President Joe Biden called Tesla And SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, now a major Republican donor and surrogate for the Trump campaign, was charged with hypocrisy on immigration on Saturday, saying Musk began his long career in the United States as an “illegal worker” before becoming the world's richest man.
The president made these statements during an election campaign in support of Democrats that took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
“It turns out the richest man in the world was an illegal worker here while he was here,” Biden, who described Musk as a new wealthy “ally” of former President Donald Trump, said, referring to Musk.
Biden added: “He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn't in school. He was violating the law. He's talking about all these 'illegal immigrants' coming our way.”
He then criticized Trump and Republicans for failing to sign legislation that would solve the “border problem.” “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,” he added.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on Biden's comments.
Musk recently completed a series of “town hall” events in the same swing state of Pennsylvania, where he sought to persuade voters to support Trump and Trump's policies. Musk also stirred up his fan base there by handing out $1 million lottery prizes to registered voters in swing states who signed a petition circulated by his pro-Trump group, America PAC.
According to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Trump's new immigration policy proposals include plans for the largest deportation operation in US history, ending birthright citizenship, and eliminating visas and deporting pro-Palestinian foreign students, among others. .
Biden's comments about Musk, his alliance with Trump and his hypocrisy on immigration came on the heels of a Washington Post report that cites correspondence, legal records and several people who helped Musk obtain a work visa in 1996 after he was already working here without one.
Musk arrived in the United States with the stated goal of attending graduate school at Stanford University in the mid-1990s. He did not enroll in the program he said he was accepted into, and instead began building a venture-backed startup called Zip2 with his brother.
The Washington Post wrote that investors in Musk's first company were concerned about “the deportation of their founder” and gave him a deadline to obtain a work visa.
Zip2 was sold for about $300 million in 1999, a windfall that enabled Elon Musk to later become an early investor in and chairman of Tesla, and to start his capital-intensive space venture SpaceX, which is now a major US defense contractor.
These actions pushed Musk to become the richest person in the world on paper. According to Forbes, the Tesla CEO's net worth is approximately $274 billion today.
In late 2022, Musk used this significant wealth to acquire the social media network Twitter in a purchase deal worth $44 billion.
On the platform, since rebranding as X, Musk has repeatedly claimed in posts seen by his massive online fan base that “open borders” and illegal immigrants are somehow harming the United States.
He also shared the false claim that non-citizens are systematically voting in US elections, a conspiracy theory put forward by conservative groups to lay the legal basis for challenging the election results if the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, wins the presidency.
In the United States, it is a federal crime and a crime under each state's laws for noncitizens to register or vote in federal elections.
According to studies compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice, “Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is almost nonexistent, and many cases of alleged fraud are actually errors by voters or administrators. The same is true for mail-in ballots, which are secure and necessary for running an election.” Safe in the midst of the Corona virus pandemic.”
— CNBC's Rebecca Picciotto contributed to this report.
