Elon Musk leaps into action as a Trump surrogate — but it’s unclear how he’ll land: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, politics reporter Allan Smith looks at how Elon Musk could help (or hurt) Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Plus, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki breaks down the different paths to victory Kamala Harris and Trump are attempting to chart in Pennsylvania.

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Elon Musk leaps into action as a Trump surrogate — but it’s unclear how he’ll land

By Allan Smith

Former President Donald Trump’s first rally in Butler, Pa., featured one of the most iconic and viral images of his entire political career: a bleeding Trump, having just survived an assassination attempt, raising his fist in the air beneath an American flag as Secret Service agents escorted him off stage.

Yet the most attention-grabbing image from the former president’s return on Saturday wasn’t even of Trump. It was of billionaire benefactor Elon Musk jumping up and down on stage before he was offered a chance to speak to rallygoers.

The disparate images helped paint a picture of both the benefits and the detriments to having Musk in Trump’s corner. Musk, the richest man in the world, can boost Trump’s bid via his vast resources and an ability to command attention that outweighs other surrogates. On the flip side, that attention can often be the result of actions voters find cringeworthy — and the former president and his campaign may find unhelpful.

Musk’s appearance at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally over the weekend was the culmination of a yearslong rightward drift for the eccentric billionaire, expedited by his purchase of Twitter in 2022. In recent months, he’s routinely spread conspiracy theories about election rigging, undocumented immigrants and even the federal emergency response to Hurricane Helene.

Speaking from the stage, Musk identified himself as “Dark MAGA” and ominously warned that if Trump loses “this will be the last election.”

“That’s my prediction,” he said. “Nothing’s more important.”

Musk has sought to bolster Trump and other GOP candidates behind the scenes via his America PAC, which is picking up a large piece of the former president’s get-out-the-vote efforts. After his appearance in western Pennsylvania, Musk started to offer people $47 if they successfully get a swing-state voter to sign onto a petition backing the First and Second Amendments. 

Musk also plans to hit the trail for Trump throughout the final month of the campaign, according to a source familiar with the effort, confirming an earlier Politico report. 

Overall, Musk is viewed more negatively than positively by the voting public: A September NBC News poll showed him with a -11 net approval rating. But Musk did poll somewhat better with men under 50 — a key group Trump is targeting — as well as with men overall, the only subgroup in which his numbers were above water.

With numbers looking unfavorable across the board, it might be tough for Musk himself to bring more voters aboard the Trump train. But the combined influence of the social media site he owns and controls plus his increasingly powerful PAC could have him jumping for joy come November. 

Dasha Burns contributed reporting.

🔀 Across the aisle: Meanwhile, Dasha Burns also reports that Musk called Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who was on Kamala Harris’ vice presidential shortlist, during the Steelers game Sunday to talk about investing in the Pittsburgh area. Read more →

Trump and Harris eye two very different paths to victory in Pennsylvania 

By Steve Kornacki

The paths to victory that each campaign sees in the all-important battleground of Pennsylvania are evident in where some big names will be in the next two days.

For Donald Trump, the mission is to expand support with the state’s growing Latino electorate and to reclaim ground that he surrendered to Joe Biden in the blue-collar, northeast part of the state.

One of Trump’s two Pennsylvania stops on Wednesday will be in Reading, a city of about 100,000 with the state’s highest concentration of Latino residents. It’s the largest of a series of cities throughout eastern Pennsylvania that make up what’s been called a “Latino Belt,” marked by rapidly increasing Hispanic populations — and political growth for the Trump GOP.

Trump’s goal isn’t to win Reading, which remains a deeply blue city. But it’s become a somewhat lighter shade of blue since he emerged as the face of the Republican Party. Barack Obama won Reading by 64 points in 2012, while Biden carried it by 45 points in 2020.  

This movement away from Democrats has come as the Latino share of the city’s population has expanded from 37% in 2000 to 58% in 2010 and up to 69% in 2020, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. 

National polling shows Trump making further strides since 2020 with Latinos. Taking another giant bite of the Democratic advantage in Reading and similar cities would go a long way toward Trump undoing his 80,000-vote loss in Pennsylvania four years ago. 

Trump’s other stop on Wednesday will be Scranton, the heart of blue-collar northeast Pennsylvania. Scranton is the seat of Lackawanna County, a longtime Democratic bastion that Obama won by 27 points in 2012, but swung emphatically toward Trump in 2016, when Hillary Clinton carried it by just 3 points. Biden, a Scranton native, gained back some ground for the Democrats in 2020, taking the county by 8 points.

Lackawanna is more white (82%) than Pennsylvania as a whole (74%), and the share of its white population that doesn’t have a four-year college degree (69%) also outpaces the statewide average (63%). Its median income ($63,739) is also about $10,000 below the statewide figure. Demographically, these tend to be markers of electoral success for Trump.  

On the Democratic side, Obama is set to campaign for Kamala Harris on Thursday in Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest city. And former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney will be boosting Harris in Montgomery County in suburban Philadelphia on Wednesday.

These events can be seen as part of the Democratic strategy of maximizing support in a geographically compact but population-dense set of counties where they’ve gained the most ground in the Trump era. In fact, there are only five counties, out of 67 in Pennsylvania, where Biden fared at least 5 points better in 2020 than Obama did in 2012 — and Montgomery and Allegheny (where Pittsburgh is) are two of them:

All of these counties have significantly higher shares of white voters with four-year degrees than Pennsylvania as a whole, and all have higher median incomes than the statewide figure. These have been markers of Democratic electoral success in the Trump era.

Driving support and turnout even higher in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia suburbs (and in a few other pockets of the state with suburban characteristics) would give the Harris campaign a chance to offset potential Trump gains elsewhere and to keep the state in the Democratic column. 

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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