Elon Musk blew $447 million to support Republican candidates in the midterm elections — and almost every single cent of it went to waste.
But if you were about to break out a tiny violin to soundtrack the sorrows of the world’s first — and first former — trillionaire, you should consider acquiring an even tinier one, because those were just the beginning of his losses.
Shares of Musk’s businesses SpaceX and Tesla immediately tanked after Democrats swept the Senate, House, and governorship races — including in Texas, Musk’s base of operations. His automaker fell 3.3 percent, and his rocket-slash-AI company plunged by a full 3.8 , wiping out what Bloomberg reported was over $120 billion.
That did a number on Musk’s personal wealth, which in large part derives from his stakes in those companies. He is now, by the Financial Time’s estimate, some $30 billion poorer.
Despite the excess of egg on his face, Musk still managed to look through his post history on X and start deleting the ones about the election.
Trying to rally his followers, Musk tweeted “Vote red today!” on Tuesday morning. But it was removed after the reality of a blue tsunami came crashing at his doorstep. So was his pinned tweet from last week urging his followers to vote for Republican senators, which according to Forbes was taken down around the time Democratic candidate James Talarico declared victory in the senate race.
To his credit, he did make a few jokes at his own expense.
“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” he tweeted late Tuesday night.
For the most part, though, Musk seems eager to move on. Besides one post in which he claimed “Voter ID failed in California,” he’s gone back to his usual tweets promoting Grok and his various companies almost as if nothing happened. If we spent half a billion dollars trying to get candidates elect who all lost, and were now staring down the barrel of a Democrat-stacked government looking to get revenge on us, we would probably try to sweep everything under the rug, too.
More on industrialists: Elon Musk in Real Trouble After Humiliating Defeat
