Elon Musk and MAGA's online pressure campaign failed to sway GOP senators

• MAGA influencers, including Elon Musk, tried to pressure GOP senators into electing Rick Scott.
• But instead they chose Sen. John Thune, a long-serving senator and occasional Trump critic.
• That may be largely due to the fact that the vote was held by secret ballot.

Elon Musk was able to help get Donald Trump elected to the presidency, and he's poised to be get a key role in the president-elect's next administration.

But it became clear this week that his influence, and the influence of the online MAGA right more broadly, isn't felt so strongly behind closed doors on Capitol Hill.

On Wednesday morning, Republican senators and senators-elect chose the current second-highest-ranking Republican, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, to be the next Senate Majority Leader.

Musk and other Trump allies had lined up behind Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who's long pitched himself as a foil to the GOP establishment and sought to capitalize on his stature as a staunch Trump loyalist.

Scott garnered just 13 votes, only three more than he won when he challenged Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell for the top job after the 2022 midterms. After Scott was eliminated on the first round of voting, Thune defeated his next-strongest challenger, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, by a 29-24 margin.

It wasn't for lack of trying by Scott's allies, including Musk, who waged a days-long campaign on social media to get GOP senators to fall in line behind the Florida senator.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Scott supporter, told reporters on Tuesday that Musk's support was "huge" and that the billionaire businessman and other conservative figures "realize we need a change here in terms of how Congress operates."

If one were assessing the race solely based on online chatter, Scott might have appeared to be in the lead. In fact, Scott was leading on the betting website Polymarket for much of Sunday and Monday.

A secret vote insulated senators from public pressure

There's a key reason why the pressure campaign didn't work: The vote was held by secret ballot, rather than in the public view.

Very few senators made their votes known ahead of time, and many still haven't, making it difficult for MAGA activists to target those who voted for someone other than Scott.

"It is totally unacceptable we do secret ballots to elect a Senate Majority Leader," said Charlie Kirk, the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA. "They are afraid of you."

The pressure campaign quickly became heated. Musk said that Thune was the "top choice of Democrats," while Tucker Carlson called Cornyn an "angry liberal." Detractors dredged up both senators' years-old anti-Trump posts and comments, including Thune's call for Trump to withdraw from the race in 2016.

The online campaign apparently irked some senators who felt they were being pressured over a matter that should be up to the judgement of senators, rather than the public.

"They're trying to bully us. That's not how these elections work," a Republican senator anonymously told Punchbowl News.

Scott's supporters, meanwhile, were hopeful that a public campaign would mitigate the impact of the secret ballot. And some were dismissive of the notion that public pressure was untoward.

"I hope the constituents call in. There's nothing wrong with that, nobody ought to be offended by that," Johnson said ahead of the vote. "If I were a constituent, I would be saying, 'I want to know exactly how you're going to vote.'"

After Scott lost, the reaction online was somewhat muted. Musk congratulated Thune, while the Florida senator issued a statement saying he will "do everything possible to make sure John Thune is successful in accomplishing President Trump's agenda.

The phrase "McConnell 2.0" quickly began trending on X after the vote, spurred by right-wing accounts who believe Thune will be a continuation of the status quo.

"I think Rick Scott would have gotten far fewer votes had we not done a public pressure campaign," conservative media personality Benny Johnson said on his show after the vote. "They thought they were going to sneak in this leadership vote in the dark of night. The pressure is now on, and John Thune better be groveling to MAGA for his existence."