What Elon Wants From Trump
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the show. Medicine square garden, ladies and gentlemen, and give you up for the greatest capitalist in the history of the united states, america. Elan must.

On sunday afternoon, bloomberg reporter max chafin was at medicine square garden watching thousands of magazine go wild. For elon IT .

was probably the loudest. The crowd was the loudest. The arena was at any point during the event, partly because people were cheering and partly because they played this video of one of the rockets landing.

The trump eli had been going on for hours. At this point, elon was deep in the batting order, but the crowd was already when he pointed .

his black maga hat. They lost IT, I could say.

I'm not just maga. I'm dog gothic maga. Well.

it's the energy .

in this room is incredible.

A great group of people.

This is not the first time that elon mask has stumped for trump, but his prominent in the campaign keeps rising. You can even see IT in where he was slaughter in the program.

You want to be as close to trump as possible and iran was as close to IT as to trump as a god accept for millennia. He spoke after j Evans he spoke after uh, all the trunk children um and you know he was essentially in a staring role the other day tim walls joked about, you know elan must be dowd trumps running may and that's how I felt that you know in the arena that that trump that you on was more important to trump then jd vans.

Today on the show how elon musk is powering dotal trumps closing argument on stage online and perhaps most importantly, with his bank account, I was your lary and you're listening to what next TVB a show about technology, power and how the future will be determined. Stick around.

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H E L P dot com slash. What next? Max has been covering elon musk for years in his reporting for bloomberg business week and on his podcast citizen elon. Recently, he highlighted the similarities, ties between mosque and trumped biography, both born wealthy with difficile fathers, both sometimes spurned by the societies they wanted to join, and both often motivated by a sense of personal .

grievance. They're both these kind of larger than life a business guys who are who are like amazing market, who who who are motivated, as you say, by grievance um who kind of tend to over promise, who are like sort of obsessed with their own self image and use that self image to to promote themselves. Um I think what brought them together is basically circumstance and if IT wasn't the fact that they both needed each other, they would have instead of being attracted to one, they would have been repelled just because um you know I think they both what's so weird about this is that they both want to be in the center of the spotlight and the idea that they would allow the other to have some piece of that or or an especially in iron mosques case to kind of play second field to somebody else is surprising. Muk once supported .

round to scientists, and trump in twenty twenty two famously doubted must could actually buy twitter, which he saw as competition for his own social media platform truth .

social he's got me said the other day, i've never voted for a republic and I said, I didn't know that he told me, voted for me so he's another bosher artist, but he's not GTA be Better to .

understand how musk and truck went from that to medicine square garden. Well, that story starts with joe biden.

Joe biden and and the people come. His advisors um positioned him as somebody who was going to no longer a be captive to silicon valley in the same way that maybe barack obama was. And I also think that some of IT was just an accident like the the event that that so aggrieved elon mosque was an event in which essentially promoting the fact that the big three auto makers in the U A.

W. Were embracing electric cars. And em most was offended because it's an event on the White house lawn about electric cars, his electric car pioneer, and he saw as this as his grieve as insult. But I mean, you know, from the ban point of view, the real achievement was that I was IT IT wasn't just tesla selling cars anymore, that these h automatic ers that had sold gas gosler in the past and that had been very resistant to evs, were now embracing IT.

They were coming around and and also, of course, biden ran as as I think that I think he said, you know the most the most pro union president history like he this was his coalition and and I think I was perfectly politically reasonable but to you on msk somebody who um takes takes everything very personally who who sees his own role in the creation of the evi industry and his sort of status as a pioneer as as very important him as as one of his great assets. IT was painful. IT was an insult and IT IT IT sent him down this path.

And IT comes up a lot for him, like he mentioned this thing a whole heck of a lot for someone who is you know busy and important. Boy doesn't feel like they did invite me to this party, and i'm still mad.

definitely. He kept bring that up.

