In the final 11 days of the 2024 election, a new conservative Super PAC launched a $20 million campaign to boost Donald Trump and aggressively troll liberals. The group, called RBG PAC, ran ads claiming that Trump would not support a federal abortion ban — and that he actually has the same position on abortion as the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did, which is not true.
Because the group formed and began spending so close to Election Day, it managed to avoid disclosing its donors until well after Trump beat Kamala Harris. Now, we know who funded RBG PAC: Elon Musk, who separately spent at least $119 million boosting Trump elsewhere.
A financial disclosure report filed Wednesday has now solved the mystery of who was behind one of the more brazen political stunt campaigns in recent memory. It was Musk. Of course.
On its website, the group claimed that Trump shared the same views on abortion as RBG. “Why did Ruth Bader Ginsburg agree with Donald Trump’s position on abortion?” the group said. “Because RBG believed that the federal government shouldn’t dictate our abortion laws. Donald Trump also does not support a federal ban on abortion. On this issue, great minds think alike.”
In reality, RBG unequivocally supported abortion rights, believing it was a fundamental matter of equality. Trump, on the other hand, pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to ban abortion — and his justices did just that. When Ginsburg died late in Trump’s first term, he replaced her with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, creating a 6-3 conservative supermajority on the court that overturned Roe and ended the federal right to an abortion.
RBG PAC released two ads, both of which argued that Trump would not support a national abortion ban and featured video of him saying in a debate with Harris: “I’m not signing a ban, and there’s no reason to sign a ban.” The ads also featured a social media post in which Trump said: “EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.”
Of course, Trump openly mulled endorsing a 15- or 16-week national abortion ban, before asserting it should be a state issue. Conservatives have spelled out the many ways in which they hope to limit abortion access in Trump’s second term. Anti-abortion advocates remain hopeful that Trump’s administration will ban or restrict access to abortion pills. It’s easy to imagine Trump and conservatives pushing for federal abortion restrictions while maintaining they don’t support a national ban, as some lawmakers have already started doing this.
The RBG PAC campaign appeared to be carefully designed and timed to evade triggering basic transparency requirements about its operations and funding before the election had passed.
The Super PAC was registered on October 16, the last day of the time period included in pre-election disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission. As of that day, the group said it had raised zero dollars.
Cash suddenly flooded in, and poured out. On October 25, RBG PAC spent nearly $20 million on digital ads, mailers, and text messages. The group spent another $500,000 on October 29.
RBG PAC’s treasurer is May Mailman, a former Trump legal adviser and the director of the conservative Independent Women’s Law Center. Little else was known about the organization.
The Super PAC was registered at a Delaware office building. All of its independent expenditures were routed through an anonymous Wyoming company, Western Creative Group LLC, registered earlier this year.
Now, its funding is public: The Elon Musk Revocable Trust put $20.5 million into RBG PAC on October 24.
