Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Listen. Honestly, I'm not meaning to offend you. You're an
Speaker 2: intense person. Where does that intensity come from? Let's boil
Speaker 2: that way. And I had a tough childhood? You did?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Huh so right.
Speaker 3: Wilf Isaacson goes into it in the book. We only
Speaker 3: have a couple minutes left, so all right, too long
Speaker 3: to describe the one or two questions I can do,
Speaker 3: and then we'll call it.
Speaker 2: Okay. Again, I don't mean to upset you. Why are you?
Speaker 4: You? Just well you are must gives now the richest
Speaker 4: person on the planet. More than half the satellites in
Speaker 4: space are owned and controlled by one man.
Speaker 5: Well, he's a legitimate super genius.
Speaker 2: I mean legitimate.
Speaker 5: He says.
Speaker 1: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 1: be different.
Speaker 5: Health vote Republican.
Speaker 1: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 1: on him.
Speaker 5: Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 1: Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Elon Inc. Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: The tape you just heard was a part of a
Speaker 4: very surreal, very strange interview between Elon Musk and the
Speaker 4: former CNN anchor Don Lemon. Today is March nineteenth, twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four. I'm your host, Max Chafkin in for David Popadopolis,
Speaker 4: who is on vacation recovering from the live taping we
Speaker 4: just did at south By Southwest. You know, one of
Speaker 4: the funny things about planning this show, one of the
Speaker 4: exciting things about this show is the sheer number of
Speaker 4: Elon Musk news that comes out in any given week,
Speaker 4: and this one was no exception. All of his companies
Speaker 4: have been making news. There's been new in Earth and
Speaker 4: in space and in the media, and on X we're
Speaker 4: gonna be talking about all of that, talking about Tesla
Speaker 4: SpaceX and Starlink doing basically a Smorgesborg of Elon, if
Speaker 4: you will. And then we're gonna get to that now
Speaker 4: infamous interview between Elon and former CNN anchor Don Lemon.
Speaker 4: You just heard a clip from that. Don Lemon's news
Speaker 4: show was supposed to appear first on X, but Lemon
Speaker 4: and MUCKs parted ways, essentially canceled the show after one
Speaker 4: episode after that interview, And we'll do that. So to
Speaker 4: break down all of this Elon News. We have Dana Hall,
Speaker 4: who is our four full time Elon Musk reporter. Hello Dana.
Speaker 5: Great to be here.
Speaker 4: And then later as we dig into the lemon of
Speaker 4: it all, we will be joined by Kurt Wagner, who
Speaker 4: covers social media for Bloomberg News. But first we're gonna
Speaker 4: start with Dana and these news stories a lot of
Speaker 4: big news. I'm gonna run through these, and I want
Speaker 4: you to tell me what, to your mind was the
Speaker 4: biggest one of the past week. So first, Tesla stock
Speaker 4: has been going way down, and Musk has lost his
Speaker 4: spot as the world's richest guy. I think he's in
Speaker 4: third now. SpaceX had a launch of its Starship Rocket.
Speaker 4: It was I think kind of successful. Taiwan is developing
Speaker 4: a alternative to SpaceX's Starlink. And we got news about
Speaker 4: a new contract that SpaceX has with the US National
Speaker 4: Reconnaissance Office. Okay, so those are four stories. What's the
Speaker 4: biggest deal of those?
Speaker 5: For I would say, of the four stories that you mentioned,
Speaker 5: I think the most interesting one is that this news
Speaker 5: that SpaceX has this huge contract with the National Reconnaissance Office.
Speaker 5: And it's not a new contract, it's a contract from
Speaker 5: twenty twenty one. But now we know that the NRO
Speaker 5: is doing it, and that's just like yet another sign
Speaker 5: that Musk has muscled his way into being this incredible
Speaker 5: part of the military industrial defense complex. And that is
Speaker 5: just like a huge thing that I think that people
Speaker 5: really forget about Elon. He's always seen as you know,
Speaker 5: the bombastic owner of X, the CEO of Tesla, but
Speaker 5: his role as a military contry actor just says so
Speaker 5: much about his standing in the world and why the
Speaker 5: US government is so perplexed and be fuddled by this guy.
Speaker 4: And this was a new contract, right, I mean a
Speaker 4: contract that was inked under the Biden administration. You know,
Speaker 4: Musk has talked a lot about you know, Joe Biden
Speaker 4: being against him, but as you I think have pointed
Speaker 4: out a bunch of times in this podcast, you know,
Speaker 4: Biden administration and people close to the White House can
Speaker 4: be frustrated with Elon Musk, but they also need him,
Speaker 4: and I think this is probably another, you know instance
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they need him for a lot of things. I mean,
Speaker 5: strictly on the SpaceX side, they need SpaceX to ferry
Speaker 5: astronauts to the ISS for NASA, but they also need
Speaker 5: SpaceX to launch military satellites, and now apparently they also
Speaker 5: need SpaceX to help the Pentagon and the NRO develop
Speaker 5: spy satellites. So this is like a very big deal
Speaker 5: that Elon is in this role and that SpaceX is
Speaker 5: in this.
