Speaker 1: My fellow Americans.
Speaker 2: Mahallo.
Speaker 3: It's April twenty eleven White House Correspondence Dinner in DC,
Speaker 3: a giant annual party for politicians and the press Corps.
Speaker 3: President Barack Obama on stage, roasting himself, his colleagues, the press,
Speaker 3: and the odd celebrity.
Speaker 1: As some of you heard, the State of Hawaii released
Speaker 1: my official long form birth certificate. Anyway, Donald Trump, let's
Speaker 1: here tonight.
Speaker 3: For months leading up to this, Donald Trump was going
Speaker 3: on talk shows falsely claiming that Obama wasn't born in
Speaker 3: the US, which, if that was true, would have made
Speaker 3: him a wrongfully elected president. People believed it. The rumor
Speaker 3: grew enough so that Obama had to weigh in.
Speaker 4: But no one has had. No one is prouder to
Speaker 4: put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. Obviously,
Speaker 4: we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience.
Speaker 4: Well seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice
Speaker 4: at the Steakhouse, the men's cooking team did not impress
Speaker 4: the judges from Omaha Stakes, and you, mister Trump, recognized
Speaker 4: that the real problem was a lack of leadership, and
Speaker 4: so ultimately you didn't blame little John or meet Loaf,
Speaker 4: You fired Gary Busick, And these are the kind of
Speaker 4: decisions that would keep me up at night.
Speaker 3: Omarrosa Newman, she was actually also on the Apprentice, was
Speaker 3: also at the Correspondent Center that night. Later in a
Speaker 3: PBS documentary, she said, it.
Speaker 5: Just up, going and going, and he just kept hammering him,
Speaker 5: and I thought, Oh, Barack Obama starting something. I don't
Speaker 5: know if he'll be able to finish.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump went on to beat Hillary Clinton for the
Speaker 3: job of president. He literally took over Obama's home and job.
Speaker 5: Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to
Speaker 5: President Trump. It's everyone who's ever doubted Donald whoever disagreed,
Speaker 5: whoever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become
Speaker 5: the most powerful man in the universe.
Speaker 3: Now fast forward a few more years. It's twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: Joe Biden's the president, and one afternoon on the White
Speaker 3: House lawn, he signs an executive order saying that by
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, half of all new cars sold would be electric.
Speaker 3: It was a piece of Biden's big plan to prioritize
Speaker 3: the climate. He wanted to make e that's electric vehicles.
Speaker 3: By the way, a lot cheaper. This was new Biden
Speaker 3: all in on EV's and the big automakers too. We
Speaker 3: are the United States of America.
Speaker 6: There's not a single solitary thing, nothing beyond our capacity
Speaker 6: to get done.
Speaker 3: I want to.
Speaker 6: Thank the CEOs of the automobile companies, and I also
Speaker 6: want to thank all the auto.
Speaker 3: Workers at the White House that day. Are members of Congress,
Speaker 3: the UAW United Auto Workers, and a bunch of big
Speaker 3: wigs from the Big Three that's General Motors, Ford and
Speaker 3: Stillantis better known as Chrysler. Right before putting pen to paper,
Speaker 3: Biden invites his colleagues to come up and stand by
Speaker 3: his side. Come on, let's let the CEO's go to
Speaker 3: Let's let the CEOs through too.
Speaker 7: This is an executive or strengthy in America's leadership and
Speaker 7: clean cars and trucks.
Speaker 2: And again, let me start up.
Speaker 6: I think in the CEOs as well as the UAW
Speaker 6: me why it is happened.
Speaker 8: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: There is one guy who's done more to make evs
Speaker 3: happen than anybody in the Big Three who was missing
Speaker 3: from the White House that day, noticeably so. But he
Speaker 3: was watching. So on one hand, we've got Barack Obama
Speaker 3: roasting Donald Trump and the fallout from that. On the other,
Speaker 3: Joe Biden hyping up electric cars, separate events ten years apart.
