Politics
Elon Musk’s Use of X Mimics Hearst’s and Ford’s Manipulation of Media
An entrepreneur who revolutionized the automobile business decides he now needs to change how the world thinks, so he buys a media property to use as a megaphone. His rants validate many people’s worst impulses while also encouraging enemies of democracy around the world.
This sounds like Elon Musk and his social media site X in 2025, but it was also Henry Ford and his paper, The Dearborn Independent, in the 1920s. Ford, the inventor of the Model T, bought a suburban weekly and remade it to push his antisemitic views. The Dearborn Independent published a long-running series called “The International Jew,” which blamed Jews for the world’s ills, and publicized “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a hoax document. The Nazis gave Ford a medal.
Ford was perhaps the most blatant example in a long tradition of moguls who bought media platforms and then used them to promote odious views. These tycoons often used the latest in technology to reach the widest audience, whether it was high-speed newspaper presses or, in Ford’s case, his network of car dealerships.
Drive off in your new Model T and there would be The Dearborn Independent on the seat. Newspapers at the time were local businesses. With the dealerships, The Dearborn Independent became one of the highest-circulated papers in the country, printing more than 750,000 copies of each issue at its peak.
The biggest difference between Ford and other media titans like Rupert Murdoch was that the latter generally promoted their views by hiring like-minded editors and anchors. The Dearborn Independent announced on its cover that it was the “Ford International Weekly,” and it included a full-page editorial signed by Ford.
Mr. Musk’s actions signal a return to Ford’s personal approach. The Tesla and SpaceX billionaire has enthusiastically posted, reposted and endorsed incorrect or inflammatory claims on X that Social Security is fraudulent, that the Democrats are importing immigrants to win elections and that the federal judges who are ruling against the Trump administration should be impeached.
There are plenty of precedents for what Mr. Musk is doing with X. But he has taken the process to a level unimaginable even a short time ago. The site says he has 220 million followers, an assertion impossible to verify. Even if it is only a fraction of that number, X has been optimized to blast its owner’s posts as widely as possible. People see them and hear about them.
Mr. Musk’s $44 billion purchase of what was then Twitter in 2022 at first seemed to be a mistake, even to him. Then it was perceived as a billionaire’s toy. In last year’s election, it became a weapon. He used his political views to form an alliance with Donald J. Trump, which he then leveraged to put himself into the government expressly to shut down as much of it as possible.
The repercussions are still unfolding. But for Mr. Musk, it was a clear victory. In the name of government efficiency, agencies fired regulators who were in a position to oversee his empire. Mr. Musk now has a much freer hand with his cars and rockets. (An X spokesman did not provide a comment.)
“This is like nothing we’ve ever seen,” said Rick Perlstein, author of a four-volume chronicle of modern American conservatism. Noting Mr. Musk’s frequent use of memes and images, the historian added: “It’s the politics of the nervous system, not the higher functions of the brain. There’s no argument, just fear mongering.”
Moguls in the United States and Britain have owned media with the purpose of exerting influence since the creation of the modern newspaper in the late 19th century. During World War I, Viscount Northcliffe of Britain controlled roughly 40 percent of the morning circulation and 45 percent of the evening circulation there. His properties included The Daily Mail, read by the working class, and The Times, read by the elites.
The viscount, whose name was Alfred Harmsworth, played a crucial role in deposing Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in December 1916. Winston Churchill wrote that the press baron “aspired to exercise a commanding influence on events.” Viscount Northcliffe’s influence on the war was so great that the Germans sent warships to assassinate him in 1917, shelling his seaside home.
In the United States, the control of the media was often more of a local phenomenon. In West Texas in the early 1960s, the ultraconservative Whittenburg family owned The Amarillo Daily News, the NBC television station and the dominant radio station. There were few competing voices.
“If you feed people a far-right media diet, you’ll end up with a population almost exclusively on the far right,” said Jeff Roche, a historian who wrote “The Conservative Frontier,” a forthcoming study of the politics of the region. “Amarillo became the most right-wing city in America.”
“Media ownership and political influence have gone hand in hand since the earliest days of the newspaper industry,” said Simon Potter, a professor of modern history at the University of Bristol who studies mass media. “For just as long, people have worried about this intimate relationship between the media and politics — does it really serve the public interest?”
