Musk's Uncharitable Charity ft. David Fahrenthold
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Just twenty twenty elan must conceded his charitable foundation and inevitable vely called the most foundation with billions of dollars to test the stock, which is not at him seventy billion dollar tax break yet a massive new york times investigation by reporters ryan mac and they fit threthaway has found that the most foundation has failed to donate the minimum amt of money required by law to get that tax break.

The investigation found that mask could not hide any staff for the foundation and that its board was made up of musk two volunteers, one of whom, the times reports, works in average of six minutes a week on a charitable Operation with billions of dollars of dry powder. A mosque donations regularly benefit causes related to his own interests, like a school inside a space's compound and the U. M.

Program to help countries find internet for rural schools where two of them became stalling customers and is, of course, musk wireless internet company. And while elan musk initially promised to help, and I quote, fund fixing the water in any house in flint, michigan that has water contamination above fda levels, you would only end up doing ating about a million dollars to local schools. Installing waterfalls isn't buying laptops for students.

While this is unquestioned a good thing, I fail to do much more than that. Only day was sent the tesla goon down there to offer, and i'm not kidding, rides around the parking law in his car. Since the meter of twenty nineteen, the times reports that mask has done little more for flink than that. According to the times, in two thousand twenty one, the most foundation fell forty one million dollars short of the minimum required donation, and in twenty twenty two, missed IT by an astonishing two hundred and thirty four million dollars that year. Musk foundation only gave way the two point two five percent of the five percent IT was required to from its seven billion dollars in assets.

Today, i'm joined by new york times investigative reporter David tharn told who won a appeal, surprised his work at the washington post investigating a big wet president, Donald d. Jay rum, and his dodgy deals. David, thank you so much for joining me. Hey.

it's great to bear.

So on a very basic level, what makes this elon musk charity story so remarkable? What's so different about him?

Well, there's two things that really stand out about the musk foundation. One is how big IT is. So the bus foundation is more than five billion dollars in assets, mostly tesla stock that makes IT one of the twenty largest foundations in the united states.

Um but the second thing is how small IT is in its actions is big in its resources and small and its action. So the most foundation has repeatedly failed to give away. Just the bare minimum is required to by law and IT. Also, when IT does give its money away, the money doesn't go very far. But that, I mean, often mister musk uses the money in his foundation to help himself for to help his businesses.

So he could be example of some of the ways is using IT .

to help himself. Well, one of the biggest ones was in twenty twenty one is a guy in Jerry t. asic. Man who is a billionaire pensylvania.

He charges a rocket from space, execute in the space and is a way of sort of celebrating, or a noble ling, what he's doing. He says, you know, i'm going to raise two hundred million dollars with this space flight for sent jude children's research hospital. Then he goes up in the space, he comes back down.

And he hasn't raised two hundred million dollars. They are still short. And so elan musk, and jumping to save his customer from fAiling on this charger pledge and says, I ll give fifty million dollars eventually.

Give fifty five million dollars, not from his own pocket, but from the mosque foundation. A few years later, the same billion air says, you know what, i'm going to order three more flights from space ex. He who goes from being a good space x customer to a really good space customer.

And part of that process was the most foundation. Another example was the most foundation had never given any money to Cameron county taxes that the area of a very, very southern p of texas, where must have the space ex launch site, uh, he never had never given any money down there until march twenty twenty one. Space rocket explodes there and rains metal down all over this area, in area, by the way, where he needs lots of regulatory approvals, goodwyn all kinds of help from the people.

Who are the politicians down there? About an hour after the rocket explodes, the most foundation starts giving to schools to downtown beautification. And the the third example I bring up for these two schools that are the that mr.

Musk w started and supported with a musk foundation on paper. These supposed to be like every charity to serve the public, right. That's the point of a charity.

It's not your, it's not to serve you. It's not a even if IT to get your name on IT, IT doesn't serve your interest that serves the public so there's a school called ad astra. Uh mr.

Moss started is another school called the foundation. That's its legal name, the foundation that mr. mr. S, give IT a unch of money to from the the most foundation.

So we went to look, okay, where are these schools? Who are they serving? How are they serving? The public answer is that one of them is behind the locked gates of a space sex compound and book a cheeky taxes you can only get in if you are a SpaceX employee. And the other one, the foundation is bought a school, uh, a property, turn into a monos school that happens to be two minutes away from a huge subdivision mr. Mask is building for his own employees outside back drop taxes.

