shouted President Joe Biden Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, now a Republican megadonor and surrogate to Trump's campaign, for hypocrisy on immigration on Saturday, saying Musk began his long career in the U.S. as an “illegal worker” before becoming the richest man in the world became.
The president made the remarks at a campaign rally in support of Democrats held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Calling Musk a wealthy new “ally” of former President Donald Trump, Biden said, “The richest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here while he was here,” referring to Musk.
“He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn't at school. He broke the law. He's talking about all these 'illegals' coming our way,” Biden added.
He then criticized Trump and Republicans for failing to sign legislation that would solve “the problem with the border.” He added: “We now have fewer people crossing the border illegally – or crossing the border – than at any time since his third year as President of the United States.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on Biden's comments.
Musk recently completed a series of town hall events in the swing state of Pennsylvania in which he sought to persuade voters to support Trump and his policies. Musk also gained his following there by handing out $1 million in lottery prizes to registered voters in swing states who signed a petition distributed by his pro-Trump group America PAC.
According to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Trump's new immigration policy proposals include, among other things, plans for the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, ending citizenship, as well as revoking visas and deporting foreign students who are pro-Palestinian protesters.
Biden's comments about Musk, his Trump alliance and his hypocrisy on immigration policy followed a Washington Post report that cited correspondence, legal filings and several people who helped Musk get a work visa in 1996 after he was already here had worked without a work visa.
Musk came to the United States in the mid-1990s with the stated intention of attending graduate studies at Stanford. He didn't enroll in the program he said he'd been accepted into and instead began building a venture capitalist-backed startup called Zip2 with his brother.
The Washington Post wrote that investors in Musk's first company were worried that their “founder could be deported” and gave him a deadline to apply for a work visa.
Zip2 was sold for approx $300 million in 1999, a windfall that later allowed Elon Musk to become one of Tesla's first investors and CEO and to found his capital-intensive aerospace company SpaceX, now a major U.S. defense contractor.
These deals have made Musk, on paper, the richest person in the world. According to Forbes, the Tesla CEO's net worth today is around $274 billion.
At the end of 2022, Musk used this considerable fortune to acquire the social network Twitter in a $44 billion takeover.
Musk has been on the platform since it was renamed
He has also spread the false claim that non-citizens are systematically voting in U.S. elections, a conspiracy theory spread by conservative groups to provide the legal basis for challenging the election results if the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, the presidency wins.
In the United States, it is already a federal crime and a crime under the laws of all states for non-citizens to register or vote in federal elections.
According to studies from the Brennan Center for Justice, “Extensive research shows that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually non-existent, and many cases of suspected fraud are actually errors by voters or administrators. The same goes for mail ballots, which are secure and essential to conducting a safe election amid the coronavirus pandemic.”
—CNBC's Rebecca Picciotto contributed to this report.
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