Exclusive: Democrats turned down $250,000 in free X advertising during DNC

When do Democrats oppose free things? When Elon Musk is offering them, it turns out...

When Elon Musk’s X offered both the Republican National Convention (RNC) and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) $250,000 in free advertising to promote their conventions on X, only Democrats declined, the Washington Reporter has learned.

The DNC streamed its content on X but turned down the offer for free ad space, seemingly based on the party’s ideological differences from Musk.

“The Democrats’ X strategy was to rely on @KamalaHQ and on Harry Sisson,” a social media strategist told the Reporter. Republicans, on the other hand, utilized X, and took advantage of Musk’s offer. Democrats’ ad spending on X for the presidential race was negligible; Democrats’ ad spends, however, dwarfed those of Republicans’ on Snapchat, Google, and Meta.

Democrats’ refusal to accept free X ad space is reminiscent of the party’s 2016 media strategy with Facebook. Facebook famously offered the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump the ability to work closely with them — Trump’s team leaped at the opportunity and Clinton’s turned it down. This perceived pro-Trump bias from 2016 remains at the core of some of the left’s opposition to Facebook.

While partisan Democrats continue to flee X for the echo chambers of Blue Sky and Mastodon, X has quietly racked up a series of legal wins in its feuds with advertisers.