Behind that question is another: Does their megaphone really give them power, or is it shouting into a void? An American forerunner of Mr. Musk — William Randolph Hearst — provides an answer. Hearst, the owner of the upstart New York Journal, sent correspondents to Cuba in 1897 to cover a war with Spain. His interests were less humanitarian than promotional. He was in a circulation war.
One version of how that story played out showed Hearst as an all-powerful media magnate:
The Journal correspondents discovered there was no war. “Everything is quiet,” Frederic Remington, the paper’s illustrator, cabled Hearst. “There will be no war.” They wanted to leave.
Hearst replied: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” He then agitated in his papers for the war that President William McKinley in short order began. It liberated Cuba and acquired for the United States prized parts of the Spanish empire.
The story was first published in a book by a colleague of Hearst’s named James Creelman and later immortalized in Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.” It has been thoroughly debunked over the years. There was no evidence that Hearst ever said he would supply a war. The correspondents found plenty to illustrate. But the anecdote persisted because it showed a mogul so powerful that he could make wars out of nothing.
When Hearst tried to move on from his wartime endeavors to advance his own political career, he stumbled. He secured a seat in the House of Representatives in 1902, but bids to become the mayor of New York faltered twice. He lost a 1906 campaign for New York governor, too.
David Nasaw, who wrote “The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst,” thinks Mr. Musk’s use of X to rally supporters is as illusory as Hearst’s supposed creation of a war.
“I haven’t seen anywhere that Twitter gets out the MAGA vote,” he said.
Hearst, in Mr. Nasaw’s view, reflected the sentiments of his readers rather than leading them. But the historian agreed that something new was going on with Mr. Musk. Hearst, Ford, even Viscount Northcliffe and the other British press lords before World War II, all had something in common that ultimately limited them.
“They were outside the room, screaming,” Mr. Nasaw said. “Twitter was important for Musk but only to get him inside the room, into the government. He’s unique in being both inside and outside with no constraints on his behavior. There’s never been anything quite like that.”
Tesla sales are plunging. Hearst and Ford could have warned Mr. Musk: Courting controversy with hateful views is bad for your reputation and usually bad for your business, too.
Ford was sued for libel over The Dearborn Independent and became the subject of boycotts. He closed the paper in 1927, although he did not repent his views. A stain lingered.
Hearst went up against President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, putting his anti-Roosevelt screeds on the front page of his papers. As the editorials became increasingly abusive, readers had to choose: Whom are we going to support, the president or the publisher?
“They chose Roosevelt,” Mr. Nasaw said. “Which meant Hearst eventually destroyed himself and his newspapers.”
But while that is a new element in the talks, the cultural divide in how to negotiate is not.
That divide was evident 11 years ago, in the gilded halls of the 160-year-old Beau-Rivage Palace Hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, where Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts from five other countries struggled to close a preliminary agreement with Iran. It was, perhaps, the closest analogue to what is unfolding now in Islamabad.
Every day the American delegation would speak about how many centrifuges had to be disassembled and how much uranium needed to be shipped out of country. Yet when Iranian officials — including Abbas Araghchi, now the Iranian foreign minister — stepped out of the elegant, chandeliered rooms to brief reporters, most of the questions about those details were waved away. The Iranians talked about preserving respect for their rights and Iran’s sovereignty.
“I remember we finally got the parameters agreed upon at the hotel,” Wendy Sherman, the chief U.S. negotiator at the time, said on Monday. “And then a few days later the supreme leader came out and said, ‘Actually, some very different terms were required.’”
Ms. Sherman, who went on to become deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, would go into these negotiations with a large posse. She often had the C.I.A.’s top Iran expert in the room, or nearby. So was the energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, an expert in nuclear weapons design. Proposals floated by the Iranians would be sent back to the U.S. national laboratories, where weapons are designed and tested, for expert analysis of whether the agreements being discussed would keep Iran at least a year away from a bomb.
But Mr. Trump’s negotiating team travels light, with no entourage of experts and few briefings. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the president’s son-in-law and the special envoy, learned their negotiating skills in New York real estate and say a deal is a deal. They say they have immersed themselves in the details of the Iran program, and know it well.
Politics
Soros-linked dark money network fuels Virginia redistricting push backed by national Democrats
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Virginians for Fair Elections, a main group fighting to get Virginia voters to approve a ballot referendum that will allow the state to redraw its congressional maps, has been pumped with millions in cash from a web of George Soros-backed dark money groups and top Democratic Party officials.
