Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3: A star is born Elon mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 4: He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 5: Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 6: I feel for the guy.
Speaker 7: I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 6: But those two percent.
Speaker 8: That are nasty, they are I'll pay in full post.
Speaker 6: We are meant for great things in the United States
Speaker 6: of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 3: Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
Speaker 3: governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: Welcome to Elon, a Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: It's Tuesday, April First, I'm your host, David Papadopolis.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: On Friday night, Elon snuck out an announcement that, as
Speaker 6: longtime listeners of this show was a long time coming.
Speaker 6: His AI company Xai had acquired his social media company
Speaker 6: x And, a deal that values the new joint company
Speaker 6: at over one hundred billion dollars. Shades of Tesla buying
Speaker 6: Solar City, a sign of things to come in the
Speaker 6: world of AI. Both and then in Wisconsin today is
Speaker 6: election day for the Musk funded race between a conservative
Speaker 6: and liberal judge. The stakes are high, although perhaps not
Speaker 6: as high as Musk has been suggesting. All this comes
Speaker 6: as Tesla's stock price has been ping ponged up and
Speaker 6: down by Tariff News and has protests of the brand
Speaker 6: show no sign of slowing down. To talk about X,
Speaker 6: were joined by one of our regulars, Max chaffickin Hello
Speaker 6: to you, Max, Hello, Papa. Okay, Now we're good. This
Speaker 6: is the first introduction of popns and our social media
Speaker 6: reporter and by far the best high school quarterback has
Speaker 6: ever been on this show. Kurt Wagner Kurt.
Speaker 9: Hello, Hey, thank you for having me.
Speaker 6: And later on Dana Hall, our other regular will swing
Speaker 6: by to talk Wisconsin politics. We actually have a surprise
Speaker 6: to start us off here. Max, You've got something that's
Speaker 6: coming later this week. Tell us about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, David, So later in the show. Not to spoil things,
Speaker 3: but we will be talking about a little bundle of
Speaker 3: joy that Elon has. But but I have my own
Speaker 3: bundle of joy that's coming in your podcast feed this week.
Speaker 3: On Friday, we'll have a the first episode of a
Speaker 3: new show called Everybody's Business.
Speaker 6: It's I like that name. It's about business, it's and everybody.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit like Elon Inc.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be me and Stacey Vannox Smith, who people
Speaker 3: probably know from Marketplace, Planet Money, the Indicator. She's done
Speaker 3: tons of reporting about markets and business.
Speaker 2: She's going to carry money. Yeah, she's going to carry
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 3: And we're gonna have a rotating crew of other experts guests.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be fun and we're really excited.
Speaker 9: For everyone to hear.
Speaker 3: So you're gonna hear it in your podcast feed on Friday,
Speaker 3: and then for the next few weeks it'll be here
Speaker 3: in the e lining feed. But we're hoping that when
Speaker 3: the show launches for real in May, you will come
Speaker 3: over with us to our own.
Speaker 6: No, we're not just hoping, we're insisting yet.
Speaker 2: We're commanded this.
Speaker 6: We're demanding. Right, you're dropping in in the feed on Friday, now,
Speaker 6: well Friday going forward, will that be the day it'll
Speaker 6: always come out on?
Speaker 3: That will be the day it'll it'll come out on
Speaker 3: Friday kind of hopefully help people make sense of what
Speaker 3: happened in the world of business for the past few days.
Speaker 2: Get ready for the weekend.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that sounds great. Okay, very good. Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 6: start off here and talk about that late night news
Speaker 6: that broke on Friday, x AI purchasing x But to
Speaker 6: get us started here on it, we're gonna go back
Speaker 6: to December when one Kurt Wagner said this, I.
Speaker 10: Got two predictions for this year for Elon Musk. The
Speaker 10: first is that he's gonna fold x social network formerly
Speaker 10: known as Twitter into Xai. So it's going to be
Speaker 10: a way for him to basically salvage that you know,
Speaker 10: struggling business, get investors away out bang.
Speaker 6: That's what I'm talking about. Wagner. Huh.
Speaker 3: I just feel like people spend huge sums of money
Speaker 3: on intelligence and various things.
Speaker 2: They could just listen to our podcast and they would
Speaker 2: know what is going to happen.
Speaker 6: Just listen to Kurt Wagner. Well done, sir. By the way,
Speaker 6: what was your other prediction and has it flopped on you?
Speaker 11: Well, first off, thank you for having me back for
Speaker 11: this victory lap. This is all I've ever dreamt about
Speaker 11: since December. Honestly, I think my other prediction was that
Speaker 11: Elon Donald Trump will go on a boy's trip to
Speaker 11: visit I may have said Kim Jong un. But I
Speaker 11: think Vladimir Putin should fall into that camp as well,
Speaker 11: and I still think that's a real possibility.
