Buying A President

You wake in the mornin' and step outside. You take a deep breathe and you think to yourself "I wonder how much a president costs."

We've all been there. Doom scrolling the socials while off on your morning constitutional, watching the neighbor's house catch on fire as the corporate hellscapes expand into your backyard, when it hits. Well two things really. "Why do I have a window next to my toilet?" But also, "I wonder how much it costs to buy a president?"

Good news fam, we're here to answer that.

Dollars and Sense

We'll start our journey into political accounting with a simple statement disclaimer. Buying elections is bad. There. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk the blast that was November 2024. By now, most of us know how that turned out. In this election cycle, more was spent than any other time in history. ^{[see here]} Even more than in 2020, which has come to be known as the best year ever by introverts. We're talking nearly $16B dollars across federal elections. That's at least 2 months groceries. Breaking it down, it's about $1B spent by Trump and $1.5B spent by Harris.

We're not here to argue who spent it better or who should have won. The point of this article is to point out something really interesting that occurred this election. And that something is this:

Daddy Warbucks is PACing

Señor Musk ran himself a little thing we in Murica call a PAC. For the uninitiated, a PAC is a thing that came as a result of us Muricanians decided that those pesky campaign limits were annoying since the wealthiest amongst us could buy favor support our preferred candidates. To solve this conundrum, in 1943, the first Political Action Committee (PAC) was formed. This allowed the wealthy, and even companies, to donate to this side action that's "not affiliated with a candidates campaign", and run their own ads for the candidate or issue they want to see elected or passed. Or to run delightfully tasteful smear ads against the people they oppose.

Then in 2002, we determined letting companies donate to political campaigns was stupid. Something around "companies aren't protected by free speech because they're not people." Anywho, that was short lived and in 2012 with Citizens United we made companies people. Well at least when bypassing campaign finance laws. Not so much when it comes to breaking the law or prosecution. We also determined that, being people, corporations have a right to free speech. Unfortunately for these new people with giant pocketbooks.

Long story short, Elon's got a lot of money and didn't find the fame he wanted when he hijacked a social media company to chortle his manhood. So, like any Lex Lutheresqueian man, he set his sites on bigger goals. The presidency. But, at least for now, his South African heritage prevents that. So what's the next best thing? That's right! Become besties with a guy that you bend over backwards to help get elected. Surely once he sees how much you've done for him, how you've been there for him through thick and thicker, how you've always laughed at his jokes, how you trade stories about how you've taken dumps on the poor, he'll realize how much you mean to him. You'll hop out of your cybertruck, take of your geeky girl glasses and he'll see you for the beautiful bro you've always been.

Funny story. It worked. Well all that handholding stuff from above plus running a PAC with $200M for the Trump campaign.

TL;DR

If you want to get into the presidents inner sanctum, all ya gotta do is tell him he's pretty and fork over $200M. Then you'll be running a meme portion of the government in no time.