Speaker 4: Role, right, And I mean the weird thing here is,
Speaker 4: at the same time this news of this contract and
Speaker 4: you know, evidence obviously of a pretty robust or growing
Speaker 4: military business with this thing, we're also seeing, you know,
Speaker 4: Taiwan essentially complaining or getting worried about the prospect of
Speaker 4: having to rely on an Elon Musk hardware and possibly
Speaker 4: developing its own sort of version of starlink. How do
Speaker 4: we reconcile those two stories.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that you know, it's kind of like,
Speaker 5: no one wants Elon Musk to have a monopoly on
Speaker 5: space based satellites or space based Internet, and he is
Speaker 5: rapidly approaching approaching that, I mean, nobody else. He has
Speaker 5: more satellites for the Internet up and up in space
Speaker 5: than anybody else. And I think that Taiwan very you know,
Speaker 5: astutely kind of watching Musk and his relationship with China,
Speaker 5: is just very worried about that, and they want to
Speaker 5: protect themselves. So I think that that makes total sense.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's been a lot of focus about what
Speaker 5: Elon Musk has said or not said about Russia and Ukraine,
Speaker 5: but the whole Taiwan China conflicts like here, you know,
Speaker 5: is just like equally important strategically geopolitically. It has a
Speaker 5: lot of implications, and Musk's has said some pretty like
Speaker 5: why things about China and Taiwan that are totally at
Speaker 5: odds with the Biden administration. And so that's like another
Speaker 5: geopolitical conflict to watch.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 4: So just to stay on SpaceX, I mean, I think
Speaker 4: what most people who were sort of just watching cable
Speaker 4: news or whatever probably know about is this SpaceX launch
Speaker 4: which happened last week. This was the Starship rocket. This
Speaker 4: is what Elon Musk has previously called the big e
Speaker 4: fing rocket. I guess that will one day, in theory,
Speaker 4: could be sent all the way to Mars. The rocket
Speaker 4: sort of got into space and then it exploded. What's
Speaker 4: your take on this? This is like basically just a
Speaker 4: par for the course or something. This is an in
Speaker 4: development technology. We shouldn't read into it one way or
Speaker 4: the other.
Speaker 5: I think that media organizations really kind of miss how
Speaker 5: space companies view research and development, which is that you
Speaker 5: have to test a lot and fail a lot before
Speaker 5: you achieve full success. And like I'm old enough to remember,
Speaker 5: you know, like in the early days when SpaceX would
Speaker 5: first try to land the rocket on like a drone trip,
Speaker 5: they would always miss, Like the rocket would land in
Speaker 5: the water, it would explode, it would like it would
Speaker 5: hit and fall over, and like we had story after
Speaker 5: story about like how the drone ship test failed, but
Speaker 5: eventually they nailed it, and now they do it all
Speaker 5: the time and it's not a big deal. Starship is
Speaker 5: very similar, Like it was a big leap forward because
Speaker 5: it it cleared the launch pad and it it went
Speaker 5: for farther and faster than it had ever gone before.
Speaker 5: And yeah, then it like broke up on re entry.
Speaker 5: But like they did a lot, like it was very successful,
Speaker 5: Like in the eyes of SpaceX, it was the most
Speaker 5: successful launch to date, and so in the eyes of
Speaker 5: the company, this was a huge success and they hoped
Speaker 5: to get back at it. I think they're aspirationally like
Speaker 5: six to eight weeks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my big question here is like what is the
Speaker 4: business for this giant rocket.
Speaker 5: It's like way.
Speaker 4: Bigger than their biggest you know, rocket Falcon nine or
Speaker 4: is it the Falcon nine Heavy? But like, do they
Speaker 4: know what it's gonna what the actual like payloads are
Speaker 4: going to be, and how they're gonna make money on
Speaker 4: this thing?
Speaker 5: Eventually, if they a will to take humans to the
Speaker 5: Moon and Mars, that's the sort of goal. But because
Speaker 5: it's so big, they can launch way more satellites on it.
Speaker 5: So I think the biggest customer for Starship is star Link,
Speaker 5: like SpaceX can put a lot more of its own
Speaker 5: satellites into orbit using this much bigger vehicle.
Speaker 4: Before we get to the next segment, I mentioned earlier
Speaker 4: that Tesla's stock price is way down this year, as
Speaker 4: is Elon's wealth. Dana, you never gave me your take.
Speaker 5: Okay, So the process of a limit, Can I start
Speaker 5: with the least big deal?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think the wealth ranking. I'm so bored of that.
Speaker 5: It's like the richest people in the world jockey back
Speaker 5: and forth, up and down, like it changes every day.
Speaker 5: Who cares, like whether he's the richest or number two
Speaker 5: or number three?
