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I don't really see how it is "buying" power. Musk and Trump shared similar ideological paths. Starting as moderate dems that became disillusioned with an increasingly authoritarian left as their business projects hit endless red tape and corruption while interacting with government. Spoke up about it and got the state media attacking them. It's not at all surprising that they ended up influencing eachother, they're friends.
If you're referring to the election in general money wasn't the deciding factor, Kamala outspent Trump by like 50% or something, 1.6b to 1b. So whatever power was bought, less of it was bought by Trump. He won on policy.
Soros follows the traditional shady lobbyist m.o. where he doesn't bother trying to convince the voters like Musk does, he just buys low level politicians, or influences vulnerable populations, low iq minorities, vulnerable children at college campuses. It's not really the same.
The left mostly has themselves and their incredibly rigid ideology to blame for Musk.
AIPAC would be the more relevant group to compare to Soros. The things Musk is doing are all things Trump ran on. War with Iran and taking the territory of Gaza are not.
Trump ran on being the most pro-Israel president ever and openly discussed assisting Israel in the war on Hamas many times in the campaign.
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Not quite. Whatever power was bought, was bought by buying Twitter, not direct contributions to either campaign.
A single non censored source of information vs completely managed media = buying power. I think libs are just used to having complete authority over communication via control of media, hollywood and the power of false accusations of the various "isms" to deter any critical speech and formation of grassroots organization.
It's such a load of hypocrisy. Like the whole Bernie, AOC nonsense tour. The Oligarch has bought our government, Trump is Musk's puppet. Trump? a puppet? I think he's easy to manipulate, but he's not someone you buy. Meanwhile they ignore that the dems are propped up by Gates, Bloomberg, Soros, Cuban etc. and the last guy they installed up as president had to literally be led around by handlers and fed his lines.
I mean, yes. If Musk didn't buy Twitter and turned it into the single non censored source of information, Trump likely wouldn't have won, and it's still useful to him now that he's president, otherwise he'd still be operating in a hostile media environment like during the first term.
This is why Elon gets to be one of Trump's closest advisors, while Vivek gets ejected.
Yup, that's me. The biggest lib on the Motte.
If he were actively using it to censor and promote his own viewpoints I'd call it buying power, but since beyond a few erratic bans over personal grudges he is not it doesn't really qualify. More like liberating the public square.
It's all relative. You are far to the left of me.
But as you pointed out, the media landscape is so scewed, that merely not censoring, or "liberating the public square" is enough to make a massive difference in the election. All I'm saying is that if you're looking at expenditures that may have won Elon influence in the Trump administration, you have to look at the purchase of Twitter, not the chump change he spent on the campaign.
Uh... that's certainly possible, but are you sure you know what you're signing up for?
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Arjin, I... I thought I knew you.
Were all these years just a lie?
It's much worse than that, I thought I knew myself, but now I don't what to think anymore!
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