So and which employees for spice for.

well, he's got a whole complex there that include space experts, mainly boring ing company employees, right? Both these places are rural areas. He's trying to bring these highly talented thought after people to a pretty rural area of texas.

You can imagine one of the questions people would ask is, where are my kids going to go to school? right? And and so these two charities are helping musk recruit by building schools to service his employees.

So taking a step back on a very basic level, how does that actually work? So has he's put stock in s grow. I assume what habit was in .

twenty and twenty one. He's facing this giant tax bill. He exercise a bunch of tesla stock options and he says, old, seven billion dollars in taxes.

He takes five billion dollars of tesla stock. This is that's not what he paid for. The stock is what I appreciate IT to.

He donated to charity. And now the tax law allows you to take a deduction based on on the appreciated value of the stocks. So the deduction to him could have been worth as much as two billion dollars off of tax bill.

He gives that stock to the mask foundation. Now it's confusing because it's got his he's in charge the musk foundation. It's got his name on IT.

But again, the mass foundation is by law a separate entity with its own strictly charitable goals. Even though that sounds like something that he like another sort of pocket of his wallet. It's not it's a separate thing.

So once the money once the shares go into to the musk foundation, now he's given himself a responsibility. He's given himself a job and that is the IOS requires foundation tions to give away five percent of their assets every year. You can imagine.

Why is that? Keep people from just dumping money in their foundation, get in the tax break and never actually helping the world. You have to send five percent of your money out the door to the real world every year.

And he hasn't. He has didn't. In two thousand, twenty one, he didn't. One thousand, thousand and two. In fact, by the end, twenty twenty two, he was two hundred and thirty four million dollars behind the minimum for what this foundation was .

supposed to have given away. right? But as far as the stock goes, does IT sit separate to mosques? In a separate is legally the .

property of this foundation that which means still in control of IT, but belongs to the foundation .

does have any liquid funds in there.

There's so I think they sold the views. There's a small amount of liquid cash. I think mostly what he does itself stock in order of the make donations, what IT does.

So how does the tax break actually work? How much does he get off of his tax bill as a result of this?

This is complicated. Uh but what we were told was that in that year um they expected that the the the five billion to he gives five billion dollars worth a tesla stock to his charity。 The folks we talked to say that they thought that actual break from that the actual production in this taxes thirty seven percent of five billion dollars, which is about two billion dollars so uh, there's a lot of other math involving volver, his income and other things but that was, the guess was two billion dollars.

Office taxi s and who gave you this estimate?

Just a weekly. And we talked to a couple of professors of tax law.

right? So what he gets out of this is just a tax break, but he's not donating enough money, right? Magic giving a way what he's meant to. Yeah.

it's confusing to think about him and his foundation of separatists. But in this case, he gives his foundation the five billion dollars. And he taken this five billion dollars with a tesla stock and given IT to same juice or unit for some other charity that he didn't control that have been the end of the story for him. He's given all the money. He's given these shares away.

He takes the tax break unit f whoever then uses the shares for whatever, right? But so now where he's like taking off his hat as donor and putting on the hat as the guy who runs the mosque foundation now he has the responsibility, is the head of the most foundation to start giving this new found money away and that's when the five percent uh minimum matters to him. He has to give five percent of the foundations assets away to other charity. They actually do good in the world every .

year and he isn't doing this.

And now, no, he missed that in twenty twenty one by forty one million dollars. And then in two and two and two, he missed IT by two hundred .

and thirty four million. And so what's meant to happen to a regular person when what actually one one quick question, does he get this text break every year for holding IT? Or is this just the one you got a one off?

Just know we get IT based on what he's donated to the foundation in that year.

okay. And how much is in there right now? Just to be clear, because I know there's a lot of numbers going on.

I know IT depends IT depends so much on the rise and fall of tesla stock, but the last time we got a snapshot was at the end of twenty twenty two. And IT was a little bit more than five .

a billion at that point. So what is meant to happen to him and who is meant to exact justice here?

Well, there's two primary regulators of nonprofits. One is the arrest, the internal revenue service. They're the ones who okay. So we said at the end of twenty twenty two, he he this foundation was two hundred and thirty four million dollars behind.

He has a one year Grace period, two thousand twenty three, to give that money away, in addition to the five percent, again for twenty twenty three. If he doesn't give, he doesn't give the money away. After that, when your Grace period, the foundation faces at thirty percent penalty tacks.

And if IT doesn't pay, then then IT bases one hundred percent penalty attack. So that would basically the irs would compass ate all the money that they were supposed to give away, but they did not. Uh, so that's what would happen.

