‘Elon 2028’ committee wants to rewrite the Constitution to make Musk next US president
The race to the White House is on, and while there are continued whispers that President Donald Trump will try to exploit potential loopholes to run for a third term, there are obvious questions about who else is in the running.
Although current forecasting models and prediction markets list Vice President JD Vance and California Governor Gavin Newsom as frontrunners in terms of who will go head-to-head in the 2028 U.S. presidential election, some unusual names have started to appear from the pack. Now, an 'Elon 2028' committee has appeared on a government website, with a desire to get the Tesla boss into the Oval Office. Though it's important to note this is an independent committee with no affiliation to Musk himself.
While OpenAI's Sam Altman has firmly said he won't run for President of the United States, everyone from Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson to Soulja Boy and Matthew McConaughey has been mentioned in the same conversation.
Donald Trump would have to change the U.S. Constitution if he were going to try and secure a third term, but what about Elon Musk sitting behind the Resolute desk?
What is Elon 2028?
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Elon 2028 promotes itself as "the first tokenized super PAC." Saying it was built to get the world's richest man into the White House, Elon 2028 explains how it wants to amend the Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to run for president.
A super PAC is a political committee that can raise funds to support a candidate, allowed as long as it doesn't coordinate with that candidate. Filed with the Federal Election Commission on October 13, the super PAC lists an Iowa address and Michael Ellison as treasurer. Michael Ellison is seemingly no relation to Trump ally and billionaire Larry Ellison.
The super PAC's FAQ reminds us that Article II requires the President of the United States to be a 'natural-born citizen', with it raising funds in hopes of changing that.
There's the $ELON2028 memecoin, which appears to be legitimate and is currently trading on Solana.
The FEC filing reiterates that Musk is unaffiliated with Elon 2028, and it's unclear if he's even aware the tokenized super PAC exists. The fine print on the Elon 2028 site also states: "The token does not fund the committee, and the committee does not back the token.”
Musk is no stranger to super PACs, famously offering $1 million a day to those he could persuade to vote.
How could the U.S. Constitution be changed to let Elon Musk run for president?
As it stands, Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, states that a presidential candidate has to meet three specific requirements. They must be over the age of 35, a resident of the United States for at least 14 years, and a 'natural-born citizen'.
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and although he became a naturalized citizen in 2002, he doesn't meet the criteria of running for president. More than this, he's automatically disqualified from serving as Vice President or being considered in the presidential line of succession.
It should be noted that more than 11,000 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed since 1789, but with only 27 being successful, they don't exactly have a high success rate. More than this, they tend to take a long time to make it through. The 27th Amendment was passed in 1992, limiting how frequently Congress can vote to increase its own pay. It was first put forward in 1789.
The likes of the "Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment" have been proposed as a way to allow naturalised citizens to run for president in the past, but they've never succeeded. There was the infamous 'Arnold Amendment' that looked at allowing the Austrian-born actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for POTUS.
The U.S. Constitution doesn't entirely count Elon Musk out of other political roles, meaning he can run for Congress, run for Governor, become Speaker of the House, and launch his own political party. You might remember when he vowed to launch his own America Party to challenge the current two-party system.
AI has predicted that JD Vance will be the 48th President of the United States, but as the wild world of American politics has taught us plenty over the years, we should come to expect the unexpected.