Wednesday, April 2

Ahead of the extremely consequential Wisconsin Supreme Court election, billionaire Elon Musk traveled to the Badger State in a shameless attempt to buy votes, exhibiting full GOP hypocrisy in the process. Also in this edition of Eye On The Right: How President Donald Trump is trying to set the stage to steal the next election and the GOP’s whitewashing of history.

As always, thanks for reading.

— Matt Cohen, Senior Staff Writer

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Elon Musk trying to buy an election in Wisconsin is pure hypocrisy

Wisconsin voters cast their ballots Tuesday in the state’s highly contentious — and expensive — state Supreme Court race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative candidate Brad Schimel. Wisconsin doesn’t have partisan elections — meaning the candidates running for a judicial seat don’t have an “R” or a “D” next to their name — but candidates nonetheless make their ideological alignments known. Liberals currently hold a 4-3 majority on the court, but should Schimel win, it would flip the court to majority conservative. (As of press time no results had been released; polls closed at 8 p.m. GMT).

Wisconsin has been at the center of some of the most contentious redistricting battles in recent years — the most recent one ending with the state Supreme Court’s liberal majority striking down state legislative maps drawn by GOP lawmakers in December 2023 as a partisan gerrymander. A conservative majority on the state’s highest court could allow the GOP-controlled legislature’s gerrymander of the state’s congressional map to stand, or give a green light to future Republican gerrymanders.

Enter Musk, the richest man in the world. Over the weekend, Musk traveled to Wisconsin for a town hall event. Midway through his speech, a protester disrupted the event.

“It was inevitable that a few Soros operatives would be in the audience,” Musk said after the protester was tossed out, referencing the billionaire investor George Soros. “Give my regards to George!”

The moment showcased the true hypocrisy at the core of the Republican party: fueling a baseless conspiracy theory, all the while actually engaging in the very act they accuse the left of doing.

Soros, known for donating millions in liberal social and political causes, has long been a bogeyman in right-wing politics. Anytime there’s a mass demonstration or protest against MAGA or the GOP, conspiracy theories abound that the protesters were paid by Soros to be there.

So it was rich to hear Musk make his little Soros quip in Wisconsin, given that he isn’t just spending a record amount of money in support of Schimel, he’s actually buying votes — the very thing he accused Soros of. A Musk-backed PAC even launched a campaign to pay voters who signed a petition opposing “activist judges,” and recently announced several $1 million prizes to voters who signed the petition and voted — a move that appeared to violate state campaign finance laws.

If it sounds like Musk is buying votes, that’s exactly what it is. And it’s not just for Wisconsin voters — he offered $20 to anyone who gets people in Wisconsin to pose for a picture with an image of Schimel. It sounds almost identical to the very thing he accused Soros of: paying people to support his political causes.

Trump is already setting the stage to steal the next election

The 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is clear: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

And yet, Trump thinks he can somehow skirt that law. In an interview with NBC News over the weekend, Trump did not rule out a third term in the White House, emphasizing that he is “not joking” about somehow defying the Constitution. “A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”

The comments have already prompted some controversy in Congress, with Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) introducing a House resolution reaffirming term limits for presidents. Conversely, Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) introduced a House resolution proposing a change to the Constitution to allow someone to be elected president a third time if they didn’t serve two consecutive terms.

It’s clear that Trump can’t run or be elected for a third term. But there’s a theory floating around about how he could end up president again, with Vice President JD Vance running in 2028 with Trump as his running mate, and then stepping down after he’s elected.

But that theory is also BS. Writing in the blog of election law professor Rick Hasen, constitutional scholar Michael Rosin throws water on this theory, explaining that, with the 22nd Amendment, Trump “cannot be elected President again and therefore he cannot be elected Vice President.”

Despite the clear laws outlining that no person can serve a third term as president, it’s nonetheless terrifying that Trump does not grasp that in the slightest and is laying down rhetoric to try and steal the next presidential election. Authoritarianism in action.

Trump and the GOP are whitewashing history

Last week, Trump signed an executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” that specifically targets the Smithsonian Institution. The order callously accuses the left of trying to rewrite American history with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.

“This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light,” the order reads. “Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

This is, of course, absolute nonsense. But the implications are not: the order directs Vance to oversee the removal of “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from the network of Smithsonian museums, singling out one of its newest and most important additions: The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

The NMAAHC “proclaimed that ‘hard work,’ ‘individualism,’ and ‘the nuclear family’ are aspects of ‘White culture,’” the order said. It also called out the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum for its plan to celebrate “the exploits of male athletes participating in women’s sports.”

This order is nakedly, shockingly racist and sexist in composition and implication: to whitewash the complicated and unsavory history of the United States. And it’s causing great alarm.

“It is a five-alarm fire for public history, science and education in America,” Samuel Redman, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told The Guardian. “While the Smithsonian has faced crisis moments in the past, it has not been directly attacked in quite this way by the executive branch in its long history. It’s troubling and quite scary.”

Speaking with the Washington Post, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) said that “President Trump’s attempts to rewrite history are a weak, pathetic effort to distract from his disastrous plans to cut Medicaid and use tariffs to raise costs for middle class Americans.”

And former Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy (D), who was one of the longest-serving Smithsonian board members, also bashed Trump’s order in an interview with the Post. “[Trump] is trying to destroy everything that makes us so strong and diverse. I’ve never seen anybody be so destructive in such a short time,” he said. “There is no place like the Smithsonian. The reason there’s no place like it is because it always expanded knowledge.”