That's the I R S. The problem with that for me is a reporter, is that the I R S, all those all, all of that enforcement is private, hidden. We can see that unless somebody sues in tax court or federal court to stop IT.

So if that happened to the end of two thousand twenty three, we don't know about IT. The other regulator in most states is the estate attorney general. They also can regulate people whom Violet tax laws.

I mean one example that just ended was um the new york atterley general and the national rifle association. SHE had the right to regulate and sue the nra because IT was a new york on profit. The most foundation is a texas non profit. So the authority lands with contacts and they turn gentle taxes. I want to say that won't happen, but he's a very political action and a very political actor is .

very friendly to mosque. Wasn't he also threatened media matters when mosques them as well? He says he seems very much in his pocket.

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So let's go back to this ad ahr a school. What exactly happened there, because it's very bizarre, is a school inside space.

So IT began, uh, as a school, basically liver musk children. He started at back in california when he and space acts were both there.

And it's a nonprofit.

right? Isn't on profit again from the beginning, IT face this requirement to serve the public and not the private good of its leader. The first class fourteen students, five of whom or musk zone children later IT moves from his house to, uh, the space ex campus in half orn, california.

So it's within the gates of space sex there we talked to the guy who was the headmaster's said about half the students were related to space sex employees. And musk and children also went there for a for a long time. Then and two thousand twenty, musk starts to shift his own residency, his own companies of gravity detections.

So then the ad astra school picks up from california, moves the texas. And from what we can tell, this sort of small amount of openness they had know the fifty percent of students they had who were not employees of space ex. They seem to have changed their model or now they're behind this security gate.

I went down there. Um if you can picture if you even see pictures of whether the space ex rocket launch site is in south texas, it's a very remote area close to the gulf of mexico. There's nothing around there.

There's no people, there's no other schools. And if you drive down there, there's a little fence on the side of the highway and you see you can see behind IT, there's a building, there's basketball course. You can see what looks like a school, but there's no sign for a school. There's nothing that tells you there's a school there. Certainly nothing tells you the school there that you might go to if your member of the public, the only signs say, you know, keep out, no trust passing and there's a security guard, you know, if you stop, ten second did come over and ask what you're doing.

So do you know how one sense one's kids there is IT a private school like IT is private .

IT does IT does not have a website which IT IT used to in california, but IT does not. Now in taxes we asked mosque and the people who run the other people who are the directors of that school yeah how you get in who chooses IT? What's the criteria? Can you go if you're not a spacelike x employee and we did not get answers to any those questions.

Does that seem to flown any nonprofit guidelines you ve seen? Or as IT just classic carbon capitalism.

IT isn't on profit. That IT remains legally and on profit. The IOS has given a tax exam status. So if you donate money to IT, you can get a tax break for IT. Uh, but you know that's the question here is you know if this is really a nonprofit actually serving the public and that the private benefit of mister moscow, the private benefit of spaceship, you know, where's the evidence of that?

That's what we asked them for and didn't get a response. So in this other school, the foundation, what is the is this feels, see, this is the thing with things like this, when people talk about conspiracy theories and the rich doing weird things, they was point to make up stuff verses this. So this other secret school that must gave one hundred million dollars do what if you found there?

Yeah, that was really surprising. So the most commendation, despite the fact, is very big, doesn't give her many the really large donations in the exception. One of the exception was this thing called the foundation, uh, and they expressed the most foundation gave IT money in twenty twenty two.

You can pull the irs documents for the foundation to see what IT is and what they told the irs. They're gonna when they got a tax exams satis. And you can see that it's very, very closely tied to you on musk.

So he's not on the word of directors, but the the head of IT is his money manager. The two other directors are his accounts. So there are people who are very close to him.

And if you look at the what they told the I R S that we're going to do, and this got some attention of the time last year, that sounds grand. We're gna start to school. We're going to start a secondary school.

We're going to start a university in Austin, texas. And a lot of people cover that at the time and at all. You know, minister musk is he's starting sort of a competition of the university of Austin.

Is what would a elon mask university be like? Is this where is going to combat? Know the forces of worker ster? Know the other things, he talks about a lion.

And so my question was, just know, where is the school? Does IT exist? Does IT has IT done anything because he doesn't web present? IT doesn't have? No, there's no evidence. You know you, if you are, I said, I want to go to the university bean musk, you know, whatever this is going to be, there's there's no way to find information about IT.