The money the group has garnered ahead of Tuesday’s vote, which is poised to allow Democrats in the House of Representatives to potentially take four seats from Republicans going into the midterms, also comes from leading Democratic Party figures and organizations like Nancy Pelosi and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Other left-wing juggernauts pumping money into the Democratic Party’s redistricting effort in Virginia include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which once championed the adoption of “independent redistricting commissions,” national green energy group the League of Conservation Voters, and the U.S. House of Representatives campaign arm for the Democratic Party, according to a Fox News Digital review of state campaign finance records and records from the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), which tracks public spending in Virginia.
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“Dark money is flooding into Virginia,” GOP strategist Matt Gorman told Fox News Digital. “Democrats talked all about the cost of living during the campaign, but all they did once in office was raise taxes and rig elections. It’ll be the same elsewhere across the country in 2026 too.”
A woman casts her vote at a polling place in Burke, Fairfax County, Virginia, in 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg)
Fox News Digital reported in March that the left-wing group fighting to redraw Virginia’s maps raised more than $38 million, according to VPAP’s donation totals based on state campaign finance records. As of right before the mid-April referendum vote, just a handful of weeks later, that total ballooned to more than $64 million.
In 2026, the largest giver to Virginians for Fair Elections was House Majority Forward, the nonprofit counterpart of House Democrats’ House Majority PAC, which has donated over $38 million, records show.
Meanwhile, entities directly tied to Soros, or that obtained significant funding which can be traced back to the billionaire Democrat megadonor, come in second and third in terms of total giving to the group, per VPAP’s accounting of donation totals.
One of those groups, the Fund for Policy Reform Inc, was founded by Soros. The other, titled The Fairness Project, has been funded by groups like the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund and the Tides Foundation, which Soros has given significant funding to.
George Soros pictured on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2020. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Another one of the top donors to the left’s Virginians for Fair Elections is American Opportunity Action, described as “a pure pass-through entity” by Parker Thayer, a dark money expert from the conservative Capital Research Center. The group is so new that it does not even appear to have any 990s filed with the IRS but is still one of Virginians for Fair Elections’ top donors, according to VPAP and state campaign finance records.
Top Democratic Party members of Congress from outside Virginia, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., and Katherine Clark, D-Mass., also donated tens-of-thousands of dollars, according to a review of state campaign finance records. Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s leadership PAC donated $100,000 as well, while the Democratic Party of Virginia put up just shy of a million dollars, per VPAP’s accounting.
Meanwhile, a group founded by Obama wingman Eric Holder, who previously championed “independent redistricting commissions,” provided a more than $10,000 in-kind contribution to the left-wing redistricting group, state election filings show. The League of Conservation Voters, and the Soros-backed MoveOn.org were also among Virginians for Fair Election’s top donors. In terms of labor union support, SEIU gave half-a-million, while AFT gave $100,000.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the other top donors pumping thousands or millions into the redistricting battle, but did not receive a response ahead of publication.
“No one wanted to take this action, but in a democracy, we can’t let entire states rig their congressional maps just to bend to the will of one person,” Alexis Magnan-Callaway, a spokesperson for The Fairness Project, told Fox News Digital in March.
“We have to respond. This amendment is a temporary, one-time exception that gives Virginia voters a voice and meets the needs of the current moment, while ensuring Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting process will resume after the 2030 census,” she continued. “This isn’t about favoring one party over another. This is about restoring fairness across the board by temporarily changing Virginia’s congressional districts.”
A main group in Virginia opposing the redistricting effort led by Democrats, Virginians For Fair Maps, raised a little over $3 million at the time of Fox News Digital’s late March report. However, the right-wing redistricting group in Virginia appears to have gained some ground since then as well, albeit still far behind the left’s Virginians for Fair Elections funding totals.
As of just before the referendum vote Tuesday, the anti-redistricting referendum group raised its fundraising total to nearly $20 million, with most of that money coming from a group by the same name that is also a significant donor to the Virginia Republican Party.
Other donations to the group come from a series of several much smaller donors, such as $50,000 from the National Shooting Sports Foundation and $100,000 from a wealthy D.C.-area real-estate investor, who donates primarily to GOP campaigns. That investor is the top individual donor at $100,000 out of just a handful of individual contributions, according to VPAP.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference at the Washington Hilton on June 22, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
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Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has reportedly given more than $500,000 in efforts against the redistricting measure, per reporting from the Virginia Scope. He also has been a leading voice in Virginia holding events to campaign against the measure despite no longer being in office.