Speaker 3: What do they have to do with each other? I
Speaker 3: think kind of a lot. I'm Max Chafkin, a reporter
Speaker 3: with Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This is Citizen Elon. This is a
Speaker 3: show about Elon Musk, someone I've spent almost twenty years
Speaker 3: reporting on. For the longest time, Elon's been a champion
Speaker 3: for elect your cars, a champion for outer space, and
Speaker 3: as of this summer, a champion for Donald Trump. The
Speaker 3: Elon I've always known has been largely a political. Now.
Speaker 3: In the weeks leading up to the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 3: Elon's funneled more than one hundred million dollars into getting
Speaker 3: Donald Trump elected. What I'd really like to understand is
Speaker 3: what happened. Why is Elon suddenly so committed to Trump winning?
Speaker 3: And if it works, if he successfully gets Trump elected,
Speaker 3: what's in that for him? The first time I interviewed
Speaker 3: Elon Musk was in two thousand and six. Tesla was
Speaker 3: just a startup. Today it's the most valuable car company
Speaker 3: in the world. You talk to CEOs normally and they're scripted.
Speaker 3: They talk in soundbites, and Elon is the opposite. He'll
Speaker 3: say whatever he wants, whatever's on his mind.
Speaker 2: It is a fixer oppera of a planet. But eventually
Speaker 2: you can try for Mars into an Earth like planet.
Speaker 8: How would you do that?
Speaker 2: You'd warm it up? The Fast Way has dropped them
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons over the polls. I actually have to say
Speaker 2: we have to keep the essays only questions.
Speaker 3: Everyone was a slave everyone, well not everyone was a slave.
Speaker 6: No, everyone was a slave.
Speaker 2: We are all decided from slaves, all of us. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just a question of when.
Speaker 3: Of course, Elon could also be cold cruel. Looking back
Speaker 3: on it now, I think maybe I was letting him
Speaker 3: off too easily, paying attention to his achievements and ignoring
Speaker 3: his bad behavior. In terms of politics, Elon's always been
Speaker 3: kind of a chameleon. When George W. Bush was president,
Speaker 3: Elon didn't have much to say about climate change. He
Speaker 3: drove a Porsche. When Barack Obama was president, Elon became
Speaker 3: a green capitalist, ecologically conscious. He wanted a blanket America
Speaker 3: with solar panels. His take on Trump running matched most
Speaker 3: Democrats and modern Republicans.
Speaker 2: You know, hopefully Trump doesn't forget the domination of you know,
Speaker 2: the Republican Party. That's because I think that's, yeah, that
Speaker 2: wouldn't be good.
Speaker 3: And again, after twenty sixteen, Musk more or less got
Speaker 3: on board with Trump, meetings with Steve Bannon, was on
Speaker 3: advisory councils to the president. It was business as usual.
Speaker 3: But then COVID came. It's something changed, especially after Biden
Speaker 3: became president.
Speaker 9: You have to remember that, Like, you know, Elon Musk
Speaker 9: is a guy who can't get enough of the dopamine
Speaker 9: feedback of people and crowds and adulation.
Speaker 3: Dana Hall is another reporter here at Bloomberg. She also
Speaker 3: covers Elon Musk.
Speaker 9: And during the pandemic, we were all locked down in
Speaker 9: our houses, and he was incredibly angry that Tesla's factory
Speaker 9: in California was shut down because of COVID restrictions.
Speaker 3: On an Ernie's call talking to investors, Elon called stay
Speaker 3: at home orders in Alameda County, where Tesla's factories were based.
Speaker 3: Fascist quote, this is not democratic, this is not freedom.
Speaker 3: Give people back their goddamn freedom. And then you.
Speaker 9: Started seeing more tweets that were kind of questioning, you know,
Speaker 9: the efficacy of vaccines and just like a little bit
Speaker 9: more COVID denihilism, and then.