And so I took a lot of su thing, but here's what we found, the foundation, the entity that the start up chair, if that is run by mosques associates IT has a show company, the shell company uh, last year bought a former horse farm in best drop taxes of forty acre horse farm. Um okay. So maybe that's the college, maybe that's the university of v line.

musk. When you go look at that property, you can see that IT actually matches what you can see. Two things about IT.

One is that it's writer on the corner from this company town, essentially, that must wants to build his employees outside bastrop. Bastrop as a is an extra often but where he's building is kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's no schools or development but he's put a boring company installation, a giant space warehouse. He's got a um there's like a live music venue in a store and he's putting in one hundred and ten home subdivision is going to call snail brook just sort of I get insight joke I guess in the world of the boring company yeah I guess the boring company moves as fast as a snails. So this is nail book.

So but the one thing that he's trying to convent people to move from Austin for, just go where you know where are people who have choices of what where they're going to live, he's going to say move to this rural part of of central taxes and the the thing that that subdivision did not have was a school. And so the foundation, again, nominally independent, not to be serving mister mosques interest is supposed to be doing its own charitable thing. The place they've selected for their first campus is right around the corner from this place where elon mosques company needs to school.

And if you look, uh, you can find job listings on the internet for another ad astra school that's being opened. And if you compare IT, it's the same place. So they're going to open another astra school in this building. And that's what really struck me was the the huge contrast between what these folks told the irs they were going to be a university for for Austin, texas. And all we've done so far, which is IT, looks like build a monetary school for elan musk employees.

So let's talk about the mask foundation itself. So by the sounds of IT, it's what three people, including elon musk, you break down the vast score prate structure here. This this bit drome little insane.

Yeah, this is really different too. So you know the you remember, the company that they keep right are talking about the top twenty largest foundations in the united states. That's you know the gates foundation that know the George sis group.

the organic. So the most foundation is A I mean.

the gates foundation is a lot bike. It's in the hundreds, hundreds of billions, but these other groups are it's around the size of other groups like the wall and family filiation. Things like that is in .

the same ballpark and the world and families and the world.

and they support charter schools and other things. It's common, although not always, but most of these places have payroll in the you know dozens or hundreds of millions of dollars. They have lots of employees figuring out where they should give their money.

Uh, by contrast, the mask foundation, as you said, as no paid employees at all, it's never had paid employees that has three directors. All of them are volunteers. There's elan musk who says he works for an hour a week on IT.

This guy, jarred berchtold is uh musk long time sort of money manager constructed area. He also works for an hour week kicked and then a woman in mattia, Simon, who works for the money manager and this part was striking. He says he works for point one hours a week.

which is six minutes. Are they compensate IT at all?

No but they they work for free. Um so yes it's there's no and you know we've asked them, do you have board meetings? You know what do you you know how do you have this huge responsibility? And now you have to give out three hundred and fifty million dollars a year.

How are you handling that? We know how much time do you spend on that. We didn't get answers about that.

Did they not answer at all?

They did enter at all.

okay. But in practice though, but in what .

we've found was in some cases when there was something that complicated that needed to be done. I mean, so for instance, and I talked about how after the rocket exploded in south texas, musk said, i'm going to give thirty million dollars to all these different groups in this, the area where the rocket exploded. okay.

So now he's he's made a that he's taken on sort of A A task that either is is too complicated for these three volunteers, he needs somebody to have, find the school districts in the area, listened to their project ideas, to decide how much money one of them should get. So he deputized this guy name, eager current of who, as much as I can tell, was never an employee of the foundation, but he was seeming to act in instead that he was easy, professional poker player, or a former professor poker player, friend of musk. So now he's in charge.

And you can see him, if I was really funny, you, we got a lot of emails back and forth between him and the school districts that he's giving the musk foundations money to. And it's fascinating to see this guy supposedly has you know, hundreds of millions ons of dollars to give away, but he was extremely detailed orient and like pressing these these schools and the city of Browns vote on the smallest details of the things they were going to use in the smallest dollar figures. Just to give one example, the city Brownsville says, hey, we want to use some of the money, the most foundations giving us. To put up Christmas lights for a Christmas where you have .

a big display in downtown n .

Brown for children? yes. And uh here's here's the estimate we got from the contractor. This is how much cost for those lights up who you pay for IT and uh, current off says, you know, I I want to talk about the color, the of the lights that you've chosen. You've chosen cool White and I don't believe cool White is appropriate.

I think I should be a warmer color so then they scramble around and points of warmer lights. Uh, so funny is a huge contrast between this sort of general, what seems to be kind of hands off approach that the the foundation Normally runs on. And then all of us said there was this guy who was extremely hands on in a way that I think people found sort of hard to deal with.

