Article in The Hill by Sarah Fortinsky, 3/30/25
Headline: “Musk says he is giving out two $1 million checks to ‘get attention’ from ‘legacy media’ “
“Tech billionaire Elon Musk handed out oversized $1 million checks to two attendees of his town hall in Wisconsin on Sunday evening, saying the stunt is cheaper and more effective 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 on stage at the town hall, before giving out the large checks.”
“ ‘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, Musk said.”