And for example, had that like electric vehicle summit at the White house six months after getting upgraded and specifically excluded tesla, even though tesler makes more electric cars. Yeah IT was not cool. And I mean.

there are other there lots of people have spent a lot of time trying to understand you are must radicalization and and like there there is a personal dimension. There is his own. There is his relationship with his daughter. Um he's a strange from his daughter who is his change gender and I think and he is offered that as an explanation, there's also covered he you know he got really mad about covered restrictions. But in terms of his actual political engagement, like like going from being just a poster, which which is what he was to being the kinder guy who's putting at, you know, as of min october one hundred and thirty two million dollars into a presidential race, the turn is this is this political spectacle.

That money is basically powering trust ground game through elon musk, a amErica a pack, sending canvas from door to door and funding and ever increasing series of rewards for signing a petition if you're registered to vote.

which is that we are going to be awarding a million dollars to branny y to people who have signed signed the petition every day .

from .

now until the election.

It's not clear that this is completely legal, a concern that spin raised by experts, election officials and the justice department. It's also not entirely clear that mosque is holding up his end of the bargain with people who sign the petition. Philadelphia district tourney Larry crazier has sued muss over IT. But icm max, that is kind of the point of this gesture. It's trolling.

I cover. I'm a lot and and I so often there are stories where it's like he's broken some law in some or some regulation and and there's up in A D C. Or the our nitta, which is that the the highway regulator or the envision the E P A or someone is suing him and or and IT feels like this is going to be hugely consequential.

And elon must does what he always does with these lawsuits, like takes them and puts them like in a giant stack of lawsuits sitting on his desk and like ignores them. And and he has I mean, one of the things this is kind of like a sub pot with with on musk, but perhaps it's relevant to trump. I mean, a more than probably any other billionaire, I mean, he has been able to be essentially above the law, right? He like has clearly broken security laws in the past.

He he's basically founded the rules over and over again and mostly been able to get away with IT, sometimes paying little penalties, but but often basically skating because he makes IT so annoying for the regulators to deal with him. He's very rich. He's very famous. He can exhaust. He's infinite resources to to drag things out. And I think basically with this one, IT seems like reading the department of justice a handbook on on this like vote buying IT seems pretty clear that what he's doing IT seems illegal but I don't think it's onna stop him and and IT hasn't stopped him from doing this.

When we come back government contracts, investigations and what elan staging and lose from a trump presidency.

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That means with discover, you could turn one hundred fifty dollars cash back to three hundred dollars IT pays to discover c terms at discover dot com slash credit card. There are right now, let me count on the back of my hand here, one, two, three, for maybe five government investigations that I can think of immediately into elon masks companies. and. I guess i've done trump wins what they .

can all just go away I think yeah I mean, I again, I I don't think you can it's not like trump can just snap his fingers and .

make these investigations. It's not.

But I do think if one u an mosque has been you know as he sees that you victimized by like constant investigations um I mean he's gonna a much Better chance of arguing um that this should be dropped whatever if he's in a position to defund federal agencies, which is which is what trump has said.

this department of governmental efficiency that he might potentially right.

And this was a huge part of the medicine square garden event that actually during the event, ltc, who's the coach ir of trumps campaign, asked mask, like how many, how much of money you going to a cut from the federal bug? And it's like a six true on our budget, how much you can cut? And musk, like two trillion, which I I see me just like, you know, pull that was, but but like, you know, if he's in a position to be like defunding federal agencies or controlling the purse strings or really and probably more importantly, being one of the most important outside voices that don't trump listens to that. I mean there's this just make no way that doesn't have an impact on how these federal agencies are approaching um in a mosque. And you you know and conversely, there are a lot of reasons to think that if trump is not elected that that these investigations must ask sort of legal issues, his regulation issues could grow because you know the other the welshy journal reported that uh must have been secretly communicating with flaming putin now we knew that um must have talked to put in in like twenty twenty one but apparently they're still talking even as putin has no even as russia has invaded ukraine and you guess yourself, like do we really want a crucial defense contractor, you know, the person who runs a company that is launching our spice satellites and and our astronauts, do we really want them to be, you know, in regular communication .

with an adversary? There's also the large number of contracts that musk businesses already have with the federal government. SpaceX, for example, is the main launch provider of rockets to the U. S. government.

What must want is a mars program like, let's spend like tens of billions of dollars instead of a mars colony. And you Normally you would expect to have A A competitive bidding process. And they ably spread the work around a bit.

