On Monday’s All In, host Chris Hayes just went on a hypocrisy-lined tear against X owner Elon Musk for spending big in the midterms, while completely downplaying the enormous spending already unleashed by leftist billionaire George Soros.
Hayes decried Musk’s “unfathomable amounts of money” to “elect Republicans this cycle,” browbeating him for not giving that money to charity or some other noble cause: “At least $100 million people are saying — quite possibly much more. That’s in addition to the nearly $300 million Musk already spent electing Trump back in 2024.”
But perhaps just as egregious, check out the pathetic caveat he just threw in about Soros: “Yes, there's some money from left too, well, mostly just George and Alex Soros, who do give a lot of money in these sorts of things.”
He immediately dismissed it, rendering the double standard even more lopsided: “But they are being drowned out by right-wing billionaires.”
Since Hayes is comparing both Musk’s spending this year and his last politically active cycle in 2024, did he forget that liberal billionaire Tom Steyer spent $558 million collectively to buy both the 2020 presidential election and the 2026 California gubernatorial election for himself?
How about when liberal billionaire Michael Bloomberg spent more than $1 billion just on his own four-month 2020 presidential campaign? Are those figures “unfathomable amounts of money” by Hayes’ standards?
Soros, until recently, was the top 2026 midterm donor with over $102 million spent so far to elect Democrats, and is still leading Musk in The New York Times billionaire political donor rankings in second place, with Musk in the fourth spot with $90.5 million spent so far.
In essence, Hayes is treating a planned Musk political outlay as being in the same ballpark as money Soros had already cut for Democrats almost entirely through his own super PAC. But for Hayes, that only amounts to “some money from the left, too.”
Check out the blatant disparity between how Where's Waldo look-a-like @chrislhayes treats @elonmusk's political donations vs. @georgesoros' political donations. It's so lop-sided it's hilarious. "Yes, there's some money from left too, well, mostly just George and Alex Soros, who… pic.twitter.com/rUB7Xkg6nY
— Joe Vazquez (@JV3MRC) September 3, 2026
Even if you were to add the to-date spending of the top 14 Republican donors currently in The Times Top 20 list for 2026 (approximately $844.5 million), it still falls well short of the over $1.5 billion Steyer and Bloomberg spent collectively on their own campaigns, and that’s not even counting the tens of millions they spent on outside liberal political groups during the 2020-2026 period as well. Elon Musk’s collective 2024-2026 political spending, at a roughly $400 million estimate, doesn’t even match the $558 million Steyer spent on himself!
So, is Hayes just griping because the right is doing the very cash thing conservatives are accustomed to seeing from the uber-left? Soros himself was the top outside group donor in the 2022 midterms with $176,752,713 spent total to help left-wing candidates. Was Hayes upset at the time?
For Hayes to treat right-wing spending as some sort of unique phenomenon, given the mountains of evidence to the contrary is more an illustration of willful media talking-head stupidity than genuine concern about money in politics.
