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Elon Musk has broken his silence after his $500 million gamble to keep Republicans in power in the 2026 Midterms failed.
The SpaceX founder tweeted, “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” and “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time.”
Those messages came less than an hour after the Lone Star state’s senator-elect, James Talarico, took to the stage in Austin to celebrate his victory and launched a thinly veiled attack on Musk and Donald Trump.
“We were the underdogs in this race… we went up against more than $300 million, more than any Senate campaign in American history; we went up against all of the negative ads, smear campaigns, foreign bots and AI deepfakes that money can buy.”
“Despite our differences, we all want the same things,” he said.“But the billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable networks, who own the politicians on our screens, they want us at our throats,” he added.
“The real fight in this country is not left vs. right. It is top vs. bottom. … Our unity is a threat to their wealth and their power.”
He continued: “The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets. … It is the oldest strategy in the world: divide and conquer. But tonight, we sent a crystal-clear message to the people at the top: We will not be conquered.”
Without mentioning the president’s name, he condemned a Trump-led decade of “politics as bloodsport, “as trolling and owning,” and “as professional wrestling.”“People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. … A politics of love,” he said.
The battle to represent Texas in the Senate was the costliest contest the country has ever seen, with combined advertising spending in the race already above $500 million, according to ad-tracking data.
The contest pitted the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, against the Democrat James Talarico.
Outside groups backing Paxton have spent about $239 million, more than five times the roughly $45 million laid out by the largest Democratic-aligned groups.
Texas PAC, a Republican super PAC, alone has accounted for nearly $149 million of that total.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the main Republican Senate super PAC, launched the group.
Musk, who lives in Texas and has relocated SpaceX, Tesla, X and other businesses there, has contributed $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, which subsequently transferred matching sums to Texas PAC, according to federal filings.
The influx of Republican money arrived relatively late in the campaign, with Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC not beginning major spending until early September.
“I think the cavalry arrived just in the nick of time for Paxton,” said Republican donor and oil businessman Dan Eberhart.
Talarico has offset the outside-spending disadvantage with grassroots fundraising.
His campaign says it raised $64 million from July through September, more than triple Paxton’s total, with 97% of donations under $100.
He spent $61 million on ads through September, according to AdImpact, while the biggest Democratic outside group, Lone Star Rising PAC, has spent $19.3 million.
Talarico has held a small but consistent lead over Paxton, though generally within the margin of error, making it Texas’ most competitive statewide race since 1994, Henson said.
Much of the spending has funded attacks portraying Talarico as out of step with Texas voters on culture-war issues.
Independent fact-checkers say the ads distort Talarico’s record, and Henson said their goal is “arousing negative sentiment among Republican voters” to boost turnout.
Texas PAC ads tell voters that Talarico is “for they/them, not you” and accuse him of supporting taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for minors.
PolitiFact rated that claim false, noting that while Talarico opposed a 2023 ban on gender-transition care for minors, he has said he opposes gender-reassignment surgery for children.
Musk’s ads were relentlessly negative against Talarico
Nationally, Republican groups have spent more than $100 million since August 1 on more than 200 ads accusing Democrats of backing “sex change” procedures for children, according to an analysis of AdImpact data by FactCheck.org.
A Paxton campaign ad featured an AI-generated Talarico reading from a fictional “King James (Talarico) Bible” that combined excerpts of his past remarks, including one describing God as “nonbinary.”
FactCheck.org said the ad lacked key context.
Talarico responded by calling Paxton “the most corrupt politician in Texas.”
Paxton was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House in 2023 on abuse-of-office allegations but was acquitted by the state Senate.
Separate state securities-fraud charges dating to 2015 were dropped in 2024 under an agreement requiring community service, ethics training and restitution.
Paxton denied wrongdoing.