Speaker 4: Okay, but I agree with you, But that's not the
Speaker 4: actual story. The story is that Tesla's stock it's down
Speaker 4: more than any other or it's sort of been neck
Speaker 4: and neck with another well known company, Boeing, which of
Speaker 4: course has had like plain parts falling off. Last I checked,
Speaker 4: Tesla had actually performed worse since the beginning of the
Speaker 4: year than Boeing. So the actual story is Tesla's stock
Speaker 4: has lost an insane amount out of its market share.
Speaker 5: Tesla stock is way down this year. Investors are sort
Speaker 5: of frustrated. There's not like a real growth wave anytime soon.
Speaker 5: A lot is riding on the next generation vehicle. You're
Speaker 5: seeing Nvidia and all of these like big tech companies
Speaker 5: that make up the Magnificent seven get all of this limelight.
Speaker 5: But you know, Tesla's stock has always been volatile. I
Speaker 5: don't think it's like I mean, I don't think it's
Speaker 5: like in a free fall. I just think that there's
Speaker 5: like a lot, you know, like it's not clear what
Speaker 5: the next big catalyst is going to be, and so
Speaker 5: that's what has investors kind of bummed out.
Speaker 4: I mean, my ranking is almost the exact opposite of yours.
Speaker 4: For what it's worth, my ranking goes Tesla's. Tesla's stock
Speaker 4: followed by the launch, followed by the nro the star
Speaker 4: Shield Starlink contract with the US government, followed by Taiwan
Speaker 4: complaining about Musk's dominance. You know, I just think, like
Speaker 4: we're talking about somebody who I think, like what he
Speaker 4: does depends on how the stock is doing, on how
Speaker 4: he perceives his own how he perceives people are reacting
Speaker 4: to him. And I think like these headlines saying that
Speaker 4: Tesla is the worst performing stock of the SMP. It's
Speaker 4: worse than even the you know, airline that can't keep
Speaker 4: the you know, parts of the playing together. You know,
Speaker 4: Elon is an extremely online guy. I do think that
Speaker 4: is really important. Although I completely agree Dana the wealth
Speaker 4: question is is not really relevant or that or that interesting.
Speaker 4: I mean, when you're worth more than one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty billion, you know, what's a few billion here there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean Elon is very aware of his own wealth,
Speaker 5: let's put it that way. He's not very liquid.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 4: Now, we're going to get into the Don Lemon Elon
Speaker 4: Musk interview, and to do that, we're going to bring
Speaker 4: in Bloomberg News social media reporter Kurt Wagner. Kurt, Welcome
Speaker 4: to Elon Inc.
Speaker 1: Hi Max, thank you for having me all right.
Speaker 4: So Don Lemon former Sienna and anchor who was by
Speaker 4: his own account fired last year, you know, after a
Speaker 4: series of controversial appearances on TV during which he said
Speaker 4: that Nicky Haley was quote not in her prime, got
Speaker 4: into a racially inflected confrontation from Vivek Ramaswami. He announced
Speaker 4: that he was coming X because you know, he wanted
Speaker 4: a place for a quote, an honest debate without hall monitors.
Speaker 4: He promised his new show, The Don Lemon Show, would
Speaker 4: be bigger, bolder, freer. Kurt, you watched it, Did it
Speaker 4: deliver on that promise?
Speaker 6: I have to admit I probably didn't watch enough Don
Speaker 6: Lemon before this interview to fully compare er s.
Speaker 4: It was big, but not necessarily bigger.
Speaker 6: I'm saying it's big, but yeah, the jury still out
Speaker 6: on the bigger part.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, this interview was really interesting
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 6: It obviously like I ended up, of course watching the
Speaker 6: whole hour, and the second half was just so much
Speaker 6: more like awkward because you could tell that Elon was
Speaker 6: so visibly frustrated with what was going on that it
Speaker 6: started off, you know, even though he was asking sort
Speaker 6: of some confrontational questions.
Speaker 1: Actually thought it started off okay.
Speaker 6: And I was like, right, you know, there's kind of
Speaker 6: like he's asking the tough questions that we would all
Speaker 6: want someone to ask Elon if he was there. But
Speaker 6: the second half just got so uncomfortable to me because
Speaker 6: Lemon was really like needling him on certain specific things
Speaker 6: that it was very clear Elon had no interest in
Speaker 6: actually talking about. And so you know, you saw that confrontation,
Speaker 6: which makes for I guess, you know, great great video
Speaker 6: content if you want to call it that, but you know,
Speaker 6: the interview.
Speaker 1: Itself I thought got progressively worse.
