Musk Revealed as Donor Behind Pro-Trump RBG PAC

The world's richest person spent more than $250 million helping President-elect Trump win the election, including a $20 million donation to a super PAC that Ruth Bader Ginsburg's family described as "appalling." Campaign finance reports filed Thursday revealed that Elon Musk donated $20.5 million to RBG PAC, reports NBC News. The identity of the group's sole donor was previously unknown. RBG PAC ran ads in October arguing that Trump does not support a federal ban on abortion. Its website featured pictures of Trump and the late Supreme Court justice side-by-side, with the slogan "Great Minds Think Alike," reports Mediaite.

• Other donations. Musk's total spending supporting Trump and other Republican candidates was at least $277 million, the Washington Post reports. Most of it went to his pro-Trump America PAC, which ran a get-out-the-vote operation. The group also spent $19 million on House races. The filings show that some of his donations to the group came after Election Day. Musk has said he plans to use the group to target progressive prosecutors. Musk also donated $3 million to the pro-Robert F. Kennedy Jr. MAHA Alliance group.

• Ginsburg "despised" Trump. Ginsburg "openly despised" Trump, the New York Times noted after the ads first appeared. "The RBG PAC has no connection to the Ginsburg family and is an affront to my late grandmother's legacy," granddaughter Clara Spera said at the time. "The use of her name and image to support Donald Trump's re-election campaign, and specifically to suggest that she would approve of his position on abortion, is nothing short of appalling." When Ginsburg died less than two months before Trump lost the 2020 election, Spera, an abortion rights lawyer, said her grandmother's dying wish was to not be replaced until a new president was elected.
• True spending figure may never be known. The New York Times reports that the true total of Musk's election spending may never be known because he "may have also funded dark-money entities that will never disclose his involvement or donations."

(More Elon Musk stories.)