WEBVTT - The Week Everything Went Wrong 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:07.080 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:09.520 Let me tell you we have a new star. 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:14.680 A star is born Elon mars Juson Kennemy. 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:18.440 He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age. 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.040 Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:21.800 I feel for the guy. 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:25.279 I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does. 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.440 But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:30.000 pay in four fos. 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:32.280 We were meant for great things in the United States 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:36.400 of America, and Elon reminds us of that we don't 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:46.840 have a fourth branch of governments called Elon Musk. Welcome 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.920 to elan Ing, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:56.040 March eleventh. I'm your host, David Popadopolis. So this is 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.320 what a bad week looks like. I mean a very 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.000 very bad week for Elon. Not only has Tesla stock 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:07.280 continued a crater it dropped fifteen percent on Monday alone, 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:10.640 but he seems to be losing on all fronts right now. 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:15.160 X was hit by sporadic outages Monday that Elon blamed 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:18.360 on hackers. A SpaceX rocket blow up, rain debris and 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:22.320 grounded flights at airports in Florida. Doge is running into 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.120 more and more roadblocks from both the courts and from 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:28.880 within the Trump administration itself. Mosk, through it all, is 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.800 putting on a brave face, setting his sights on bigger 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:34.080 and boulder things for Doge to cut from the budget. 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.520 But has he backed himself into a corner. Here to 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:41.200 discuss all this, we have our trusty muscologists, Max Chaffkin 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:44.959 and Dana Hall. Hello to you both, Hey, David, Dana, 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:46.360 how are you good? 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:47.520 Good? Good to be here? 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:50.480 Okay? And then later on in the episode, Bloomberg Stocks 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:53.680 reporter Esha Day will join us to talk all about 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:59.800 Tesla's free fall. Okay, Dana, So let's start by going 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:02.360 a little bit to the tail end of last week 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.000 for those who may have missed it. There was a 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:09.440 cabinet meeting in Washington that Musk attended and it got 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:11.600 a little sporty. Tell us what happened. 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.080 Yeah, So what was interesting is that this cabinet meeting 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:17.880 was not on the president's daily schedule. But Sean Duffy, 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:21.240 the Transportation Secretary, posted on x that he was like 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:23.560 headed into a cabinet meeting, And so we were like, wait, what, 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.800 there's a cabinet meeting, And then The New York Times 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:31.280 reported that the things got pretty spicy. Apparently there was 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:35.440 like a testy exchange between Musk and Marco Ribio about 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.519 cuts at the Department of State, and then you know, 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.040 Musk was basically saying that these guys weren't cutting fast 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:43.480 enough or deep enough, and then there was sort of 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.320 pushback from the cabinets. Duffy was saying, you know, you 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:48.600 want me to fire all these air traffic controllers and 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:51.360 I've got planes falling out of the sky. And The 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:53.640 New York Times reported that that Trump was kind of 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.320 like watching these exchanges, ping pong back and forth, like 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:58.760 almost like he was watching a tennis match, and then 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:02.600 the kind of upshe is that Trump then basically said 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:05.880 that Doge is like an advisor, but that the deep 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.160 cuts are, you know, in the province of the Cabinet secretary. 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:09.680 So there's like a. 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:11.240 Little bit of a power struggle going on. 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:11.560 You know. 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:14.920 Obviously I wasn't at the meeting, would love a readout 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:16.960 if you were, but it's just like the sort of 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.120 the first sign that there is tension between Musk and 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.399 the Cabinet secretaries about how these agencies are basically being 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:24.600 overtaken by Doge. 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:28.280 Yeah, and just add one think, Trump after this meeting 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:31.480 did a truth which is, you know, the truth social 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:35.200 version of a tweet Nique a Nicks. And he essentially said, 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:36.880 we're not going to use a hatchet. We're going to 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:42.360 use a scalpel, which feels like a implicit rebuke or 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:45.040 correction or something to Elon Musk. Of course, in the 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:47.880 next paragraph he talked all about how great a job 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.560 Elon Musk is doing, and Musk when he posted this, 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.240 he only posted a portion of the truth. He posted 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:58.440 the second paragraph, not the one about the scalpel. 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:02.480 It's fascinating that we've gone from Musk wielding a chainsaw 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.640 at SAPAC to Trump saying we're not going to use 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:08.560 a hatchet, We're going to use a scalpel. So like 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:11.600 what's next, like tweezers, like we're going down We're going 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.960 downstream in terms of like the size and scope of 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:16.480 the of the implement. 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:20.560 Here, clearly here max hard to interpret this any other way. 