Speaker 4: Well, we should say just at the top of this
Speaker 4: segment that after the interview, Elon Musk essentially, according to
Speaker 4: Don Lemon, canceled what was supposed to be a deal
Speaker 4: to air the Don Lemon Show Bigger Boulder, Freer without Hall, Monitors,
Speaker 4: all that good stuff that it was already done. But
Speaker 4: basically by the end of the interview, as Elon Musk
Speaker 4: you know, walked away, you know, in frustration. It seemed
Speaker 4: Dana there were, like Kurt says, a couple of kind
Speaker 4: of tough questions. Don Lemon asked, I guess about two
Speaker 4: related topics, drug use, and that the impact of that
Speaker 4: use on national security, which is that if Elon does it,
Speaker 4: it's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think what was really interesting about the interview was
Speaker 5: that Lemon asked Elon Musk specifically about his usages of ketamine,
Speaker 5: which you know has been rumored about for years, and
Speaker 5: the Wall Street Journal had a whole story about Musk
Speaker 5: and drug use, and Musk was very open about it.
Speaker 5: He said, I have a prescription for ketamine. I take
Speaker 5: it for depression. I you know, sometimes have it helps
Speaker 5: me get out of these bad moods. I'm under a
Speaker 5: doctor's care. I don't take it a lot. There are
Speaker 5: weeks when I don't take it at all, but like
Speaker 5: I take it, And investors should be happy with that
Speaker 5: because Wall Street fundamentally cares about execution.
Speaker 3: Teesley is worth about as much as the rest of
Speaker 3: the car industry combined from nothing, So I know that's
Speaker 3: pretty good as a mention. We had the best LA
Speaker 3: Car autoth last year. So for investors work, if there
Speaker 3: is something I'm taking, I should keep take it.
Speaker 4: This is Dana the I think what Matt Levine are
Speaker 4: kinbably called the Elon theory of management.
Speaker 5: I think it's remarkable that we're in a day and
Speaker 5: age where as CEO is now talking so openly about
Speaker 5: his mental health. And I thought that the way that
Speaker 5: he answered the question was actually assuring to Tesla investors,
Speaker 5: because the interview aired on Monday, and like Tesla stock
Speaker 5: was up six percent yesterday, and we were sort of joking, oh,
Speaker 5: like investors like prescription drugs. But it was like he
Speaker 5: just answered it forthrightly, He was honest about it. He
Speaker 5: was like, yes, like I take ketamine, Like what is
Speaker 5: the big deal? And ketamine is increasingly legal, it is
Speaker 5: used in all kinds of therapies for people with PTSD,
Speaker 5: and the Veterans administrations like it's very much where you know,
Speaker 5: the use of psychedelics and things like ketamine are very
Speaker 5: much where marijuana was twenty years ago in terms of
Speaker 5: just growing social exceptions and a growing body of research
Speaker 5: that it can be an effective tool. And so I
Speaker 5: thought that Musk candled that actually very well, and it
Speaker 5: was kind of like now we've got like the drug
Speaker 5: use questions sort of like done. Like Musk affirmed on
Speaker 5: camera on tape that yes he has a prescription for ketamine.
Speaker 4: Actually, Elon and his allies sharing these clips like using
Speaker 4: them to kind of you know, own or dunk on
Speaker 4: Don Lemon. The weird thing is, you know, ahead of
Speaker 4: this interview, Don Lemon, who is, like it should be said,
Speaker 4: making the most of this right, like he is not
Speaker 4: letting this opportunity go to ways. He went on CNN
Speaker 4: last week to essentially complain. He implied very strongly it
Speaker 4: had been the drug thing, although I don't think it
Speaker 4: was the drug thing, right Kurt.
Speaker 6: I mean, we don't know exactly what part of the
Speaker 6: interview set Elon off to cancel this partnership, but I
Speaker 6: agree with both of you. I mean that was pretty
Speaker 6: early in the conversation, and I thought, I agree. I
Speaker 6: thought Elon handled it well, like he talked about it.
Speaker 6: He didn't labor any of the points, but like we
Speaker 6: did get some answers, and I thought where it really
Speaker 6: went off the rails for me was like much later
Speaker 6: on towards the towards the end, when they started talking
Speaker 6: about Elon's views on speech and what Elon calls censorship
Speaker 6: and what Don Lemon was referring to as you know, moderation,
Speaker 6: and and like you could tell at that point that
Speaker 6: they just fundamentally disagreed on what Elon should be doing
Speaker 6: with X. And I felt like the end of that
Speaker 6: exchange was the moment where, if I had to pinpoint,
Speaker 6: I would say he was just like, Okay, you know
Speaker 6: this guy, this guy's clearly not aligned with my views
Speaker 6: on what X should be and where it stands on
Speaker 6: the on the spectrum of free speech. And there's no
Speaker 6: way I'm giving this guy any money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally agree. And you know, Don Lemon had not
Speaker 4: promised that Cringe would be a part of the show,
Speaker 4: but I definitely think in that moment it was. It
Speaker 4: was really a rough lesson. Let's let's hear a little
Speaker 4: bit of that exchange. So you said, if they kill
Speaker 4: the company, it's them, but doesn't the Buck stop with you?
Speaker 2: I mean, you're on. I have to say, choose your question, Kathy.