So do you think the reason that not investing comes down to like this management? Or is there something else going on here?

You know it's um it's difficult to tell the the thing. I think you can it's hard to me to know what his motivations are. The two things that would say is, number one, he, mr.

Musk, S. S. Always said philanthropy is a mistake. You know, he is always said publicly, philanthus is not the way to save the world. My companies do that for me.

You know text less space x they make a difference in the world is far greater than any anthropic effort could his moked bill gates, uh for believe in in the phantasy is a way to change the world. And I mean, that's a fine attitude to have. It's a weird to describe a guy who now is giving him in a set up a five billion dollars ity. Um and the other thing is talking to people um my my reporter, a ryan that talk to stand people who knew mister must well from tesla and spaces in other places what they said was just like, this is not something he talks about things things about he's got a lot going on. He's got a lot of lot of balls in the air and this was just not something they ever heard him thinking about .

really considering so could IT also be that he just wanted to parks and test the stock without IT being sold? It's just to be clear, to invest money from that stock, you would have to liquidate shortly? Or can charities donates stock directly?

They can do directly.

That's so. It's so interesting because if he's not talking about that, this feels like just a basic tax touch, just the lowest possible hanging through because three people does not feel including one of them being in luck that doesn't feel like enough people to run a small business learn yeah three .

people who work at total of two hours in six minute to week yeah IT IT is something that you know what he's doing and is not the way a lot of other people do IT. Either other people of his, of his with charities of his size, either hire or a big staff or they just choose one cause and give their money to that you but he's kind of get them in between where he's not hasn't chosen was one cause to sort of you know uh, focus on his giving around and he also hasn't picked out on his staff to handle a defuse kind of giving so he sort of in the middle.

So if regulators wake up and go, hey, this is very obviously bad. What would be the process that would against much?

What would I think the thing that would happen would be an an audit from the IOS, the I O S. Would sisters setting in letters and say, look, we think that you are know we have questions about the way you're Operating these charities, either the mask foundation or one of the schools. We believe you doing this, the rules get in the tax code against using your nonprofit for private benefit, we think maybe are violating that, tell us more.

And in the end, they could shut IT down. They could make him pay, we know, back payback based with a tax benefit. He god, those remedies are pretty rare. The I R S is a pretty weak regulator of this space. But that would be, how would work?

Is there any historical regulation of people who have messed up at the scale?

There are not many foundations of this scale. I actually is a good point I am not aware of. And the IOS coming down on anybody with a foundation this .

big feels like stuff like this, just the incentivises more activity like this, because this is in public like this is out there. This is very obvious.

One of the the real. And as I read a lot about trust foundation back in the day, and that is a lot was a lot smaller than this, that he had much, much less, less money than the the masculine ation does. But IT Operated in sort of in a similar way.

In that case, in the new ork turny general came down on them IT wasn't the I as far as we know, I think the irs has always been understated, ed, and you to think if there are a member about them, i've always been told this by irs veterans. The point of the arrest is not to police the point of the arrest is to collect money. And so they prioritized the things that bring the most money and in nonprofit law and is not bad.

So they do IT. They regulate IT, but it's not something they put a lot of energy into. And they're obviously shed away in recent years from fights with rich people and fight with people are who are is politically conservative.

Theyve been burned by that in the past. So they would really have to be to get their loans before taking on. Somebody like elon mosque is obviously both rich and now very conservative.

And would would such an effort be on guessing, be quite expensive?

Yeah, that would last a long time. They also have to consider sort of cost benefit, know how much money in time would you have to spend on this and how much money would you get there.

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So how does this compare? You mentioned? Missed the donor trump.

How does this compare his situation? how? Agree, just as IT in comparison, there are different .

in a couple of ways. As I said, the musical oundle is much bigger than the trump dating ever was. Trump oundle was like two million dollars at the most.

They were similar, and that they often use the the money. If you look hard enough at their chairman will give away. You'd realize that they were spending money in ways to help themselves.

Trump was a little more direct about IT, and that's what got him in the trouble. He would use IT. He would use his foundation to do things like buy a portrait of himself and then hanging on the wall of the golf club. He would use IT to pay off legal set up on surface business, and he would use IT to by an autographed football helman for himself. He was using IT in a way that was like directly benefiting himself, not mr.

