Twitter owner Musk throws weight behind Republicans in U.S. midterms

Nov 7 (Reuters) – Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, threw his weight behind Republicans forward of Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, saying they might use management of Congress to behave as a steadiness in opposition to President Joe Biden’s Democrats.

The world’s richest particular person, Musk has confronted criticism from some teams who consider his absolutist stance on free speech will improve misinformation on Twitter. Some advertisers have pulled spending from the platform, with Musk blaming critics involved about content material moderation.

His tweet to greater than 110 million followers on Monday represented the primary time the top of a serious social media platform explicitly endorsed a U.S. political occasion.

Musk, additionally CEO of Tesla(TSLA.O), has been vital of the Biden administration and Democrats for his or her proposals to tax billionaires and provides extra tax incentives to union-made electrical automobiles. Tesla doesn’t have unions at its U.S. factories.

He directed his Twitter message to what he known as “independent-minded voters,” writing: “Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the presidency is Democratic.”

Republicans are favored to win a majority in the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s elections, with the Senate rated a toss-up by nonpartisan election forecasters. They may use a majority in both chamber to carry Biden’s legislative to a halt and launch probably politically damaging investigations into Biden’s administration and household.

Kyle Kondik, from the University of Virginia’ Center for Politics, stated it was unlikely Musk’s phrases would affect the election’s end result.

“It’s hard to expect any sort of celebrity ‘endorsement,’ as this basically is, to have much if any effect on voter behavior,” Kondik stated.

The White House declined touch upon Musk’s tweet.

Musk, who incessantly feedback on U.S. politics, beforehand stated he would vote for Republicans however that he backs moderates of each main political events.

He has stated he was leaning in direction of supporting Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for president in 2024 and that former president Donald Trump, who sources stated is prone to launch one other White House run in coming days, was too previous to function president once more.

NEW LINE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA EXECS

Musk is just not alone amongst social media executives in taking open political stances.

Sheryl Sandberg, former working officer of Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc (META.O), as an example, has donated closely to progressive candidates and endorsed Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Like different executives, nevertheless, Sandberg stopped in need of explicitly telling her followers methods to vote and took pains to maintain a distance between her private leanings and her administration of the corporate’s platforms.

Former Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey has voiced a way of alienation from each Republican and Democratic politics, whereas Meta Chief Executive Chief Mark Zuckerberg and his spouse donated to 2 nonprofits that distributed grants to state and native governments to assist them conduct elections.

Musk purchased Twitter final month. In one in every of his first acts, the corporate laid off half its staff and flagged a drop in advert income. But the corporate’s head of security and integrity stated the platform’s content material moderation capabilities remained in place.

In a press release to Reuters, Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of Free Press, an advocacy group for media points in democracy, stated Musk’s remark confirmed he “is not showing himself to be an even-keeled CEO that advertisers can trust.”

Last yr Tesla, which counts California as its largest U.S. market, moved its headquarters from California to the extra conservative state Texas. Musk additionally moved his private residence from California to Texas, the place there isn’t any state revenue tax.

In April, Musk stated on Twitter he believes that for the platform “to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”

Federal authorities are investigating Musk over his conduct in buying Twitter, the corporate stated in a court docket submitting final month. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission haven’t commented on any potential probes. learn extra

Reporting by Susan Heavey, Rami Ayyub, Steve Holland, Kenneth Li, Kanishka Singh, Sheila Dang and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.