“It will be much harder to win races where there are millions put into spread misinformation, and use fearmongering to try to get voters to move away from candidates who are more committed to their local communities than Musk would ever would be.”
-Cristine Soto DeBerry
Executive Director of Prosecutors Alliance Action
By Trisha Thadani
Donald Trump adviser Brooke Rollins had a question for the crowd celebrating his election at his Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month. “Where is the George Soros of the right?” she called from the stage, referring to the billionaire investor and prolific liberal donor.
To loud cheers, a younger billionaire in the audience threw his right hand into the air: Elon Musk.
Musk is being likened to Soros in Republican circles — and embracing the comparison — after he plowed more than $118 million into his pro-Trump super PAC to support the former president’s campaign. He is also planning to use Soros’s past donations as a road map to guide his own political targets.
The tech mogul told advisers shortly before the election that America PAC should challenge “Soros DAs,” referring to a cohort of progressive district attorneys across the country who received support from Soros and affiliated organizations, according to two people familiar with Musk’s plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
Musk believes that prosecutors linked to Soros are too lenient on crime and directly responsible for theft and other quality-of-life issues in cities across the country, the people said. Many DAs linked to the liberal donor campaigned on platforms of criminal justice reform and were elected in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
“The progressive district attorneys are a problem, and they are easy pickings,” one of the people said.
Soros, a Hungarian-born hedge fund founder, has long been a target of right-wing conspiracy theories about his involvement in liberal politics around the world.
Over the past decade, Soros and affiliated groups have backed prosecutors across the country who campaigned on liberal ideals, like reducing mass incarceration and improving equity in the criminal justice system. His donations have ranged from thousands to millions of dollars, in cities large and small. His intervention in local district attorney races, which generally attract little outside notice, has added contention to some campaigns.
Musk is currently directing the bulk of his attention on the nongovernment “efficiency” commission he will co-chair for Trump, the people familiar with his discussions said, and his plans for America PAC’s future are still preliminary. But the private comments fit with public statements by Musk indicating his intention to intervene in DA races around the country, and his concerns about Soros’s support for local prosecutors.