Speaker 3: That's five minutes left, okay, But so the same question
Speaker 3: you want to ask, the same question as you said
Speaker 3: that they are killing the company, but you're the head
Speaker 3: of the company, the Buck business stup of the I
Speaker 3: acquired X in order to preserve freedom of speech in
Speaker 3: America the First Amendment, and I want to stick to
Speaker 3: that and if that means making less money, so be it.
Speaker 4: I mean that's.
Speaker 5: Produce our questions carefully. I'm going to use that. I
Speaker 5: love that line.
Speaker 4: Have you heard him speak to people that way, either
Speaker 4: of you.
Speaker 5: I think that this is kind of classic Elon. He
Speaker 5: gets he gets like he's very sensitive, and he gets
Speaker 5: very he gets upset easily, Like I mean, like when
Speaker 5: he was at the deal Book conference at the Year Times,
Speaker 5: he got like pretty upset about the whole idea of
Speaker 5: advertisers blackmailing him and you know, told famously told them
Speaker 5: to go f themselves. And like I think he also
Speaker 5: gets bored, and his time is pretty I mean, it's
Speaker 5: for a guy who has run six companies, Like it's
Speaker 5: amazing that he gave that. He that he talks so
Speaker 5: much and so openly all the time on all these events,
Speaker 5: but he gave this guy an hour, and I think
Speaker 5: he just got increased, seemingly annoyed, and like it was
Speaker 5: like I felt like we were watching, like I felt
Speaker 5: like a volcano was about to explode. And then like
Speaker 5: he gets like more and more kind of quiet and
Speaker 5: like intense as his rage is boiling beneath the surface.
Speaker 6: I was going to agree he's done some Twitter spaces
Speaker 6: in the you know eighteen months or so since he's
Speaker 6: taken over the company, and there's been some moments where
Speaker 6: you know, they'll bring someone up sort of quote unquote
Speaker 6: on stage to ask a question, and the either ramble
Speaker 6: or they're they'll actually ask him a challenging question that
Speaker 6: he's not used to getting, and he'll sort of do
Speaker 6: the same, like he'll cut them off and or just
Speaker 6: completely change the subject and sort of dismiss that person.
Speaker 1: So that that's where I've heard him do it before.
Speaker 4: It really is a good reminder that like he has
Speaker 4: not allowed himself to be with a critic like he
Speaker 4: even here right even in this interview where he is
Speaker 4: is dealing with questions he doesn't like, where Don Lemon
Speaker 4: seems really be getting under his skin by pointing out,
Speaker 4: you know the obvious, which is like your CEO of
Speaker 4: this company, you keep saying Disney's killing it, but you
Speaker 4: know it's it's actually you, and Elon just can't take it.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a good reminder that these other interviews
Speaker 4: have been in extremely friendly conditions where where Elon is
Speaker 4: either with like Joe Rogan or Lex Friedman, one of
Speaker 4: these influencer types who is you know, kind of borderline
Speaker 4: sycophanic with him, or where he's like literally controlling the
Speaker 4: other participant's microphone like in an X space is a
Speaker 4: Twitter spaces thing, Kurt, he made good on his thread threat.
Speaker 4: It appears that Don Lemon show the partnership with X
Speaker 4: is gone. Where does the format?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: Where does this?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: Does this? Where does this leave the whole plan that
Speaker 4: they were going to have all these TV shows? How
Speaker 4: big a loss is Don Lemon for the Elon musk
Speaker 4: Linda Yakarino pivot to video strategy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is what I wrote my newsletter on this
Speaker 6: week was that I thought the decision to cancel Don
Speaker 6: Lemon's contract or partnership was really the mistake here, not
Speaker 6: anything that was actually said during the interview. I think,
Speaker 6: you know, as bad as both Elon and at times
Speaker 6: Don Lemon looked a in this interview, the issue was
Speaker 6: that that he bailed on this partnership and sent a
Speaker 6: signal to the entire media industry that partnering with X
Speaker 6: is you know, only going to work if you continue
Speaker 6: to make Elon feel good or make Elon feel happy
Speaker 6: or safe for whatever you want to say. And so
Speaker 6: you know, I don't think Don Lemon was necessarily going
Speaker 6: to be the champion that carried X into profitability. But
Speaker 6: I also think that he, you know, they really really
Speaker 6: talked about this partnership, how important it was.
Speaker 1: It was sort.
Speaker 6: Of the he was like the face of this pivot
Speaker 6: to video and this like push towards more professionally produced content.
Speaker 6: And the fact that they got rid of him so quickly,
Speaker 6: to me, is just yet another sign that like Elon's
Speaker 6: impulsive decision making is hurting the business of X.
Speaker 5: I sort of skimmed through something in the New York
Speaker 5: Post about like Don Lemon wanted a cyber truck and
Speaker 5: equity and like a bunch of money. Is that true?
Speaker 5: Like I couldn't figure out the sourcing of that. It
Speaker 5: seemed like a very strategic leak from the Elon side.