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:23.479 Even though the reporting from inside the room that we 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.320 saw in The Times and in other places, mostly the Times, 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:31.599 did make it clear that Musk certainly counterpunched and was 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:34.679 effective to a degree, but it's really hard to interpret 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:37.680 it any other way than it was a defeat and 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:39.480 a setback for his endeavor. 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:45.000 I think Musk has struggled to some extent to transition 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.400 from the kind of realities of campaigning, and even in 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:54.039 the transition, when there weren't these Senate confirmed appointees taking 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.440 responsibility for these agencies. So like, what's changed now is 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.279 you have Marco Rubio in charge of the Department State, 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:02.680 Shawn Duffy in charge of the Department of Transportation. If 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:07.000 a plane crashes tomorrow, God forbid, Shaw Duffy is the 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:09.520 one who's gonna have to answer questions, not Elon Musk, 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:11.640 no matter what Elon Musk does, no matter how you know, 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.479 what his influence is. And that is creating pressure on 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:18.679 these cabinet appointees, which is now a counterweight to Elon Musk. 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:20.480 And I think so, and I think that's what we're seeing. 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:24.000 This was inevitable, this was going to happen, and here 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:26.839 we are it is happening because of course, none of 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:29.839 these Cabinet secretary, as much as they agree maybe in 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:33.880 principle with the idea of cutting government spending. None of 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:37.000 them want their departments to be cut too much, and 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:39.839 they're going to be concerned, especially given musks, you know, 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:44.200 pension for willy nilly, you know, cut now, ask questions later. 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.640 So, Dana, it strikes me that what we're seeing a 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:52.120 little bit here is the classic musk of putting my 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:56.200 head down. I'm just efing going for it. Balls to 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:58.600 the wall, to hell with everyone. We're just going to 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:00.840 go full speed ahead and just see what that what 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:03.760 the hell comes out of it. All that may work 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.560 to a certain degree at Tesla, at X and at 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:10.120 other places, but right as Max is getting out here, 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:12.920 the political reality of trying to do that in Washington, 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.200 it's just a it's just a different dynamic. 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:15.880 Yeah. 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:18.840 But he's also it's also making him dig in even 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:22.080 more because he's saying things like, well, it's like the 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.560 ideas that the quote unquote deeed State is squealing and 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.680 like you know, all of the Democrats who are in 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.440 on this or of course they're responding, and that he's 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:34.520 fabricated this whole thing in his mind where you know, 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.960 the media and the NGOs and government employees and federal 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.400 workers and contractors and George Soros are like all in 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.960 on this, like massive grift that he alone is like 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:50.320 untangling for the world. But it is fundamentally like a 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:54.480 misunderstanding of how bureaucracy works and how you know many 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:56.520 of these people are lifelong civil servants. 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:00.000 Yeah, so we actually have him, Dana in his own 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:04.200 words here he is speaking on Fox Business with Larry Kudlow. 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:05.000 Let's listen to that. 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.160 You're giving up your other stuff? I mean, how are 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:10.080 you running your other businesses. 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:15.160 With great difficulty? Yeah, I mean that. 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:16.200 There's no turning back. 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:22.040 You're saying, I'm just here trying to make government more efficient. 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:25.520 Okay, So Max, I know I said at the top 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:28.080 that Musk is putting a brave face on it all. 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:30.960 But man, those were some deep size. 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.360 You know, he does this and like that part. 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.520 Do you think it's just for you think it's it's No. 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.080 I think it's both a performance, but I think it 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:42.560 is also genuine, right, Like, I mean, obviously he is 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:47.320 struggling to run his companies and do the job that 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:51.360 he's doing, as his comments indicate. I do think that 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:55.440 there are ways in which the kind of the sort 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.200 of practical ins and outs of what he's trying to 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.080 do in government, and also the kind of impression, the 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:03.400 branding of what he's trying to do conflicts with who 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.120 he is. Like his thing in the past has been 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:10.640 putting himself almost deliberately into these crises and sleeping on 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.680 the floor, which you know, dramatically right. But now like suddenly, 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:17.760 this this performance is coming off a little bit differently, 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:22.040 partly because what he's doing is just like fundamentally not 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:26.239 gonna be as popular as building an awesome, super fast, 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:29.320 super cool electric car, you know, or whatever, and or 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:33.360 taking the planet in mars, like like being really good 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:37.480 at like cutting parts of the federal