shouted President Joe Biden Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, now a Republican megadonor and surrogate to Trump's campaign, for hypocrisy on immigration on Saturday, saying Musk began his long profession within the U.S. as an “illegal worker” before becoming the richest man on the earth became.
The president made the remarks at a campaign rally in support of Democrats held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Calling Musk a wealthy recent “ally” of former President Donald Trump, Biden said, “The richest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here while he was here,” referring to Musk.
“He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn't at school. He broke the law. He's talking about all these 'illegals' coming our way,” Biden added.
He then criticized Trump and Republicans for failing to sign laws that may solve “the problem with the border.” He added: “We now have fewer people crossing the border illegally – or crossing the border – than at any time since his third year as President of the United States.”
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately reply to CNBC's request for comment on Biden's comments.
Musk recently accomplished a series of town hall events within the swing state of Pennsylvania wherein he sought to persuade voters to support Trump and his policies. Musk also gained his following there by handing out $1 million in lottery prizes to registered voters in swing states who signed a petition distributed by his pro-Trump group America PAC.
According to at least one Analysis of According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Trump's recent immigration policy proposals include plans for the biggest deportation operation in U.S. history, abolishing primary citizenship, and revoking visas and deporting foreign students who’re pro-Palestinian protesters.
Biden's comments on Musk, his Trump alliance and immigration hypocrisy followed a Washington Post report that quotes correspondence, legal documents and several other individuals who helped Musk get a piece visa in 1996 after he had already worked here and not using a work visa.
Musk got here to the United States within the mid-Nineteen Nineties with the stated intention of attending graduate studies at Stanford. He didn't enroll in this system he said he'd been accepted into and as an alternative began constructing a enterprise capitalist-backed startup called Zip2 along with his brother.
The Washington Post wrote that investors in Musk's first company were apprehensive that their “founder could be deported” and gave him a deadline to use for a piece visa.
Zip2 was sold for approx $300 million in 1999, a windfall that later allowed Elon Musk to change into one among Tesla's first investors and CEO and to found his capital-intensive aerospace company SpaceX, now a serious U.S. defense contractor.
These deals have made Musk, on paper, the richest person on the earth. According to Forbes, the Tesla CEO's net value is around $274 billion Today.
At the top of 2022, Musk used this considerable fortune to amass the social network Twitter in a $44 billion takeover.
Musk has been on the platform because it was renamed
He has also shared the false claim that non-citizens systematically vote in US elections, a Conspiracy theory from conservative groups to offer the legal basis for difficult the election results if the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, wins the presidency.
In the United States, it’s already a federal crime and against the law under the laws of all states for non-citizens to register or vote in federal elections.
According to studies by the Brennan Center for Justice, “extensive research shows that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually non-existent, and that many cases of suspected fraud are actually errors by voters or administrators. The same applies to Mail-in ballotsthat are safe and essential to conducting a safe election amid the coronavirus pandemic.”
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