Musk doing in in a way into a little moral bleak uh, and I think the that matters and the law is certainly mattered to the irs if they want to take on an open and short case the musical nation may not be yet but the the thing that I kept so striking to me is the same way that when I was covering the trump foundation, you would find things that looked in accused or donations that looked just like regular charity. And if you if you pull on the string hard enough, you'd realize actually there was a story underneath where I was trump helping himself and the musk the same way. I mean, just to give you another example, he gave five million dollars to unit f right, who you know though sort of like byword for an unrepeatable .

Cherry alright.

when you when you pull on that a little that um you realized that he was giving money to a united program that helped countries around the world a identify schools that need connection to the internet. So let's find schools in rWanda, k standard, whatever that are connected to the internet, and then help those countries find ways to connect those schools.

So effectively, he was investing in a program that created customers for starlink his satellites service. So at least two cases is the countries that the unit helped them. Once they realized where their schools needed connections, they paid mr.

mus. Company to connect them. So, you know, even there even in the unisex there, there's a line that goes back to his own interests.

It's genuinely despicable. But here's another did you find anything or much about OpenAI, which is of course, the nonprofit wing of the company like check GPT yeah uh .

but has had always said that he given one hundred million dollars, the OpenAI to get started. Obviously, he was on the original body was one of the copy ders of OpenAI when I was a nonprofit. When IT started as an on profit, what we found was that he gave about ten million dollars from the moss foundation to open a ee at the start, and then he and OpenAI agreed that he gave about thirty four no more million dollars out of his own pocket. So he gave forty four million dollars between september twenty sixteen or twenty sixteen and twenty twenty part from the foundation, part from his own pocket. So that's a lot, but it's a lot less than he had gone around saying for years that he gave.

And that kind of seems to be the theme with a lot of his maybe good donations. He says he'll do one thing and then he does another. Let's talk about flim michigan way, what he promised there and what he actually did.

So there was a period in in the the most foundation when he had a lot of money, but not billions of dollars in which he, uh, this is like twenty six and seven hundred and eighty and nineteen. IT seemed like the motivator by a lot of his giving was twitter that he was doing IT. In response to people who can call him out on twitter, he was becoming more of a twitter celebrity.

And so, like mr. Beast would say, hey, i'm raising money to plant trees. You know, even, will you give me money in illam? L say, yes, i'll give you a million dollars.

Spent a million trees back. Came from the groundwater, a theyve port noy. The guy from barston sports was raising money to help small businesses.

During coped, he pushes moskin mask, responds with a million dollars from the moscom. During one of the more unusual sort of, uh, instances of that was there was A A girl in flint, mich. gan. I think he was ten at the time. Little, this flint murry copy and he had tweet at mosk like he, you know, he was thinking of buying twitter.

Doesn't earlier inertion of him thinking in buying twitter, you know, you have that much money, why don't you use IT to buy, you know, supplies for flint, michigan, where we have this horrible water crisis? And he responds and says, I will pay to fix every home and flint that has too much LED in the water. This is at a time, obviously, when they they had been the acute epidemic of LED and water pipes and water supply.

the kind of a problem today is, yes.

And so the mayor reaches out to him. The mayor has actually know what we need right now is help in the schools. You know, the schools need, need help. Know the water, water and houses is being handled by the state.

And so he gives about a million dollars, the mass foundation to schools in flint, both to put water filters in the school into buy laptops for middle school, as he also gives a little bit more to the to a bh charity that was sort of associated with little miss flint. Now flint people, you know, the mayor and other people in the city of flint see how which he is and see that he cares about flint. And they want more.

They ask for more. They said, you know, they send him this letter that said, you you have the potential that makes such a huge difference in flint. Can you give us more to do things like replay large scale water .

infrastructure? And just one thing, the exact thing that musk said and quoting the output and one mux himself, he will fund fixing the water in any house in flint that has water contamination above fda levels. So just to be clear, he promised the world they were not asking him for too much. If this is just what he said.

do I think he's followed up by saying, like, no kidding or something? So yes. So they ask, okay, you know, we also want, can you invest in this fund that help us build small businesses here? Will you move one of your own businesses here? Uh, and IT seems like out of that came only one.

You know, beyond the things I already mentioned, the only additional thing they did was sent a guy from tesla, uh, he came sort of H A guy from tesla who was thinking about setting up a good Operation. There are some sort of test la building of Operation. And so he came in sort of people. The city hall gave rides and the tesla around the city hall parking lot. And that was IT.

Nothing more came of IT just around the parking lot. I don't know why.

just run the parking, but just drown the parking.