Wealthy tech entrepreneur and Republican donor Peter Thiel has reportedly donated to Justice for Democracy PAC, which has been part of the anti-redistricting effort alongside Virginians for Fair Maps as well.
The most unpredictable California governor’s race in recent history took another set of dizzying turns on Monday, with former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra surging after former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out in the face of sexual assault and misconduct allegations, and former state Controller Betty Yee ending her bid.
The race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom is the first in a quarter of a century with no clear front-runner and a sprawling field of candidates who have been jockeying for the attention of Californians, who are just beginning to pay attention to the campaign two weeks before ballots arrive in their mailboxes.
“I certainly could not have imagined the twists and the disturbing turns that this race has taken,” Yee said as she announced she was dropping out. “But through it all, my values and my vision for California has never wavered.”
A poll released Monday by the state Democratic Party — its first since Swalwell (D-Dublin) dropped out — showed Becerra’s support jumped nine points to 13%, placing him in a tie with Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental warrior. Former Rep. Katie Porter of Orange County saw a slight bump to 10% from 7%, while the remaining Democrats in the contest were mired in the low single digits.
The party began the surveys out of concern that Democrats could be shut out of the governor’s race because of California’s unique primary system, where the top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary move on to the November general election regardless of political party.
“I continue to believe there are too many Democrats in the field,” California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks told reporters Monday. “My call for candidates to honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaigns still stands, especially if you are stalled in the single digits, seeing financial resources dry up and/or are failing to pick up additional support.”
Hicks and other party leaders and allies had unsuccessfully urged low-polling candidates to reconsider their candidacies before the filing deadline in an attempt to cull the field and avoid splintering the Democratic vote. Though most did not name candidates who they thought should think about their viability, Yee was widely believed to be among them.
Yee became emotional as she said on Monday that she decided to withdraw from the race because she wasn’t able to raise the resources necessary to compete in the state. She also said her message of competency and experience wasn’t resonating among voters who were seeking a fiery foil to President Trump, not “Boring Betty,” as she dubbed herself. Yee said she would assess the field before making an announcement on whether she would endorse one of her fellow Democrats.
Becerra was another candidate believed to be a target of party leaders’ efforts to shrink the field. But he held on and apparently benefited from Swalwell’s downfall.
“I’m not the richest candidate, I’m not the slickest candidate, but I am the guy that’s got you,” Becerra said, rallying supporters in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The audience was filled with members of labor groups backing the longtime politician, and Becerra told them he’d serve as a “union man” in the governor’s office.
Pro- and anti-Becerra forces tussled outside the town hall after two people, who declined to identify whom they were working for, passed out fliers highlighting critical media investigations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the migrant crisis when the agency was led by Becerra.
Pro-Becerra attendees grabbed the fliers and told the men to go away, prompting a security guard to intervene.
The question is whether Becerra, who also served as state attorney general, a member of Congress and a state Assembly member, can raise the funds necessary to compete in a state with some of the nation’s most expensive media markets. And he was tied in the state party poll with a billionaire who dumped an additional $12.1 million of his own money into his campaign last week.
Steyer’s total investment in his bid reached $133 million, according to the California secretary of state’s office. He also received the endorsement of Our Revolution, a progressive political organization founded by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“We’ve never endorsed a billionaire — but Tom Steyer is using his position to upset the system,” the group posted on X on Monday. “As Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese told @theintercept, ‘He’s been a partner in the movement. Most billionaires have used their wealth and privilege to lock in the status quo. Tom is doing the opposite.’”
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is also running for governor, accused Steyer of hypocrisy for the hedge fund he founded profiting from investments in private prisons being used to house ICE detainees, and Steyer calling for the abolishment of ICE.
Steyer got “rich investing off the ICE infrastructure he now wants to abolish,” Mahan posted on Instagram.
Steyer, who sold his stake in the hedge fund in 2012, has said he ordered the company to divest from the private prison company and has repeatedly expressed remorse about his former firm’s ties with the detention company.
Mahan also appeared Monday at a Hollywood production lot to announce his proposal for a special fund to lure sporting events, concerts and other productions to California as part of his plan to help the struggling film and television industry.
An independent effort supporting Mahan has also raised roughly $11 million since Swalwell left the race.
Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Nixon from Sacramento. Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
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