Speaker 6: Sure, I don't know if it's true, but it it
Speaker 6: doesn't surprise me, Like, it sounds very believable to me
Speaker 6: that someone who is like trying to come up with
Speaker 6: a partnership would say, well, here's the compensation package I want, Like,
Speaker 6: let's negotiate this. The fact that they announced Don Lemon
Speaker 6: back in January, that Elon sat for this interview, and
Speaker 6: that they had not apparently one figured out that compensation package.
Speaker 6: And two that Elon was acting surprised at the format
Speaker 6: of the show, right, that was his whole thing. He
Speaker 6: was saying, Hey, I'm bailing on this deal because this
Speaker 6: is just CNN but on X and it's like.
Speaker 1: Would you think you were buying to talk about this?
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly, So you agreed to sit for a whole hour.
Speaker 6: Didn't you know that before you sat down?
Speaker 4: So two things on this on the point of Dana
Speaker 4: made One is Okay, I don't know if Don Lemon
Speaker 4: asked for a cyber truck, but like, he's Don Lemon,
Speaker 4: he's a big star. He gets paid a lot of money,
Speaker 4: as like Kurt saying, to go on TV and if
Speaker 4: your ambition is to recruit other people like you know,
Speaker 4: Tucker Carlson also gets paid a lot of money. You know,
Speaker 4: Joe Rogan, who I'm sure Elon Musk would love on
Speaker 4: the X platform, gets paid a lot of money. Like
Speaker 4: you got to deal with this kind of thing. And
Speaker 4: the approach of like kind of canceling the show, attempting
Speaker 4: to if in fact these were leaked deliberately, you know,
Speaker 4: attempting to embarrass you know, former star like it's not
Speaker 4: going to make the next deal any easier. And the
Speaker 4: other people that they announced at the same time, I
Speaker 4: think one of them is, you know, Tulsey Gabbert is
Speaker 4: kind of like an Alt Democrat, not a Don Lemon
Speaker 4: level star by any stretch.
Speaker 6: No, Don Lemon was the biggest name for sure, and
Speaker 6: then Tucker Carlson, the other big name that we all
Speaker 6: thought was partnering with X, ended up sort of being like, well,
Speaker 6: I put my stuff on X, but I was never
Speaker 6: officially a partner. So it's like, even this effort to
Speaker 6: move to video has had a ton of fits and starts,
Speaker 6: and it's just again, this to me was a huge
Speaker 6: red flag for this whole effort.
Speaker 4: The other thing, too, is that this is like, if
Speaker 4: you're really trying to make this a thing, you don't
Speaker 4: want every star to be focused on Elon Musk. If
Speaker 4: the only way to get video like viewers to an
Speaker 4: ex video is to have Elon on the video, like,
Speaker 4: that's a bad sign too. Right now, it often feels
Speaker 4: like X is just the Elon Musk, you know, reality show,
Speaker 4: And of course this Don Lemon thing forwards it, but
Speaker 4: it doesn't. It doesn't like allow them to build a business,
Speaker 4: you know, in any way. I want to move on
Speaker 4: to a couple of the sort of weird political parts
Speaker 4: of this, of this interview, as well as some of
Speaker 4: the things that Elon's been tweeting about. What did you
Speaker 4: two make of Don Lemon's efforts to like press Elon
Speaker 4: Musk on his, for instance, endorsement of The Great Replacement
Speaker 4: or the tweeting the recent tweeting about these kind of
Speaker 4: immigration related conspiracy theories.
Speaker 6: I think it was good that he brought that up
Speaker 6: and sort of, you know, attempted to have some kind
Speaker 6: of discussion about this. I think hearing Elon try and
Speaker 6: defend some of these tweets was really frustrating to me.
Speaker 6: And I think the biggest issue that I took from
Speaker 6: this was that there was an exchange where Don Lemon
Speaker 6: said something along the lines is, well, don't you feel
Speaker 6: some responsibility to sort of, you know, know that the
Speaker 6: things you're tweeting are either accurate or as close to
Speaker 6: accurate as you can, Like, shouldn't you be kind of
Speaker 6: doing your homework before tweeting these things? And Elon's response
Speaker 6: was essentially, well, the community will just fact check me
Speaker 6: if I'm wrong, and to me, it was such a
Speaker 6: disappointing glimpse into his thought process, which is, I'm just
Speaker 6: going to say whatever I want, you know, implications or
Speaker 6: consequences be damned, and I'm just going to put the
Speaker 6: pressure or the responsibility of actually determining whether I'm saying
Speaker 6: true things on other people. And as we all know,
Speaker 6: by the time anyone fact checks him, or by the
Speaker 6: time anyone challenges him or whatever, like, the damage is
Speaker 6: oftentimes done.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: He has reached hundreds of millions of people, he has
Speaker 6: he has stirred up his fans and supporters to probably
Speaker 6: say many of the same things. And it's just like,
Speaker 6: I just thought that was a really disappointing framework for
Speaker 6: him to basically say, it's not my responsibility to say
Speaker 6: to say thoughtful things, it's everyone else's responsibility to check
Speaker 6: me on that.