Speaker 3: Danna said, by this point it was just a hop,
Speaker 3: skip and a jump to much fringier conspiracy theories. And
Speaker 3: then there was something else that happened during COVID, something huge.
Speaker 9: But at some point Elon Musk became the richest person
Speaker 9: in the world. And I think that once you're the
Speaker 9: richest person in the world, you are emboldened to do
Speaker 9: things that maybe you weren't before.
Speaker 3: Let's go back to that summit. August twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: A month after that, Elon's at a tech conference. He's
Speaker 3: on stage in front of an audience, and that snub
Speaker 3: that he felt. He's still thinking.
Speaker 7: About it, you know, like Biden held this EB summit,
Speaker 7: didn't invite Teslam, and if I had jammed forward christ
Speaker 7: or in RW maybe summits on.
Speaker 6: The White House.
Speaker 10: So you're pissed.
Speaker 2: So this has sound maybe a little biased.
Speaker 3: Eight months go by and Elon sits down for another
Speaker 3: interview with the guys running a club for Tesla owners
Speaker 3: in Silicon Valley. It's called the Tesla Owners Club of
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley. And remember that White House snub. Elon is
Speaker 3: still pissed off about it.
Speaker 2: Last year, President Biden held an EV summit where Tela
Speaker 2: was explicitly not allowed to come. Now, Tela's made two
Speaker 2: thirds of all electric vehicles in the United States. Deliberately
Speaker 2: excluding us from an EV summit at the White House,
Speaker 2: that tells you all you need to know.
Speaker 1: It's insane.
Speaker 2: Insane.
Speaker 3: Fast forward another eighteen months, a year and a half later,
Speaker 3: Elon's on stage at a New York Times event. He's
Speaker 3: talking to the financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Speaker 5: You've been very frustrated with the Biden administration, feeling like
Speaker 5: they did not respect what you created.
Speaker 3: Have you forgotten yet about that White House snub? No,
Speaker 3: neither has Elon Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, without any doing nothing to provoke the wide administration.
Speaker 2: They held an electric vehicle summit at the White House
Speaker 2: and specifically refused to let Tesla attend. We've done nothing
Speaker 2: to provoke them. Then Biden went on to add insult injury.
Speaker 3: Elon says, President Biden even singled out General Motors for
Speaker 3: having quote led the EV revolution.
Speaker 2: This was in the same quarter that Tesla made three
Speaker 2: hundred thousand electric cars and GM made twenty six Does
Speaker 2: that seem fair to you.
Speaker 3: Tesla actually sold three hundred and eight thousand cars that quarter.
Speaker 3: Elon's under selling the number. And he's also right about
Speaker 3: GM that they really did just sell twenty six Something
Speaker 3: important to note here is that Elon has never been
Speaker 3: a fan of labor unions. That's putting it mildly. Joe Biden,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, the opposite. Biden loves labor unions.
Speaker 3: He's called himself the quote most pro union president in history.
Speaker 3: He made it a big part of his presidential campaign.
Speaker 5: Can you give us any insight into why Tesla wasn't
Speaker 5: included in this event?
Speaker 3: Well, we of course welcome. This is from a White
Speaker 3: House press briefing.
Speaker 10: So it's not because Tesla is a non union shop. Well,
Speaker 10: these are the three largest employers of the United Autoworkers.
Speaker 10: So let draw your own conclusion.
Speaker 3: Go ahead. Translation, Yes, which classic politics, right, But Elon
Speaker 3: didn't take it that way. Biden doesn't have to include
Speaker 3: every automaker. It's not like Toyota or Volkswagen were there either.
Speaker 3: But Elon's reaction was personal. He couldn't seem to move
Speaker 3: beyond his own feelings to see this as anything other
Speaker 3: than a grievous insult. On the one hand, it's surprising
Speaker 3: to see a busy CEO fixate like this. Doesn't he
Speaker 3: have bigger things to worry about. Who cares about GM
Speaker 3: and Biden. On the other hand, and this is vintage Elon.
