***Exclusive from Rolling Stone’s Asawin Suebsaeng, Miles Klee and Andrew Perez:***

*Donald Trump’s allies have been warning him that Musk’s field operation is failing in key states — and that it’s being led by DeSantis’ failed team.*

Donald Trump has largely outsourced his 2024 campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation to a Super PAC bankrolled and directed by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man — and one of its most awkward. In recent weeks, several Republican operatives and other figures in the national party have bluntly and directly informed Trump they fear Musk’s organization is falling down on the job of mobilizing voters to cast their ballots for the Republican nominee.

According to two sources familiar with the situation and another person briefed on it, these close Trump allies have told him that they are worried that America PAC, an outside group that Musk created to boost turnout for Trump, is failing in critical battleground states that are likely to be won by razor-thin margins, with only weeks left to go before Election Day. Some partly blame, including when they’ve spoken to Trump, the group’s lead strategists, who are linked to the failed 2024 primary run of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“We were upfront about our concerns,” says a GOP operative close to the former president and 2024 Republican nominee, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations with Trump. Rolling Stone was shown a screenshot of written communications further corroborating that these sentiments were conveyed to Trump himself.

This source adds that they relayed to Trump that they have been in touch “constantly” with conservative activists and other top Republicans based in key swing states, and few of them have had any positive comments lately about the Musk-supported America PAC’s impact in their respective states. Some say they are seeing a relatively small GOTV presence on the ground, despite the Super PAC’s massive spending to boost Trump — $75 million since Joe Biden withdrew from the Democratic ticket in July.

Moreover, the sources say, several members of Trump’s inner circle have grumbled for weeks, including in discussions with Trump, that the Musk operation is being led by senior officials from Ron DeSantis’ embarrassing 2024 effort. In the 2024 GOP primary, the Florida governor and his allies waged a hugely expensive campaign to snatch the nomination from Trump — only to be roundly humiliated by the former president, again and again.

Read more: [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-elon-musk-republicans-super-pac-election-2024-1235134877/](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-elon-musk-republicans-super-pac-election-2024-1235134877/)