But like what trump accent on a campaign il is just like we're going to order up rockets no. And so you could imagine you know a monster um a monster contract for for launches. Trump has also talked about you know new weapons programs.

He's very interested in the in israel's iron and you could imagine you all must be involved in um in new weapons programs or whatever. The other thing that's happening that is probably like the the more immediate potential way for him to make money is starling, which is the satellite internet business kind of aside business for space ex. Um the U.

S. Government has these subsidies that are are are set up for a rural internet so that so that the government pay telecom Operators to to provide internet to people in rural areas. Ian was sort of in line for one of these contracts but didn't get IT because um the government decided that starlink was not good enough, that I was not the speeds were not up to snuff.

And um you want is very grieved about this. You know you could totally imagine um that turning around for him that he'd be able to get contracts subsidies for regular people to buy internet for him, which would be like really very much up as ali, right? Like not that different from tesla, which benefits from government subsidies to make its cars cheaper. And then starling is also sort of desperately trying to turn himself itself into a defense contractor, the idea being that the military would pay for access to its its uh communication satellites for like to be able to to to use you know on the battle field and that is another potential area of of revenue for for this company. Ultimately for elon mosque is the biggest shareholder of space sex.

He's also the bigger shareholder at tesla p, where he's been pushing the idea of full self driving cars, promising that tesla is not just an electric car company but a robot taxi business.

During the latest uh, tesla earnings call, musk essentially said that his hope is that trump would like sort of legalize .

his robot taxi should be a federal crucial process for automated vehicles that really like a national goal is important, does IT part on a government efficiency try to help make .

like we'll create a new framework that would allow teslas to drive around, know, without without passengers in them? Now I think that's pretty like, first of all, like I don't know how that would work. Second, I don't know that tesla has even the technical capability to do that, but but I think that is actually helping to drive tesla stock Price like in the near term.

Well, trump could say, oh, well, we're not going to let any, let's say, chinese firms like B, I, D be a part of this.

Yes, absolutely. And I think I that is likely that probably would be likely with or without elon mosque, just given where what the politics are with china. But yeah, trump could trump could try to block um could block competitors, chinese competitors especially um and he signal that he would do that and then he could um he could at the very least have nita, which is the main highway regulator, which is investigating test as autonomous vehicle capabilities. No text has been implicated in handful of fatal accidents that nzsc has serious concerns about this technology could at least get in at the back off. If not, you know, do something more dramatic like like, like try to create some sort of regulatory framework that would have put these things on the road like immediately.

We've been talking obviously about elon mosque, but you have covered silicon valley tech billionaires for a long time. You read a book about Peter till there are a number of silicon valley billionaire who seem to be suddenly hedging their bets. Jeff OS comes to mind. Why are they doing this over some? I think .

part of IT is that they think that truth might, when, and in the case of bezos, are seeking to, you know, to take advantage of that and also to limit the potential for retribution. Of course, trump has signaled over and over again his his willingness and and even desire to to like punish his adversaries and punish h his political opponents. He's had a long um you know beef with the washington post and and sort of a mixed relationship with basso. And you know this feels like baths, like he said, attempting to the hedge his bets.

I mean, IT is it's kind of staggering just because bezos had kind of presented himself you know as as like somebody in opposition to trump um but I have to say like this is very similar to what happened in twenty sixteen where where after trump they're all these uh tex ceos and ceos in general who are like presenting as big adversary to trump. And then when you know what wants his in power, they they basically did what every business person has done, Polly, since the beginning of time, know they thought to adapt in and their big moral oba, you know there are big moral objections to to downed trump, sort of melt IT away. I mean, what's different is that there a lot of this seems to be happening before the election. And and I think whatever there was before, kind of a taboo around business support of trump, like open armed business support of trump and and that feels like IT really has melted away. Um and and part of that is know you you have like I said, like the the C E O of the most valuable car company is standing up a mass and square garden pumping his fist .

and you know wearing a maga head that feels to me like one of the things that iran has done here is shift the over ten window for acceptable by using at an airport tes CEO discourse what he has done among his ceos or his coast CEO. But I think he could could also make the argument that he did that with his purchase of twitter to shift the overton window for acceptable discourse online.

