elon Musk is believed to have deleted his social media posts urging people to vote for the party he poured millions of dollars into.
The SpaceX founder set a record for contributing the largest amount of cash ever by a single donor in an American election cycle when he gave at least $474 million to Republican campaigns.
A large portion of the eye-watering sum went towards candidates standing in Texas, a historically red state that shocked the nation when it turned blue on Tuesday night.
Why was Musk so desperate for Texas to stay Republican?
The world's only trillionaire directed the majority of his resources to the southern state because he chose it as his primary home in 2020, after relocating the headquarters of Tesla, SpaceX, and X there.
Some believe he made the move from California partly because of the appeal of Texas' political climate and the unlikelihood of it ever becoming a liberal place to live.
However, as it has been well reported, the results in Musk's adopted home state proved particularly dramatic. James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton to become the first Texas Democrat elected to the Senate in 36 years, while Gina Hinojosa scored an upset victory over incumbent Greg Abbott to capture the Texas governor's mansion.
In another blow to the tech giant and pal of the President, shares of both SpaceX and Tesla fell substantially to around 6 percent in premarket trading as investors reacted to the shifting legislative landscape on Wednesday morning.
Musk appeared to be embarrassed by the results on social media
Shortly after the first results began showing major Republican losses, Musk took to X to make bitter jokes in light of his failed attempt to exert power over the electorate. He quipped: “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time” shortly after posting: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”
Later in the fateful day, he responded to a post claiming “Voters agreed with Republicans on every policy at issue and then voted Democrat” by saying: “Voter ID failed in California,” referring to a failed measure that would have mandated showing a government-issued photo ID to cast an in-person ballot.
Digging himself a hole, Musk has also been accused of deleting social media posts endorsing the incumbent party. When one X user asked Musk's own chatbot, Grok, whether its inventor was removing his own posts, it responded: "true", revealing that he had deleted one statement urging his followers to "Vote red today!"