Speaker 6: You know, if he didn't like what you were doing,
Speaker 6: or thought you were an idiot, or any one of
Speaker 6: these sort of negative reactions to you personally.
Speaker 3: This is Jim Cantrell. He was on the founding team
Speaker 3: at SpaceX for a long time. He and Elon worked
Speaker 3: closely together.
Speaker 6: He wouldn't come talk to you about it. He would
Speaker 6: either call you an idiot, he would tell you you're wrong,
Speaker 6: he would challenge you, he would yell at you, and
Speaker 6: then later he'd just fire you.
Speaker 3: Elon is indisputably really impressive. Jim agrees. But Jim also
Speaker 3: could not take Elon's moodswings, and so he quit.
Speaker 6: By the way, that's a controversial topic that he.
Speaker 3: Last year, the writer Walter Isaacson published a sprawling biography
Speaker 3: of Elon's life. So far, Elon participated in the book's creation.
Speaker 3: He talked to Isaacson, and when he talked about his
Speaker 3: early days at SpaceX.
Speaker 6: He told Isaacson that I wasn't employ and I don't
Speaker 6: know why he says that.
Speaker 3: But I was, yeah, we're not sorry. I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to litigate this.
Speaker 6: I just know I understand it's a short point for me,
Speaker 6: so I am.
Speaker 3: This fixation on credit, this pettiness. It's also vintage Elon.
Speaker 3: He actually got into it big time with Martin Eberhard,
Speaker 3: the guy who started Tesla. Martin himself claimed that Elon
Speaker 3: was taking up more than his share of credit for
Speaker 3: the company, and even though these guys settled their lawsuit
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine, it's something Elon still brings
Speaker 3: up all the time. I told jim My theory about
Speaker 3: the correspondence dinner and the EV summit, and I asked him,
Speaker 3: does he see the same parallels that I do.
Speaker 9: I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think he and Trump probably feel a kinship. There's
Speaker 6: a certain this resonates with what I understand of Elon.
Speaker 6: There's a certain sort of sense of fairness and fair
Speaker 6: place that, like Trump, he feels violated.
Speaker 3: Where Jim's take diverge from mine was about Elon's feelings.
Speaker 3: I just think Elon was hurt, and maybe justifiably hurt,
Speaker 3: like this guy revolutionized the electric vehicle industry. He spends
Speaker 3: you know, a decade and a half not taken seriously,
Speaker 3: called a joke, and then the President of the United
Speaker 3: States basically finally embraces it, like everything that Elon has
Speaker 3: imagined is happening without him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm going to tell you something that goes against
Speaker 6: that theory. Elon, I don't think he was hurt by it.
Speaker 6: I think he didn't really want to be part of
Speaker 6: that crowd. I don't think he cared. There's a certain
Speaker 6: rage in the machine song you know, You'll do what
Speaker 6: I want to. I mean that if I had a
Speaker 6: theme song for Elon, that would be it.
Speaker 3: That EV conference was the summer of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: Within a few months, the rage started to bubble up,
Speaker 3: and it was a very specific, politically charged rage, usually
Speaker 3: in tweet form, usually some right wing line about Biden
Speaker 3: being too old, calling Biden quote a damp sock puppet
Speaker 3: in human form, or saying Biden looks good for a
Speaker 3: two hundred year old. When I read these, I could
Speaker 3: tell that Elon was mad. What I couldn't tell is
Speaker 3: where these insults, these specific words were coming from.
Speaker 8: N PC is the biggest one to me.
Speaker 3: Ellie Reeve is a CNN correspondent. She spent the past
Speaker 3: ten years or so covering the far right. In November
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, she noticed this tweet from Elon. It
Speaker 3: was a random comment on a six month old video
Speaker 3: where Biden was praising the Autoworkers Union. Elon responded to
Speaker 3: that video by tweeting that Biden quote talks like an
Speaker 3: end PC with a limited dialogue tree. That acronym is
Speaker 3: what caught Ellie's attention.