Speaker 5: I agree with Kurt completely. He makes a really good
Speaker 5: point that, you know, Musk seems to be relying on
Speaker 5: this community notes feature on X to kind of fact
Speaker 5: check falsehoods, when if you had actual content moderation, you
Speaker 5: could nip that in the bud much more quickly. But
Speaker 5: that's not the business model.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and I feel like we sort of
Speaker 4: saw some of the limits of that approach. Even in
Speaker 4: this interview, you know that the segment where Lemon was
Speaker 4: like attempting to fact check on the immigration stuff, I
Speaker 4: thought was like pretty weak and ended up just having
Speaker 4: Musk kind of repeat a bunch of the same falsehoods
Speaker 4: and come off almost sounding reasonable. Like I feel like
Speaker 4: if this was on CNN, we would be talking about
Speaker 4: should CNN really be like, you know, spending this much
Speaker 4: time like giving air to these theories about like democrats
Speaker 4: secretly importing you know, illegal migrant you know, sorry, democrats
Speaker 4: secretly importing you know, migrants who are undocumented. Like the
Speaker 4: whole idea doesn't even make a lot of sense because,
Speaker 4: as Don Lemon said, the migrants don't vote. But if
Speaker 4: you just listen to what Elon said, you might think, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: like he's very well informed. I want to switch to
Speaker 4: another thing. Dan, it's to stay with you. Why has
Speaker 4: Elon this did not come up on the Don Lemon thing,
Speaker 4: but Elon Musk has in addition to this immigration fixation,
Speaker 4: he has spent quite a lot of time on the
Speaker 4: topic of birth control and has been like tweeting about it,
Speaker 4: you know, over and over again over the past few months.
Speaker 4: In February said hermonal birth control makes you fat, doubles
Speaker 4: the risk of depression, and triples the risk of suicide.
Speaker 4: That claim has been called into a serious question by
Speaker 4: actual experts. Is this just this is like some kind
Speaker 4: of weird fertility thing, Like, what's going on with this?
Speaker 5: Our colleague Sophia Alexander and I have dug a lot
Speaker 5: into this. Yeah, musk is very worried about population collapse
Speaker 5: and the lower than fertility rates in the industry world,
Speaker 5: and he really thinks that people should have as many
Speaker 5: children as possible. He himself has ten that we know of,
Speaker 5: and he has funded like an academic at the University
Speaker 5: of Texas at Austin to kind of create this whole
Speaker 5: institute that's all about fertility and population. And this is
Speaker 5: like a this is like a pet project of Elon's intellectually,
Speaker 5: and he is like very part of the whole like
Speaker 5: natalist movement. And it's super interesting. I mean, I think
Speaker 5: that there's a lot more to report out there, but
Speaker 5: this is this is part and parcel of that.
Speaker 6: I think the people who would be bothered by Elon
Speaker 6: musk Man's plaining birth control to people have already either
Speaker 6: left or written Elon off because he's said so many
Speaker 6: misogynistic and sexist things over the years that like, people
Speaker 6: who would be bothered by this are sort of either
Speaker 6: not on X anymore or already shaped their opinion about Elon,
Speaker 6: And so I kind of feel like at this point,
Speaker 6: anything else that he says in that vein is sort
Speaker 6: of just like like, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, we've heard it, we've heard it before.
Speaker 6: Obviously different content, but the same general idea, where like
Speaker 6: he is here to explain something that he probably shouldn't
Speaker 6: be trying to explain to anybody.
Speaker 4: And I mean, just to put a button on this, like,
Speaker 4: this is not good for Linda Yakarino, this is not
Speaker 4: good for X, right, I mean, Kurt, Like, what's she
Speaker 4: doing right now? How do you imagine her? She's watching
Speaker 4: Don Lemon, you know, probably trying really hard, I guess,
Speaker 4: to cheer on the boss, but also what like just
Speaker 4: thinking like, oh man, this is making things a lot harder.
Speaker 6: Well, this was the one question that I was really
Speaker 6: disappointed that Don Lemon did not ask, which was, how
Speaker 6: does Elon view his own behavior as affecting negatively affecting
Speaker 6: Ex's business right.
Speaker 1: They got into this whole.
Speaker 6: Idea of like the clip we played about how Disney
Speaker 6: Elon is saying Disney's going to bankrupt and ruin this company,
Speaker 6: and Don Lemon is saying, well, is is this your responsibility?
