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White House officials found Elon Musk to be a coronavirus ad campaign
Elon Musk was among the celebrities that Trump administration officials sought to woo for the Helping the President Helps the World taxpayer-funded ad blitz that never got off the ground, according to documents published by the House Oversight Committee.
The $300 million initiative was set up as a way to defeat despair and encourage hope over the coronavirus. We need to film them ASAP — we need material in the can now, one official wrote to the contractors who worked on the ad campaign on September 13th.
Like several of the more than 250 celebrities screened, Musk's position on the "Celebrity Participant Position List," first mentioned by Politico, appears as a "pending response." An additional notice by Tesla and SpaceX CEO's name reads that Musk "in 2018 announced that he was a 'registered independent' and listed himself as a 'half-democratic, half-republican.'"
It's an obvious nod to Musk 's 2018 tweet that he said he wasn't a conservative. Am registered as independent and politically moderate. Doesn't mean that I'm moderate on all the problems. Humanitarian problems are incredibly important to me, and I don't understand why they're not important to everyone.
Just ten celebrities have obtained final approval from the administration, and all have since backed the campaign, according to the House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) news release.
Earlier in the pandemic, Musk expressed doubt about the coronavirus, called the shelter-in-place "racist" orders, spread disqualified news about the virus, challenged facts about its spread, and at one point said that the virus — which killed more than 1.1 million people worldwide — was "dumb." But Musk publicly disagreed, if not explicitly, with the president's stance.
He withdrew from two advisory councils to the president after Trump declared that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
The White House 's set of celebrities planned for the ad campaign is an odd list, spanning from Silicon Valley to Hollywood, of actors , singers and other performers listed. It is not clear what point most of the discussions have entered.
The list includes Sean Penn and Jay-Z (both identified as "maybe") Instagram celebrities Josh Ostrovsky aka The Fat Jewish ("pending answer"); reality show stars Chip and Joanna Gaines ("pending answer") to cater to religious voters; Beyoncé ("pending answer") to cater to "Black Americans and super-spreaders"; and Cardi B ("pending answer"), whose list notes have already supported Biden as president. Podcast host Joe Rogan, who said he would vote for President Trump's re-election, is classified as "overcommitted" but with a "maybe" status.
Rejection from the list included previous criticism of President Trump—Judd Apatow's opinion that Trump may not have the analytical capacity to run as President,' Billie Eilish's not a Trump supporter, he said he was 'destroying our country and everything we care for,' and Bryan Cranston's call out Trump's assaults on journalists.
Others have been rejected for their views on "liberal left" topics such as same-sex marriage. According to the map, singer Christina Aguilera is an Obama-sponsored Democrat and a gay-rights Liberal advocate, Justin Timberlake "publicly supported Obama and supports gay marriage," and George Takei is a vocal political activist, including immigration and the federal government's decision to detain migrants at the facility.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has since requested a campaign review. House Democrats, including Maloney; James Clyburn (D-SC), chairman of the select Coronavirus Crisis Sub-Committee; and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), chairman of the Economic and Consumer Policy Sub-Committee, wrote in a letter to Azar Wednesday that the Trump administration had failed to provide the requested documents for investigation.
Your failure to provide the documentation we requested—especially in the light of the details we have learned from the contractors—appears to be part of a cover-up to hide the abuse of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars by the Trump Administration for partisan political purposes ahead of the upcoming election, and to guide taxpayers' money to friends and allies of Trump Administration officials,
