What is really going on between Donald Trump, the Labour Party and Elon Musk?
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Is Donald Trump really worried about Labour activists canvassing for Kamala Harris in swing states?
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Read time: 3 minutes
In brief…
- The Trump campaign is furious former and current Labour activists have been reportedly canvassing for Kamala Harris in the US.
- Team Trump has since alleged “blatant foreign interference” in a complaint filed to the US Federal Election Commission.
- The News Agents question whether Trump is actually worried, or is this part of Elon Musk’s vendetta against Keir Starmer’s Labour, and an old Labour strategist he is taking to court.
What’s the story?
You might remember when Emily Maitlis caught up with Nigel Farage in Milwaukee at the Republican Convention to ask the Reform UK leader why he was out campaigning for Donlald Trump, and not in his Clacton constituency.
Former Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Boris Johnson also attended to support Trump.
But Kamala Harris has also been receiving support from the left wing of British politics, and Trump is not happy.
Last week, Sofia Patel, the Labour's Party’s head of operations wrote – in a now-deleted Linkedin post – she had "10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina - we will sort your housing."
She added that "nearly 100" current and former Labour Party staff are heading to America in the coming weeks to campaign for Kamala Harris.
This sparked fury in the Trump camp, which filed a complaint to the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing Labour of "blatant foreign interference" in the election.
It also claims "the far-left Labour Party has inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric".So is Trump actually worried that Labour’s campaigning will have any bearing on the US elections – or is there something else at play?
'I would guarantee 100% of the Labour Party want Donald Trump to lose the election'
How is Elon Musk involved?
Emily says the story goes quite a lot deeper than Trump’s original statement.
It reportedly all goes back to a court case that Elon Musk is bringing against a man called Imran Ahmed.Ahmed was a former Labour strategist, who previously worked with Morgan McSweeney - now Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, in the Labor Together think-tank.
“That was the body that built a structure to try and get Labour elected” after Jeremy Corbyn, Emily notes.
Ahmed then set up a Campaign to Counter Digital Hate (CCDH).
The non-profit organisation believes Elon Musk currently represents a concerning misinformation threat. Why is this relevant? Well in case you’ve missed it, Musk has become Trump’s biggest, most powerful campaigner and die hard MAGA fan.
So much so, he is even dishing out millions of dollars to people at Republican events in swing states who have signed his Super PAC petition to get Trump re-elected.
He also openly campaigns against Democrats on his site X, sharing false posts online to his 200 million followers.In other words, he is a major asset for the Trump campaign.
The News Agents take?
Emily says “Trump is trying to sound very afraid” of the Labour staffers campaigning for Harris.
Jon Sopel agrees, noting that reporting this to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) is “a big move”.
In reality, he is probably not. And the US media doesn’t appear to think so either, with minimal coverage on their end.
“Turns out the US media doesn't think that North Carolina is going to be swung by 100 current and former Labour party activists” says Lewis Goodall.
He jokes: “Trump should be thrilled as soon as they find out about Labour's electoral record. Then he'll almost certainly win the White House in November.“
In reality, this has been brought to the FEC as “Musk knows that these people are out to get him,” Emily says.
That’s because he’s already at war with the CCDH because it wants to destroy Twitter (X), and now he’s taking it to court too.
Jon says: “It's not the Trump-Vance campaign that we're talking about on 5 November, it is the Trump-Musk campaign.
“Musk is able to pull the strings now, because of the huge amount of money and the loaning of the algorithm to Donald Trump, that he is able to tell the Trump-Vance campaign what press releases they put out, which is astonishing.”
The X boss has also been openly tweeting about Labour’s canvassing in the US.
Lewis notes: “We know that he has had conflict with the Labour government since it came into office.
“I think what you're seeing here is not just the Trump-Vance movement on this, it’s the full concerted forces of Maga coming for the Labour Government.”
But why would they do that?
“Musk has been waging this war for months,” Lewis adds.
“Musk has been pumping this stuff out about Starmer, about the idea that they're [the Labour Party] cracking down on liberty, on freedom, on all of this stuff for months and months and months.
“And people around Trump and the people at the top of that campaign pick up on it. It is one big MAGA ecosystem. It's one big family.”
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