budget, even if 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:39.319 you're awesome at it, even if there's none of the 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:42.280 sort of negative press, even if you don't accidentally fire 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.440 you know, a bunch of nuclear engineers or air traffic controllers, 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:47.560 Like I still think it's just inherently not gonna be 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:52.520 as cool. And then when he admits like, yeah, it's tough, 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:55.120 Like if I'm an investor in one of these other companies, 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:58.360 like ooh, this is gonna give me a feeling that 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:00.800 is not great. It's gonna confirm some of maybe my 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.440 worst fears about what where this thing is leading where 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:07.640 Musk is at once distracted so that he's not spending 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.160 as much time with the companies as he once did obviously, 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.000 but also eroding his brand. And I'm just sort of 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.400 watching my investments lose value day by day. 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:21.000 Yeah, So, Dana, those size bring me to a question 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:23.280 that I meant to and failed to ask last week. 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:27.120 So I will ask you it now. Elon Musk, knowing 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:31.040 what he knows now, had he known this on oh, 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.600 I don't know, say June the first of last year, 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:39.520 or October the first of last year, or November fifth, 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.319 would he say yes to doing it all over again? 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:44.720 Yes? 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.360 I mean this is why he donated to Trump's campaign 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.520 and he pitched this idea. Like Elon Musk has has 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.440 always been driven by two goals, getting to Mars and 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.320 getting rid of regulation. Those are that is what is 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.400 driving him. Maybe he didn't expected to be so bumpy. 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.240 Maybe he expected more people to like applaud his efforts 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.560 and not to get the kind of pushback that he's getting. 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:10.640 I mean, you're seeing all these protests at the Tesla showrooms. 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:13.000 But no, I mean I think that you know this 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.320 is like he proposed this idea that there is a 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:18.200 reason why he donated to the campaign. 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:20.800 And but so so you don't think you don't think 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:23.240 he feels like in hindsight, it was just a bridge 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:23.640 too far. 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.400 No, because he loves to create. This is sort of 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:29.960 who he is. Like, and I've been through so many 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.840 cycles of this with Elon before, and it's like every 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:36.120 time we get to like a new quote unquote crisis, 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:38.400 everyone's like, oh my god, this is it. But like 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.280 we've been through this countless times. In twenty eighteen, when 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.120 he tried to like fake the buyout of going private 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.000 and when he bought Twitter, like everyone was like, oh 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:48.800 my god, Like this is the end. He's going to 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:49.600 be so distracted. 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:51.600 And then you're telling me, you're telling me he actually 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:55.360 loves this. He's this is his this is his Okay. 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.920 Yes, he creates chaos on purpose, right, Okay, that's how 0:10:58.960 --> 0:10:59.959 he throws That's how he. 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:02.920 Okay, we need to move on from Washington and go 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.280 to x, which was down for users at different parts 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.240 of the day yesterday. Max tell us what transpired. 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:15.319 You know X Twitter has long had issues with uptime. 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:18.839 This is a site that gets at times like huge 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.760 amounts of traffic and you know, over the years, like 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:26.199 has gone down numerous times. There have also been numerous 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:28.640 incidents like this where there's some sort of denial of 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.720 service attack or cyber attack. The site went down yesterday, 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.960 I should say, there were sort of intermittent outages over 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.920 a period of time across you know, a number of countries. 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:40.360 I was not able to use it, you know, you 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:44.000 know me, I'm a big X user. I was not 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:46.080 able to get on weeks from no weeks is I 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:48.360 was not able to get on for hours yesterday. So 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:50.880 from my own personal experience. 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:52.400 Is that why you're in such a crappy mood today? 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.640 Yeah, I didn't get my fixed. It seemed like a 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:59.959 particularly bad, you know, sort of crash or whatever. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.119 Any work of the Ukrainian he blamed. 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:04.600 Yeah, well he said he didn't exactly say that. He 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:07.680 said there were IP addresses in Ukraine. Of course, he's 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:12.079 What he's trying to do is suggest that somehow Zelenski, 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:14.080 in addition to like not saying thank you or something, 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:19.600 set the hackers on Twitter. Certainly possible, although there is 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:23.000 a group, a hacking group that has taken responsibility. They're 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:29.280 a sort of pro Palestinian aligned hacker collective. So again, 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.079 we don't I don't think we know yet who did it, 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.200 But of course it's not good for business and it 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:37.920 and when you when you layer in all of the 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:40.440 other things that we're going to be talking about, it 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:46.199 doesn't necessarily communicate command or having having their stuff together. 