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EXCLUSIVE — Nate Morris says that a staggering contribution by Elon Musk in support of his Republican bid for the Senate in Kentucky “certainly gives us the firepower and the ammo to go the distance, to be able to get out our message.”
Morris, a businessman and political outsider who’s showcasing his support for President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement as he runs for the Senate, spoke first with Digital after Musk cut a $10 million check to the pro-Morris Fight for Kentucky super PAC.
The contribution by Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, was his largest ever in a U.S. Senate race.
Morris is one of the top three contenders, along with Rep. Andy Barr and former Kentucky Attorney General and 2023 gubernatorial nominee Daniel Cameron, among a dozen Republican candidates, running to succeed retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Senate GOP leader.
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Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk contributed $10 million to a super PAC supporting pro-Trump GOP Senate candidate Nate Morris of Kentucky. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“Elon picks winners. Elon has been the greatest entrepreneur in the history of our world, and people are going to be talking about him for 1,000 years. And he knows success. He knows leadership, and I think this is another example of him putting his money where his mouth is.”
Morris noted that to date, he’s “financed most of the campaign myself, and also with help from small dollars from all over the country that want to stop the McConnell machine and want to send a pro-Trump outside business person to the U.S. Senate.”
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But he emphasized that “this investment from Elon Musk is going to give our message, our campaign, the opportunity to continue to amplify why we should be the U.S. Senator here in Kentucky, and the kind of Senator we’re going to be.”
Asked why he thought Musk decided to support him, Morris, who had a recent conversation with the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said, “I think he saw an outside business guy and someone that was willing to take on the Mitch McConnell machine, and someone that’s going to tell it like it is, and has experience creating jobs, and I think also, a really tough, hard line immigration policy.”
Nate Morris, former CEO of Rubicon Technologies, is running as a pro-Trump political outsider in the 2026 race to succeed retiring longtime GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)
Musk is also close with Vice President JD Vance, who counts Morris as a personal friend.
The donation, which was first reported by Axios earlier on Monday, came last week, according to sources. It’s Musk’s largest single donation he has spent supporting a candidate for federal office, except for Trump.
Musk went all in for Trump in the 2024 election, dishing out nearly $300 million in support of Trump’s bid through America PAC, a Trump-aligned super PAC. Much of the money was used for get-out-the-vote efforts and ads in the crucial battleground states as Trump and then-Vice President Kamala Harris faced off for the presidency.
But Trump and Musk had a major falling out last year, with Musk threatening to form a third party, before patching up their relationship the past couple of months.
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Following a November dinner with the president at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Musk gave major contributions to the leading GOP-aligned super PACs supporting House and Senate Republicans.
Morris, who launched his Senate bid in June during an interview on Donald Trump Junior’s podcast, held a rally kicking off his campaign with conservative leader and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk. Morris was the final Senate candidate endorsed by Kirk prior to his assassination a couple of months later.
Republican Senate candidate Nate Morris of Kentucky, left, is joined by the late Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk at Morris’ 2026 Senate campaign launch on June 30, 2025, in Shepherdsville, Kentucky. (Nate Morris campaign)
Morris has also been endorsed by a number of other leading MAGA figures, including Sens. Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana, and Steve Bannon, a one-time leading Trump political strategist and host of the popular “War Room” podcast.
Barr campaign manager Blake Gober, responding to the news of the Musk donation, said in a statement, “the more money Nate Morris spends, the more Kentuckians get to see him and the worse he does.”
“Nate Morris spending money made this a two-man race between Andy Barr and Daniel Cameron. Nate Morris spending more money will cement it that way,” Gober argued.
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Eight Democrats, including 2020 Senate nominee Amy McGrath, are running for their party’s nomination in the Senate race in Kentucky.
The primary is scheduled for May 19, and the eventual GOP nominee will likely be considered the clear favorite in November’s general election.
‘ Paige Dukeman contributed to this report.