对， 不是。

And so the mayor said, you know, look, we were happy to gave something and I didn't have to give anything. He said that this was a time when, you know that twenty and twenty and twenty was a time when they were hearing from sort of a lot of celebrities, well meaning celebrities today, they were sort of being incited by offers from various celebrities and they become flynt become that much of a cost celebrity people always people wanted to help um and so elan was one of them and he gave you know, that sounds like he gave a Better million dollars. They definitely wanted more, but they were happy with what they got.

It's weird because a situation like that, it's good. He get up money for water filters and laptops of kids like on question, be good. But also he didn't actually fix the problem. He didn't actually fix prints water problem. And IT sounds like that was the problem with celebrities in general.

Then yeah I mean, I think his problem his promise to fixed the water in the houses was more specific and he also probably had the capacity to do IT more than a lot of the other celebrities are offered um but yes that is the striking thing is yes, the city steer them into schools and the main said we steer them into schools first, thinking that, you know we let the stay try to fix that what the houses and if that didn't work than elan could fix those too so he didn't do the thing that he was. He said he was going to do in this tweet.

So on a large scale, IT seems like a lot of tech people outside of maybe bill gates seem very bad at the philanthropy thing. My mark ZARA burg is the one on thinking of his hundred million dollars to what's new, new york school systems. Why is that? The this is a very dumb guy question of why is that? The just having a lot of money doesn't help.

How is that? That is IT gona. Is IT actually quite difficult to deploy this capital?

And I think IT is the the answer is yes, that IT IT is a very it's hard to give this much money away. You can do IT in one of two ways. You can do IT the macana bases as way that she's an example of somebody who has a lot of money and is given away a lot of money, but she's not you know it's SHE is like dropping IT from heaven.

There's she's not trying to sort of come in and help you manage your organization. SHE doesn't want a grand proposals. SHE just shows up and gives you a lot of money and leaves and other folks who have tried to sort of invest in something over the longer term. You mentioned mark za berg.

Uh, you know, I think IT also is just a matter of time, like it's really, really hard to to give money away effectively, especially for trying to to like have a specific outcome in the world and maybe these guys are too busy and may the one of the other sort of people have a foundation about as big as islands is a Larry page, the guy from google, and his foundation both failed to make its minimum pay out, but also gives its money, all of its money, into something called the donor advised fund, which is basically like a warehouse for money. And and IT disappears into there. We don't know where I wonder any of IT actually went out into the world. So IT does seem like maybe these focus don't have the time or the you know the band with to put money into the to like put the attention. Commentate with the money they're putting in.

So that but just to be clear, a Larry page code of google, he has he is doing a similar thing.

He is doing a somewhere well, is not somewhere and that I don't have any proof of that. He's doing things that a benefit himself, but he is his a huge amount of money. He failed to meet that goal, that minimum of five percent payout.

And what he's doing with this money in some ways is he basically is giving IT to middle man and then there's no sense of charger middle man, the special sort of class of charitable middle man. And we don't know what happens to IT after that. So he is what he's doing is less transparent than what musk is doing.

Other rather take people doing similar, maybe not same size, but there are other fill of foods fAiling to invest.

And know if you look at the people who are above most. So with the shortfall in moscow at the end of two thousand and one and two, where he was to his foundation was two hundred hundred and thirty four million dollars under what I should have given away there. Only three foundation tions that were worse than that had a bigger shortfall that year.

Larry pages one, the huge foundation was another. And then the lilly foundation, tied to the drugmaker eli lilly, was the first. So there are not that many out of the hundreds and hundreds of foundations in the U. S.

Those four had the biggest shortfalls, but they still want to get billions of dollars in tax breaks out of this.

Yeah, this is a field that is not that well, police. But as I said, by the arrest or anybody else.

and is IT just that expensive in time can see? Or would there be a massive legal fight to try and actually get this thing done and the congress .

could change the laws that they could give the irs more money to go after? And I I think the yet this is suffered from an a sense of neglect. And also the irs is general weakness that they gonna use political capital. They're to use a collecting taxes, not fighting non profits.

So where do you think this goes from here? Do you think he just continues doing nothing or doing less than the bare minimum?

Well, we will not know this. The reporting you know the um the filing deadlines are so slow that we won't know until this november whether the the muffin dating made at schools for twenty twenty three must I choose to tell us first? The actual required deadline for them to release something publicly is not till november.

And we may know then if the irs is take some action against them, but we may never know if IT taken action against them. So we're gonna ep bwh hinging and see what all is done. But there is no expectation that I have that we're going to see any changes any time soon.

