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Elon Musk's recent actions at the Wisconsin rally on Sunday, March 30, 2025, have caused a frenzy online. The tech billionaire handed over two one-million-dollar oversized checks to two lucky attendees of his town hall in Wisconsin on Sunday evening, claiming the stunt was more effective and even cheaper than paying for the same amount of media coverage.
“The reason for the checks is that it’s really just to get attention. It’s like, we need to get attention. And it’s somewhat inevitably, when I do this, these things… it causes the legacy media to, like, kind of lose their minds, and then they’ll run it on every news channel,” Musk said.
He continued:
“And I’m like, I couldn’t pay them to, it would cost, like, 10 times more… to get the kind of coverage that we get” without distributing the checks.”
“This is just helpful for getting attention, and then, like, it’s kind of fun to see the legacy media lose their minds over it too,” Elon added later.
Keeping to his promise, the billionaire presented the checks to two members of his audience, Nicholas Jacobs and Ekaterina Diestler. To get a seat at his event, they were mandated to sign a petition against “activist judges.”
More details on Elon Musk’s shot at Legacy media
Elon Musk held the event just a few days before Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Elon Musk and his America PAC have invested millions of dollars to support their candidate, the conservative Judge Brad Schimel. Elon Musk's promise of two million dollars caused a huge controversy as Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul called it an illegal payment. He appealed to the state’s top court to block the payment.
Elon Musk's latest dig at Legacy Media comes after the billionaire pointed out in a February episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that most mainstream media outlets are left-leaning.
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"Almost all the media is left shifted. If you talk to somebody who gets all their information from legacy media, they are living in a different world than if they are listening to your podcast or getting news from 𝕏. They are living in an alternate reality.”
In the podcast, Elon and Rogan discuss how the media has seemingly turned into a breeding ground for sensationalism. Joe says:
“The mainstream media is in line with the very specific talking points and how little... You have Fox News on television [and] it's like the only one that is pointing out the ridiculous fraud and waste... I know you saw the Jeff Bezos thing in the Washington Post, they're going to stop all the wacky editorials and limit that stuff to, I think it was uh wealth and personal freedom or something along those lines.”
In the #2281 Joe Rogan episode, Elon emphasizes the importance of media merit, especially when it concerns the safety of the public.
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