‘They’re trying to save their tails’: The billionaires scrambling to influence the US election

Entrepreneurs become legends when they make big bets on technology that pay off in a huge and dramatic way. Elon Musk is now applying that all-or-nothing philosophy to a presidential election, tying his reputation and perhaps his future to a win by Donald Trump.

Jeff Bezos, the reigning swashbuckler of the internet age until Musk came along, was playing a cooler game, content to let Musk take the headlines and the risk. Then last week Bezos ventured — well, stumbled — into the heart of the news.

Jeff Bezos’s decision to cancel the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris led to 250,000 readers cancelling their subscriptions.Credit: AP

Among his many properties is The Washington Post, which he bought in 2013. The paper’s editorial board was preparing to recommend the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, when Bezos cancelled the endorsement at the last minute.

It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, just a ho-hum announcement of something not happening. Instead the greatest salesperson of the era, whose customer obsession had made Amazon into a colossus of modern retail, got the greatest customer rejection of a lifetime.

A quarter-million Post readers cancelled their subscriptions, a figure first reported by NPR and then by the Post itself. That is about 10 per cent of the total circulation. The speed and decisive force of the cancellations was a bit of a shock but also weirdly appropriate, said Danny Caine, author of How to Resist Amazon and Why.

“Amazon invented the whole notion of one-click culture, where you click a button and there’s a bunch of toilet paper on your porch,” he said. “You can’t get rid of a Tesla in your driveway with one click. But you can with the newspaper that Jeff Bezos owns.”

Those cancelling said they felt Bezos was trying to curry favour with Trump, a charge he denied. The furor immediately exceeded any damage incurred by Musk since he endorsed Trump in July and became the former president’s most visible fan, cheerleader and acolyte.

If customers are rejecting the electric vehicles made by Musk’s car company, Tesla, for political reasons, it has yet to show up in the sales numbers. Musk implicitly dismissed the notion on the social platform X on Tuesday, reposting an admirer’s note that said it wasn’t happening.

Musk, Bezos and other extremely rich people are confronted with unusual opportunities and invisible perils in the tightest, most dramatic, chaotic and highest stakes political battle in modern times. Everyone has a stake in this election, of course, but the very wealthy have so much at stake — or at least think they do — that they are perhaps inevitably trying to shape it, too.

There has always been money in politics, and rich people who sought their reward in Washington. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first Cabinet was known as “eight millionaires and a plumber.” But until recently, it was literally considered bad business for successful public figures to declare favourites too stridently and make too many demands.

Elon Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, are the subject of more than 20 investigations or reviews, a New York Times examination found.Credit: AP

Michael Jordan established the standard for many celebrities in 1990. The basketball superstar, who went to college in North Carolina, was asked about whether he would endorse Harvey Gantt, the Black candidate running to dethrone Jesse Helms, the Republican senator with a long opposition to civil rights.

“Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Jordan said. Helms narrowly beat Gantt.

Jordan later said it was an off-the cuff remark, a joke even, but he did not really back away from it. “I never thought of myself as an activist,” he said. “I thought of myself as a basketball player.”

Many billionaires now are activists. One reason is there are more of them — the ranks of US billionaires are up 38 per cent by one estimate since Trump first took office in 2016 — and they have even more money. For all the spectre of antitrust and regulation, life has been very good for the rich and their companies. The stock market is perpetually at a record high.

Even this ocean of money has a limit, however. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle who ranks just behind Musk and Bezos as one of the richest men in the world, last year backed the presidential aspirations of Senator Tim Scott. Ellison spent at least $US30 million ($46 million) but could not make Scott a viable candidate.

Ellison came up with the funding for his candidate but was otherwise quiet. Musk is anything but reticent and has become a full-scale surrogate for Trump, as well as one of his biggest donors. Speaking at the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Musk told the crowd, “We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.”

Musk would no doubt like to get the government off his own back. His companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, are the subject of more than 20 investigations or reviews, a New York Times examination found. Tesla’s push for autonomous driving is a particular focus for regulators. Just last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was investigating several self-driving crashes involving fog and dust.

Musk, who has offered himself to Trump as a sort of inspector general for government waste, has regularly tussled with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The commission has probed the entrepreneur’s 2022 purchase of X, then called Twitter. Musk did not show up for a deposition in September, leading to an SEC request that sanctions be imposed on him.

Beyond the regulatory scrutiny, Musk is tied to the government through funding. NASA announced in June that SpaceX got an $US843 million contract to “de-orbit” the space station when it is ready for retirement in a few years. SpaceX has contracts to launch military and spy satellites. It also received contracts in 2021 and 2022 worth a total of $US4 billion to take humans to the moon twice. It is working on many other projects involving the government.

Bezos, too, has business with the government. Most notably, the US Department of Justice is bringing Amazon to court, accusing it of antitrust violations.

When Trump was president, Amazon and its CEO were sometimes the subject of his barbs. The company bid on a $US10 billion cloud computing contract that the Pentagon awarded to Microsoft. Amazon sued, saying Trump had undermined its bid. The contract was cancelled. Ultimately four tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, got a part of the cloud deal.

The most vulnerable Bezos property in a new and vindictive Trump administration is probably the one he cares about most: his space company, Blue Origin. The company will compete with SpaceX and a third firm to provide launch services for national security rockets over the next five years.

On Friday, when the Post announced it would not endorse a presidential candidate, Blue Origin’s CEO, Dave Limp, had a brief meeting with Trump in Texas. Bezos did not respond to a request for comment but said in a piece he wrote in the Post on Monday that he knew this “would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision” and that the whole thing was a coincidence. That article drew more than 24,000 comments, few of them favourable to Bezos.

Everyone has a stake in this election, of course, but the very wealthy have so much at stake — or at least think they do — that they are perhaps inevitably trying to shape it, too.

A few hours later, Musk posted on X: “Kudos to @JeffBezos.” It’s possible he was tweaking Bezos, like the time an interviewer asked about him and Musk responded “Jeff who?” Musk did not respond to a message for comment.

For Gordon L. Johnson II, a New York securities analyst and die-hard Tesla sceptic, everyone is acting rationally: “They’re trying to save their tails.”

The best-case scenario for Musk if Trump wins, he said, “is that Trump says, ‘Forget about the open cases the DOJ and SEC have against you,’ ” he said. “The risk if Kamala wins is that the current investigations continue.”

As for Bezos, he is also doing the sensible thing, Johnson said.

“If you want to protect your business interests, cowardice is a rational thing,” he said. “We’ve never had a president threatening the things Trump has threatened.”

Johnson knows he, too, must behave rationally.

“I have a ‘sell’ rating on Tesla,” he said. “If Trump wins and Musk is in government, who knows what is going to happen to his enemies. I have a 4-month-old son and Daddy going to jail would be a problem. I’m not rich. I’d drop my coverage of Tesla.”

Which would be another win for Musk.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.