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:52.160 No, Dana. Meanwhile, a SpaceX rocket launch late last week 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:55.400 was quite a show, but I suppose for for the 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:56.160 wrong reasons. 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:58.840 Yeah, I mean, it launched okay, but then it blew 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:02.160 apart and then debris kind of like closed air travel 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:04.280 in Florida for a little while. I mean, I think, 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:09.360 you know, in SpaceX's defense, they would argue that every 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:11.600 time they have a mistake, they learn from it, they 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.600 get better, they iterate, they improve on things like you 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:17.559 don't make advances in sciences and technology without a lot 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:21.040 of experimentation. But you know, Musk has always been someone 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:23.280 who is spinning a lot of plates. And as Max 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.319 and I wrote earlier this year, you know, he is 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:28.880 running six companies and now he's got a seventh, which 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:30.920 is running the government. And it's only a matter of 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:33.559 time before like one of those plates comes crashing down. 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.440 So how long he can keep them all spinning as 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:39.079 anyone's guest, but he's we've sort of been in these 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:40.320 crisis moments before. 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:45.160 So Max Dana points out that SpaceX and Musk love 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:47.360 to learn and iterate from these blow ups, and they 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:50.600 kind of, to a certain extent almost even enjoy them 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:52.600 in the sense that they then get to autopsy the 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:56.240 whole thing and go on. That's fine, learning and iterating 0:13:56.320 --> 0:14:00.000 is one thing. But raining so much to debris down 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:03.319 that airports are shut down for a while, Is that okay? 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:04.200 Is that normal? 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:05.000 No? 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:09.000 And it's not. And so obviously yes, it's true that 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:11.760 like they're not going to get to Mars or even 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:16.319 get this uh spacecraft working on one launch. By design, 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:19.400 these things are are not going to work out. They're 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.680 not launching any real cargo yet. For this very reason, 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.400 I believe there were some rocket was by the way, 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:27.800 this was a starship rocket. This is the This is 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:32.320 the spacecraft that Elon Musk sees as the Mars vehicle 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:37.080 for now, though SpaceX has a contract to land this 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:41.400 is a lunar landing craft for for the Moon mission, right, 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.480 but musks that that's the contract that they have. 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:44.920 Moon is for losers. 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.080 That's what Elon Musk says, but now, but the challenge 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.520 here is that, well, first of all, one challenge is 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:53.960 there are a lot of people who who don't think 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:56.680 the Moon is for losers, and and those people include 0:14:56.840 --> 0:15:01.000 many of the other companies who have contracts UH to 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.440 send people and parts and so on to the Moon. 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.600 There is going to be political opposition. There already is 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.840 political opposition to any effort to sort of like as 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.480 Musk has sort of hinted, like, cancel the Artemist program, 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:15.520 which is the Moon program and replace it with a 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:19.360 Mars program. The other day, Trump actually brought up Mars 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.080 and said it, well, it's it's not that big a priority, 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.960 which I would say is in start contrast to how 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:30.440 Elon Musk s is it. These launches are have scientific 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:34.080 and engineering value, but they also are political. And we 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:38.080 learned that during the campaign trail when Trump over and 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:41.760 over and over again talked about how beautiful it was, 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:43.960 how amazing the arms they lived. You know, we all 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:45.840 heard this over and over again. Dan and I heard 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:50.480 it in person in Madison Square Garden. Trump loves like 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.360 cradling a baby like Trump loves to talk about it 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:55.600 because and of course he loves it because it is 0:15:55.720 --> 0:16:00.320 like a perfect illustration of Elon Musk's competence and at 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:04.240 and so when we see the opposite, it doesn't convey that, 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.000 and it makes it all the harder for Elon Musk 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:09.840 to argue that the United States should bet on this 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:13.480 technology which is a new technology, which is not totally 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:17.200 figured out, which could fail. Right, Like, so, yes, the 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.520 failures are by design, but they're not good. 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.800 As we wrap this segment here, Max, I'll just say 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:27.840 that Musk, like I knows that stocks go to the moon, 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.640 starships go to Mars. Come on, I don't. 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:33.520 I don't totally know what that means. 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:42.200 But okay, all right, okay, So we're now joined by 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:45.640 stocks reporter Esha Day. Hello, Esha, welcome back. 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:46.320 Hello. 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.280 So I told you to come back on when you 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.400 had something interesting to talk about, and man, do you 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:58.120 so the Tesla, the stock has been in free fall, 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.080 notwithstanding a little bit of a bump back up today. 