Speaker 6: And what I wanted him to say is like a
Speaker 6: lot of the reason advertisers are not spending money on
Speaker 6: X is not because they're worried about where they're going
Speaker 6: to show up in the feed. It's because they're worried
Speaker 6: about what you're going to tweet on any given day,
Speaker 6: and should you be changing your own tweeting behavior if
Speaker 6: you want to save X? And he didn't quite get there,
Speaker 6: and I was disappointed that that that question wasn't asked,
Speaker 6: But it ties into what you were just asking Max,
Speaker 6: which is like, how does Linda continue to do this
Speaker 6: job right? Because every time she goes out and attempts
Speaker 6: to sell something or to promote something, or to lure
Speaker 6: Don Lemon to come bring his talk show to X,
Speaker 6: Elon sabotages it with his own sort of decision making
Speaker 6: and behavior. And so everything we've heard is that Linda
Speaker 6: is totally bought into this guy, and totally bought into
Speaker 6: this mission. But like you have to imagine, at a
Speaker 6: certain point, she's saying, how can I continue to do
Speaker 6: this job when the one person who's my boss continues
Speaker 6: to undercut all of my efforts?
Speaker 4: All right, So to end this show, we've got another feud.
Speaker 4: So you know, we've talked about some of the other
Speaker 4: big Elon fuse recently. You know Mark Cuban, the billionaire
Speaker 4: former owner of the Dallas Mavericks, a Bay Area pie baker,
Speaker 4: a Nobel Prize winning economist, a famous CNN host, And
Speaker 4: we can add Ruth Bader Ginsburg's family renowned Supreme Court
Speaker 4: justice now deceased. Her son got into a big dispute
Speaker 4: with Elon Muskin. I'm just gonna give you guys a
Speaker 4: quick synopsis of this. So there's an award you may
Speaker 4: have been familiar with, the Dwight d Opperman Foundation's RBG Award,
Speaker 4: which has been awarded to quote women who have strived
Speaker 4: to make the world a better place for generations that
Speaker 4: follow their own, women who exemplify human qualities of empathy
Speaker 4: and humility, and who care about the dignity and well
Speaker 4: being of all who dwell on planet Earth. Now I'm
Speaker 4: not sure about this I'm not an expert in philanthropy
Speaker 4: and I'm not an authority on this, but I do
Speaker 4: think a key phrase here is women. Previous honorees of
Speaker 4: this award have been Queen Elizabeth the Second, Barbara Streisan.
Speaker 4: The latest honorees include Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk. This
Speaker 4: led to James Ginsburg, rbg's son saying it was a
Speaker 4: quote desecration of his mother's legacy, and the ceremony has
Speaker 4: since been suspended.
Speaker 5: What I don't even I had never even heard of
Speaker 5: this award before?
Speaker 4: Like what?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 5: Who made this decision? It makes zero sense on so
Speaker 5: many levels, particularly like the humility part, Like what what
Speaker 5: so I haven't followed I haven't followed this, but is
Speaker 5: this This is a feud because now that the the
Speaker 5: Ginsburg family is feuding about the award itself.
Speaker 4: Ginsburg Feasts versus Musk, I believe is the feud.
Speaker 6: When I first saw this, I assumed that the foundation
Speaker 6: must be like really strapped for cash because they gave
Speaker 6: it to a Murdoch uh and Elon and the hope
Speaker 6: was like maybe they would donate or something like that,
Speaker 6: because otherwise I don't think it makes any sense that
Speaker 6: like it just truly sounds like an onion article or
Speaker 6: like a SNL skit or something, because other it just
Speaker 6: makes no sense.
Speaker 1: Beyond that we.
Speaker 4: Have talked about one sided feuds. I think this is
Speaker 4: the one sidedest of one sided feuds. I don't believe
Speaker 4: Elon has acknowledged this award or the fact that it's
Speaker 4: been withdrawn. Although this creates an opportunity for a furtherance
Speaker 4: of the feud, he could complain and insist that he's
Speaker 4: going to attend the ceremony. I was also like trying
Speaker 4: to rack my brain for again, like you, Kurt, like
Speaker 4: what is the reason? And I believe like RBG, like
Speaker 4: very early in her career did defend take on a
Speaker 4: men's rights case and there was like interesting legal rationale.
Speaker 4: It was about women's rights ultimately. But maybe this is,
Speaker 4: you know, in recognition of Elon's role as a great,
Speaker 4: you know, men's rights poster.
Speaker 6: I'm wondering when we're going to hear that the woke
Speaker 6: mind virus is the real enemy and the reason that
Speaker 6: he lost this this wonderful award.
Speaker 4: Dwight Dio Oberman Foundation, Operaman Foundation, we are here, we
Speaker 4: are ready to explain this if you want to get
Speaker 4: in touch, and with that we'll leave it there. Thank
Speaker 4: you for listening Elon Inc. And thanks to Dana and Kurt.
Speaker 5: Always a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 4: Rayhan Harmansi are our senior editors. The idea for this
Speaker 4: very show also came from Rayhan. Blake Maples New Dad
Speaker 4: handles engineering and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott.
Speaker 4: Our supervising producer Happy Birthday is Magnus Hendrickson. The Elon Inc.
Speaker 4: Theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sigiera.
Speaker 4: Brendan Francis Noonan is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
Speaker 4: is the head of Blueberd Podcasts. I'm Max Chafkin. If
Speaker 4: you have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll
Speaker 4: help other listeners find us and we will see you
Speaker 4: next week.