Speaker 8: In PC from non player character comes from a video
Speaker 8: game world. It's like, you know, instead of the character
Speaker 8: that you can play, it's this static character with no
Speaker 8: interiority that gives you directions or something. And in the
Speaker 8: four chan world, that's their term for unthinking liberals real quick.
Speaker 3: Four Chan was this free for all online forum where
Speaker 3: people would share memes. It's also where a lot of
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's early support comes from. You've probably heard this
Speaker 3: term alt right that started on four Chan. Back to
Speaker 3: Ellie and the NPCs. The tweet she noticed it was
Speaker 3: basically Elon calling Biden a tool of the elite. And
Speaker 3: I don't mean elite in the normal sense. I mean
Speaker 3: it in the conspiratorial sense of an elite cabal, probably Jewish,
Speaker 3: that is secretly out to get us. Ellie says, NPC
Speaker 3: is a kind of acronym that would normally be thrown
Speaker 3: around by neo Nazis, men's rights groups, proud boys in cells.
Speaker 8: Elon Musk is a very powerful person, you know. He's
Speaker 8: not a guy with a Twitter handle like this guy
Speaker 8: can influence wars. Does Elon have the social skills to
Speaker 8: actually lead a massive men I don't know, But does
Speaker 8: he have enough of a network to spread these ideas into,
Speaker 8: like among people who are in the position to truly
Speaker 8: affect how the government works?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 8: That's the question for me.
Speaker 3: Ellie's not alone on this one, and she's certainly not
Speaker 3: the only person who's noticing Elon's changing politics.
Speaker 10: The first thing that I really noticed about Musk was
Speaker 10: during the Rise of the all Right.
Speaker 3: Joe Novan is a sociologist. She specializes in disinformation, that's
Speaker 3: people or groups who lie on purpose for political gain.
Speaker 10: He seemed to be very cued into the idea of
Speaker 10: pop collapse.
Speaker 3: In this idea, this is like the NPC thing. It
Speaker 3: doesn't sound that bad on its face, but if you're
Speaker 3: paying attention to the subtext it's not just about babies.
Speaker 10: He seems to believe that the wrong kind of people
Speaker 10: are the ones who are reproducing because white people are
Speaker 10: not reproducing at the same rate as other people. He
Speaker 10: does really get his hackles up about population collapse and
Speaker 10: about this idea that white people might not be the
Speaker 10: dominant culture going forward.
Speaker 3: Right eugenics a discredited theory about selective breeding. By the way,
Speaker 3: we invited Elon must to come talk to us or
Speaker 3: to provide comment. He didn't respond. Another thing that Elon's
Speaker 3: growing interested in, and I mean really interested in, is
Speaker 3: free speech, specifically the idea that right wing guys on
Speaker 3: the Internet are being suppressed by social media sites. Those
Speaker 3: right wing guys, though, I don't think they were really
Speaker 3: paying attention to Musk, not yet anyway, When did he
Speaker 3: start mattering to them as a as a figure.
Speaker 10: Around the time he started to say that he should
Speaker 10: just buy Twitter. That's when I first saw the far
Speaker 10: right really starting to believe he was a mover and
Speaker 10: that he was going to do something huge.
Speaker 3: After the attacks on the Capitol on January sixth, in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, Twitter banned tens of thousands of accounts
Speaker 3: associated with the right wing conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
Speaker 3: They even ban Donald Trump's account permanently for the role
Speaker 3: he played in inciting violence. Then, in March of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, something happened that, especially Claudilan's attention, Twitter suspends
Speaker 3: this satirical newspaper, the Babylon Beet. They're like a right
Speaker 3: wing version of the Onion. The Bee had tweeted about
Speaker 3: a trans woman who was a White House staffer. They
Speaker 3: called her Man of the Year. Twitter said that violated
Speaker 3: its policy against hateful conduct. The bees owner refuse to
Speaker 3: take the tweet down. Musk hears about this from his
Speaker 3: ex wife, Tallula Riley. She sends him a text a
Speaker 3: few days later, quote America is going insane, it says
Speaker 3: the Babylon b suspension got crazy. Can you buy Twitter
Speaker 3: and then delete it please? Or can you buy Twitter
Speaker 3: and make it radically free speech? And so he did.