One hundred percent. I mean, I totally agree with you counts. I mean, I think first of all the way, like, I mean, I cover tax ceos and and so I don't know how much this generalizes, but like among the tech crowd iron mosque, they just so like arb are generally like aping him, you know like he's the most successful one.

So people tend to adopt his you know his style, his mannerisms, his interest, it's and so on because because they sort of think like this is the key to success, is not that different to how during when Steve jobs was kind of at the height of his powers, like a lot of people were wearing like like turtle next you know essentially like doing the same things that save jobs did so in that sense is true but also yeah are in terms of twitter. I mean we've been talking about money and and like money and this um I mean you know it's it's a big issue. There's there their ethical things to debate about IT and and the money here that you want to spending is enormous. You we don't know we don't know exactly how much you will be when all said and done, but I think it's very likely he will have spent more than one hundred eighty million that he sort of told people he was going to spend at the beginning of this and and that's a lot on a presidential race and makes him you know one of the biggest donors ever um if not to be the biggest, but that's kind of like not even the most important part of his support because he's taken twitter, which was this substantial media company that was basically like a way that people got their news and completely sort of moved IT into essentially like A I don't know like a the media ARM of the far ride and it's not like IT doesn't it's not like it's you know i'm on twitter still um it's IT can still be entertaining can still be a great way to like you know laugh about something that happened like in a baseball game or whatever with your friends but IT is just IT is much much more full of essentially like right wing content and you know really troubling ly hate speech, misinformation um you know and all sorts of stuff that in the past had had been sort kept off there and and elon musquet, that has been what he's done and I think done mostly by design.

How much do you on have writing on tuesday?

I think there are two things to say. One is that he is he is the richest person in the world. He owns these big companies armed. In some ways, there's you know like you on mosque is going to be fine no matter what happens.

But I will say that I think that you on musk is probably more vulnerable both in terms of his businesses and his sort of regulatory exposure than most people rely. Um and so you know what he has to lose is if trump is not elected, these investigations continue. Tesla is worth, I haven't checked in the last day or two, but you know something like eight hundred billion dollars um that is as a car maker, IT is wildly overvalued.

Its values almost entirely because people have this idea that it's gonna a robot taxi company. If that goes away, IT would stop being that um and and I could drastically ally alter the financial picture for tesler. And if you drastically alter the financial picture for tesla, you drastically off alter elon musk network because he is not a liquid guy. His most of his money is in tesla stock. Um so I think they're all sorts of ways his businesses could stagnate um and could be drag into further lawsuits and and regulatory chAllenges and fines and and things like that, then they already are because .

elan stands to lose so much from a Harris Victory. You might think a trump in only means he stands the game. But max says it's a little more complicated.

You know during twenty sixteen, there are part one of the reasons that that illam back away from trump was because trump refused to join the paris, or know which you, from the paris climate at court. That was the stated reason. That's why you can told people he he was sort of backing away from trump.

But the other thing that was happening at that moment was a lot of tesla owners. We're getting really restless. People are talking about boycott tesla, not buying tesla.

You know, elon musk is a conservative figure, but the people who own testers are not overwhelmingly conservative, right? like. But if you think of the typical tesla driver, it's somebody who lives.

It's it's like a kind of upper middle last person in a suburb, right? It's it's a como of voter. It's not a trump voter. And I don't think that that the kind of like backlash to trump IT is happening and I think it's already hurting tesla sales.

But if if we wake up um you know the day after election day and the story is that elon must get down a trump elected to president, I think that is going to lead to a big, big time backlash against tesla and probably against billionaire in general like IT is this is you know what we're seeing now is unusual. It's not Normal. And I and I don't think we know how you know americans are gonna react to IT and and they might react to IT, you know, very negatively in ways that could hurt that much even if dal trump is throwing, you know, one contract after another. You know, IT is rock company.

Max chef can, as always, IT is a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for max chef. Kon is a tech reporter at blue g week.

He is also the host of the podcast, citizen elon. You to check that out, and that is IT for our show today. What next? T V D is produced by evan campo patch ford chanot analisa jg purry. Our show is edited by page Oscar allege on guy is vice president of audio for light and TV d is part of the larger what next family and if you like what you heard, the best way to support us is by joining sleep less.

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