I am with a personal question. Does any of this work kind of depress you, make you a little cynical because you see these people just getting these .

massive benefits to a question. I mean, the the reason I I cover a on profit, that's that's what I do all the time. And the reason I got into this is because there is such a like obviously if a non profit sector or is such amazing work, there's so many incredible things that non profits too.

But IT also is a shield, you know, that we give nonprofits legal rights, we give them tax breaks. And we also, given the sort of the year of two GTR ism that makes people, both in government and other government not want to look in any closer. And so some people use that um they use that goodwill.

They use that those privileges as kind of a shield to hide self dealing, the a foreign fluence to hide in richmond and bezz men, all kinds of things. Uh, and so that's the sort of support I do every day, is to try to find out what people are doing beyond behind that kind of a screen of of of of philanthropy, screen of sort of goods. So IT doesn't the depress me is just that's what I do every day. And I think IT IT makes IT for IT makes a fascinating beat. This contrast of like the great potential and the great trust and the reality of these of these groups sometimes.

David, thank you for joining me. Thank you.

So what's remarkable about this story to me is that musk z, for all intensive purposes, received the multibillion dollar tax break in exchange for about a quarter of a billion dollars that which he has spent as mostly gone to things that directly benefit him. And the few times he actually spent well on people that needed is gone. The must grow of over promising and under delivering.

It's genuinely despicable to watch him send a hundred billion dollars to and barely corporate school in texas. No campus exist. They own some land.

And it's very clearly lining up with these other companies. And that's about a hundred times more than he provided to flint, michigan, a place very promised. And he received a tonne positive press for fixing the contaminated water system.

He didn't do IT. He did some stuff and it's good that he did something, but you can see how much money this man deployed and you see how little he's actually done with that. And it's also sickening to watch this unfathomably rich man, this ultra rich goal, receive a massive, massive return for doing very little and actively calling the non profit system.

And David kind of hinted that there just isn't the regulatory framework or action or political capital to actually fight a man like elon mask. As I ve said before, the U. S.

Government just advise the society are just not capable of dealing with billionaire. But there is another side of this story. Mosque doesn't want this money spend.

Most of this, they have a terribly smaller ont of money, less than one hundred thousand dollars. I believe he doesn't want this money spend anywhere because he wants to hold that tesla stock as merchants can. Putting any downed pressure on tesla would be a bad idea.

And almost all the money this foundation has its test stock. But this is still a very important story, even if nothing changes, because it's another way of showing how empty the legend of elon musk really is. He got so much positive press around this foundation.

He promised to fix flint, michigan war system. He got ton's impress in eighteen, and he's given away what a million dollars for him. That is something he finds in his pockets or between the couch cushions, probably as more than he got another bunch of press for giving away eleven point six million tesla shares to charity.

And that kind of close to what the wall street journal actually row. He didn't give away anything, by the way, he put IT in the charity, literally with his name in IT or a non profit in this case, and as we've heard, hasn't really spent IT. And he even at one point twist that he sent this to the U.

N, saying he would spend six billion dollars to fight world hunger, but only only if they tell him how they'd spend them, which I don't know. There's always a condition with this man. There's always a trick.

And I just think it's because he doesn't really care that much and will continue to do stuff like this as long as the media is unable or unwilling to call him out and indeed, as long as they are willing to buy his bullshit. This man is a liar, he's a billion's artist, is master, exploited the law and society and the media to get even richer. I am not freaking out too much because every friend told he's one appeal is of a work exactly like this on trump.

There is more to this story that i'm sure David will bring out. And his college grown market work in the story with him is one of the most industrious elon. Mass report is out there.

The media is turning on this man and this work is deep. It's dangerous and it's going up against the man who has proven to have a hostile relationship to the press and society. But these stories are so important and as they accumulate, must reality distortion field will fall apart more.

It's already going. And i'm not saying this man can be brought down. I don't think there's anything that could truly quote on quotes. Stop yellow mask, but we can close the wound that he's opened in society.

Where is just drinking money from the blood of others? And I really want you to read David's work, and I put a link to IT in the shower notes of this episode. It's important to read this.

It's important you try and understand exactly how little elon musk is done for the world. Because it's time to turn on this man. It's time to stop calling him in inventor.

He didn't invent anything. It's time to even stop calling him then focused at the scale. He's done.

Things here, barely done anything. We should check out David story. You can find them on twitter at forel. That's F A H I E N T H O L D is a great guy. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for listening to Better or offline. The editor and composer of the battle offline theme song is matter sales cape. You can check out more of his music and audio projects.

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