Speaker 11: Welcome to Tucker Carlson said, a good news show. Don't
Speaker 11: get those two often. It's April twenty fifth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 11: Elon Musk bought Twitter today. Unlike the leaders of Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon,
Speaker 11: Elon Musk believes in free speech This is the single
Speaker 11: biggest political development since Donald Trump's election in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 11: It is certainly the most threatening challenge to the corrupt
Speaker 11: and in competent leadership of this country.
Speaker 2: Now that I.
Speaker 3: Remember watching this and rolling my eyes, I thought, Elon
Speaker 3: Musk is no free speech savior. He's a business guy
Speaker 3: who's just spent forty four billion dollars to buy Twitter.
Speaker 3: Why would he mess with that. He's got other companies
Speaker 3: to worry about. But now looking back, I think Tucker
Speaker 3: really was seeing something, something seismic and inevitable. For years,
Speaker 3: Elon and Trump have been marching in the same general direction,
Speaker 3: which makes sense. They are a lot alike. They both
Speaker 3: come from privileged backgrounds. They both grew up under hugely
Speaker 3: accomplished fathers whose shadows they wanted out from under. They
Speaker 3: both thought hard for their rightful place, not just to
Speaker 3: be inside of the rooms where history happens, but to
Speaker 3: be the ones in charge. But they never really made
Speaker 3: it all the way through the door. To President Obama.
Speaker 3: Trump was a punchline to President Biden was irrelevant. There's
Speaker 3: something Jim told me he's a guy who worked at
Speaker 3: SpaceX with Elon that I keep coming back to it's
Speaker 3: about that correspondent's dinner and the Evy Summit.
Speaker 6: It's a slight that tells you that they think they're
Speaker 6: the parents sitting at the table and your child is
Speaker 6: not invited. And I can see Elon one ting to
Speaker 6: just destroy the table, burn it to the ground.
Speaker 3: What does Elon do right after closing the Twitter deal?
Speaker 3: He reinstates Donald Trump's account. If you can't join them,
Speaker 3: beat them, that's next time. Citizen Elon is produced by
Speaker 3: Lina Mesitzi's Rayhon Haarmanci is our senior editor, Blake Maple's
Speaker 3: handles engineering, and William Elstrom fact checking. Brendan Francis Newnham
Speaker 3: is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is the head of
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Podcasts. Big thanks to the Elon Ink crew, David Papadopolis,
Speaker 3: Naomi Shaven, Magus Hendrickson, Stacy Wong listen every Tuesday for
Speaker 3: breaking Elon news, and thanks to our Bloomberg colleagues David Fox,
Speaker 3: Julia Press, Dana Hull, Sarah Fryar, Kurt Wagner, Mark Millian,
Speaker 3: Becca Greenfield, Margaret Sutherland, Alison Mobley, Jackie Kessler, Ariel Brown,
Speaker 3: Chris Nescenzo and Albert Hicks. An extra big thanks to
Speaker 3: Brad Stone, editor of BusinessWeek and Katie Boyce, executive editor
Speaker 3: of Bloomberg Digital for their unflagging support. Part two of
Speaker 3: Citizen Elon comes out next week, and since we won't
Speaker 3: know how this thing ends until after the election, that's
Speaker 3: when you'll hear the last part of our series. I'm
Speaker 3: Max Chafkin. If you have a minute, rate and review
Speaker 3: our show, it'll help other listeners find us. Thanks again,