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:05.360 Hit us to start with with some superlatives that capture 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:06.960 the move in recent days. 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:10.720 Sure, let me absolutely spoil you here. So Tesla says 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:14.240 a down forty five percent last I checked for the year. 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:16.119 It's really volatile today. 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.120 But let's go with forty five percent, and then it's 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.919 down fifty three percent from the all time high that 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:25.760 it touched on December seventeenth. So in the process, the 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:29.160 stock has now lost more than eight hundred to be specific, 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.160 eight hundred and sixteen billion dollars from its market evaluation. 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.679 So at and its peak, its market value was. 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:37.320 One point five trillion. 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:41.919 Yes, and currently it's worth around seven hundred billion and change. 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:46.800 Yes, and I believe it is the biggest decliner in 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:48.240 the S and P five hundred index. 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:51.720 Since that's right, yesation, right, yes, you you completely snatched 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.600 the words out of it is the worst decliner on 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:58.280 the SMB five hundred right now by a decent margin, 0:17:58.480 --> 0:17:59.040 I would say. 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:01.680 So, I get the sense that even the bulls out there, 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.040 the Tesla perma bulls, are starting to get to get 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:08.879 starting to get a bit nervous. What are you hearing? 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:12.880 Yes, that's a great way to put it. The perma bulls, 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:17.800 some of them extremely vocal and art in Tesla fans, 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.760 I would say, who absolutely believe in this kind of 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:24.399 long term vision of Tesla becoming this pioneer in the 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.320 fully self driving vehicle, the robot taxi and a much 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:34.119 more sophisticated real life AI applications such as humanoid robot 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.000 and all that. Even those people, when I talk to 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.000 them for in a very long time, and I have 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:41.520 been covering this stock for a while now, this is 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:44.640 the first time that I'm hearing them being a little antsy. 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:47.640 They're not sure. They're still on the sideline. 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:50.080 So despite a fifty what seems like a fifty three 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.520 percent discount, So clearly these people think, and they say 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:55.960 this in as many words, that they think there's more 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:58.920 to go in this decline. And why is that? The 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.600 reason is simple, Like you know, the the boom that 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.000 we saw after the election, it was really not driven 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:11.040 by anything fundamental. So now that all that speculative frenzy 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.679 has been taken out of the stock, people are starting 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.280 to look at the fundamental. So where do fundamental stand 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:18.800 compared to say November. 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:22.520 Of last year. They look weaker. So there's no reason terrible. 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:24.880 Right, I mean, in Europe, in parts of the US, 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.919 sales are way down. The brand has been damaged with 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:34.240 the significant swath of consumers out there. But Dana Trump 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:36.440 came out last night in truth it was I believe 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.240 it was last night, and he said He's going to 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:43.760 go out himself and buy a Tesla to show support 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:47.000 for his man mosque. Is this is going to turn 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:48.680 this is going to turn the stock around? 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.159 Well, I mean, it's it's remarkable that the President of 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:54.119 the United States is saying this, and his exact quote 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:56.800 on truth is I'm going to buy a brand new 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:01.000 Tesla tomorrow morning, meeting today today as we speak, as 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:04.000 a show, as a show of confidence and support for 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.960 Elon Musk, a truly great American. So, first of all, 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:10.080 I don't see how this works in practice, Like, are 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.200 we supposed to believe that the President is going to 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.919 like waltz into some showroom in Washington, DC and like 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.080 roll out with the cyber truck or something like. I 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.240 just don't really I scrutinize this very concept. 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:23.240 I could see him rocking a cyber truck. 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:27.920 But secondly, if the whole issue is brand erosion and 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.840 Tesla's longtime consumer is being very upset that Musk has 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:35.240 thrown in his lot with Trump, the idea that Trump 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:36.959 is now going to buy a Tesla is just going 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:42.440 to further cement Tesla as a brand into like a Magamobile, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:44.239 which you know, Max and I wrote about like two 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:46.960 years ago. So I don't see how it helps Elon 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:48.680 at all. I just think it's not good. 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.200 This is a key thing. And I guess my first 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:54.640 reaction was when Trump said he was gonna go buy one. 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.919 I was like, one, you're gonna buy one Tesla? How 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:01.439 about three hundred thousand, buddy? And I guess my question 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.120 for you, Max is and it gets back to something 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:08.119 it's been nagging for a while for me, which is, 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:13.760 for every five or ten or twenty buyers Musk loses 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:17.760 in Blue America, is there some offset in Red America, 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:23.240