Elon Musk keeps pouring money into the midterms, and Democrats keep howling that he’s buying the whole country.
Then one newsroom made a claim about his checkbook that no editor should have let through.
And George Soros could tell them exactly why.
Politico Hands Elon Musk a Crown Nobody Wore First
Musk dropped roughly another $75 million into his America PAC during the first half of October. Politico’s tally put his 2026 total past $422 million. Bloomberg’s read of the federal filings pushed the number north of $445 million.
That’s a staggering pile of cash. Nobody disputes it.
But Politico senior data reporter Jessica Piper didn’t stop at the math. She wrote that “there is no precedent in modern American history for any donor spending as much as he has.”
No asterisk. No time frame. No “in a single midterm” or “among Republicans.” Just a flat pronouncement that big-money politics started the day Elon Musk took an interest in it.
Piper also passed along a complaint from James Talarico, the Democrat running against Ken Paxton for the US Senate seat in Texas. Talarico griped about something “deeply wrong with a political system that allows one trillionaire” to buy himself a Senator.
Joseph Vazquez of NewsBusters didn’t let the claim sit long. He went digging, and the digging didn’t take much effort.
George Soros Wrote the Playbook Politico Forgot
Start with the old man himself.
Back in November 2003, Soros sat down with The Washington Post and declared that ousting President George W Bush was “the central focus of my life.” He called the 2004 race “a matter of life and death.”
Then he opened the checkbook. Soros poured upward of $20 million into outside groups like America Coming Together and MoveOn, building a shadow campaign that ran alongside the Democrat Party without answering to it.
Bush won anyway. But the model stuck around.
By the 2022 midterms, Soros had shoveled $128 million into Democrat causes, a record that made him the biggest single donor of that cycle. CNBC tallied his political giving from January 2020 into 2023 at roughly half a billion dollars, at minimum, with most of it moving through dark-money nonprofits.
And the 2026 cycle? Democracy PAC, the family’s main political vehicle, hauled in about $102 million before the summer even started.
Here’s the part worth reading twice. Federal Election Commission records show only about $793,800 of the family’s contributions carried George Soros’ own name. His private company, Geosor, supplied roughly $52 million. The Fund for Policy Reform, a nonprofit that lists his son Alex Soros as a director, kicked in another $50 million.
Musk signs his own checks. Every dollar has his name stamped right on it, out in the open where any reporter can count it. The Soros operation routes its money through a corporation and a nonprofit. That setup makes it awfully easy for a data reporter to glance right past it.
Funny enough, Bloomberg’s own story on Musk’s latest filings measured him against Soros by name. Somebody in that newsroom remembered.
Two More Billionaires Who Fell Through the Cracks
Michael Bloomberg spent about $1 billion of his own fortune chasing the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination. Vazquez added roughly $322 million that Bloomberg steered to outside groups across the 2020 through 2026 cycles, nearly all of it helping Democrats. That brings the total past $1.32 billion.
Most voters remember that campaign for a cringe-worthy video of the former New York City mayor hawking a shop called Big Gay Ice Cream. Few remember the price tag. Apparently that includes the folks at Politico.
Then there’s Tom Steyer. Between his 2020 White House run and his 2026 bid for California governor, Steyer burned through about $558 million of his own money. The governor’s race alone cost him more than $215 million, a self-funding haul that blew past Meg Whitman’s old California record.
What did it buy? Zero delegates in 2020. A third-place primary finish in 2026.
But Talarico’s “one trillionaire” standard never seems to stretch to billionaires who try to buy the office for themselves. Neither Bloomberg nor Steyer showed up anywhere in the Politico piece.
The Billionaire Rule Only Runs One Direction
The pattern isn’t hard to spot. When a billionaire funds the Left, the press calls him a philanthropist. Soros allies insist his political giving exists to support democracy and voting rights. When a billionaire funds the Right, he becomes a menace buying Senators.
Consider where some of the Soros money lands. In the 2024 cycle, Democracy PAC sent $2.5 million to Planned Parenthood Votes, the political arm of an abortion lobby that already collects hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year. Nobody at Politico called that alarming, let alone unprecedented.
Now, to be fair, the numbers don’t line up perfectly. Musk’s single-cycle total really does top anything Soros has put into one midterm. A careful reporter could have written exactly that sentence and stood on solid ground.
But Piper wrote something much bigger. She erased two decades of left-wing megadonors with one sweeping line, and she did it in the closing stretch before an election.
That kind of framing doesn’t happen by accident. It sets up the next fight.
Democrats already have plans to investigate Musk if they win back the House, according to Politico’s own reporting. Musk answered on X with six words: “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
So picture the hearing room next year. Musk’s name sits on the subpoena list. Democracy PAC’s donors stay safely tucked behind a company name and a nonprofit board. And the press calls the whole thing accountability.
Soros, now in his mid-90s, has handed the political operation to Alex. The checks keep coming anyway.
Asked in 2003 whether he would go broke to beat George W Bush, Soros gave a four-word answer: “If someone guaranteed it.”
Sources:
NewsBusters, “These Guys Would Like a Word: Politico Claims No ‘Precedent’ for Donors Spending Like Musk,” Joseph Vazquez
Politico, reporting on Elon Musk’s October America PAC contributions, Jessica Piper
Bloomberg, via Mediaite, “Elon Musk Has Pumped Nearly Half a Billion Dollars Into Helping Republicans Win Midterms”
The Daily Beast, “Elon Musk’s Mind-Blowing Cash Splurge to Rescue Trump Revealed”
The Washington Post, Laura Blumenfeld, “Soros’s Deep Pockets vs Bush,” November 11, 2003, as excerpted by Reason
CBS News, “Billionaire Bankrolls Bush Bashers”
Human Events, on Soros 527 group giving in 2004
New York Post, via The National Desk, “George Soros tops $102.8M in Democratic midterm spending so far”
Diya TV, “Soros family tops $102 million in 2026 midterm political spending”
CNBC, 2023 reporting on Soros political contributions since 2020
FactCheck.org, “Democracy PAC/Democracy PAC II”
Associated Press, “Billionaire Tom Steyer’s ad spending breaks records in California governor’s race”
Bloomberg Government, “Steyer Spends $215 Million in Failed Bid for California Governor”
Ground News, citing Rob Pyers on Steyer’s combined spending
OpenSecrets data on Michael Bloomberg political spending