Speaker 6: He's on the verge of two for two. All right,
Speaker 6: that's very good, way, way way better than me. I'm
Speaker 6: oh for so far. But let's focus on this one.
Speaker 6: Give us a little bit of a little bit more
Speaker 6: of a cent. So what you were thinking at the time,
Speaker 6: and in turn, what your understanding of the particulars of
Speaker 6: this deal now is.
Speaker 11: Well, I think it kind of shaped up how I thought,
Speaker 11: which is that it feels like this is a deal
Speaker 11: specifically tailored to bail out X investors, Right, and think
Speaker 11: about it this way. If you are an investor in X.
Speaker 11: A week ago, you had shares in what has mostly
Speaker 11: been a struggling social networking company with an ADS business
Speaker 11: that is about half the size that it was when
Speaker 11: Elon acquired it, with no real reason to think that
Speaker 11: that was going to change anytime soon. Suddenly your investment
Speaker 11: is now part of an AI startup that is worth
Speaker 11: three times the amount of money, and you really didn't
Speaker 11: lose any money. Right, he acquired the company Xai acquired
Speaker 11: X at roughly the same price that he paid for
Speaker 11: it two and a half years ago. So you just
Speaker 11: take your money from a business that has low ups
Speaker 11: to a business with very high upside. And I think
Speaker 11: this was really a way to make X investors whole
Speaker 11: and give them something more optimistic to look forward to.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I will say on that point that being
Speaker 6: made whole is a hell of a lot better than
Speaker 6: the way it looked at multiple points over the past
Speaker 6: couple years. I think Fidelity was marketing it down forty
Speaker 6: to fifty percent. The only thing to be clear on
Speaker 6: here is just being made whole and getting out even
Speaker 6: over a two and a half year period ain't great.
Speaker 6: The S and P five hundred over that time period,
Speaker 6: Max chef gin up forty six percent, I will note,
Speaker 6: so really you could have just pretty much been blindly
Speaker 6: investing in the index and been up made a hell
Speaker 6: of a lot more money. But I want to talk
Speaker 6: for a second Max on kurtz first point, which is
Speaker 6: a bailout of X investors. We've seen this movie before
Speaker 6: from Elon, one Elon company buying another, or at least
Speaker 6: one Elon company buying a company he's closely affiliated with.
Speaker 6: You know, Tesla and Solar City is this Teslas Solar
Speaker 6: City part du.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's very similar, and I think, you know,
Speaker 3: we have anticipated not just Kurt's prediction, but on this
Speaker 3: podcast for like more than a year we've been talking
Speaker 3: about and I think it was actually Kurt also who
Speaker 3: first suggested this around the time when his book came out,
Speaker 3: which everyone should read. But basically the idea that that
Speaker 3: x doesn't has sort of a diminished business outlook and
Speaker 3: that AI is one of the only ways that it
Speaker 3: can kind of find a way to find opportunity, and
Speaker 3: you had this sort of awkwardness where xai is training
Speaker 3: on Twitter data Xai. Many of Xai's shareholders are the
Speaker 3: same as Twitter shareholders. The main distribution platform for Xai's chapbot,
Speaker 3: which is called groc is x So like it was
Speaker 3: weird that they were two separate companies to kind of
Speaker 3: begin with.
Speaker 6: Of course, well maybe it was to have so the
Speaker 6: Ai company had a clean slate, didn't have any baggage
Speaker 6: with it. I think certainly there was a lot of
Speaker 6: baggage from x for sure.
Speaker 3: And you know, Musk has operated his companies. There's a
Speaker 3: reason we call the show Elon Inc. Because Elon Musk
Speaker 3: runs his businesses like one conglomerate like Elon Inc. And
Speaker 3: what happened with Solar City is you had basically a
Speaker 3: troubled solar panel installer. It had looked really promising when
Speaker 3: Elon Musk started. They managed to get all these subsidies
Speaker 3: from state and national governments to install panels. All of
Speaker 3: a sudden, you had all these other companies come in
Speaker 3: a lot of competition, turns into basically a low margin business.
Speaker 2: Lo and behold.
Speaker 3: Tesla acquires it and then sold as part of the
Speaker 3: Elon Musk master plan. And at the time the Elon
Speaker 3: Musk master Plan was around, you know, green energy, We're
Speaker 3: gonna sort of your and have electric cars, You're gonna
Speaker 3: have solar panels on your roofs.
Speaker 2: There were, of course shareholder lawsuits because.
Speaker 6: I'm not on the Tesla side, people saying hey, you're
Speaker 6: bailing out this company, you're diluting me. I'm getting screwed.
Speaker 6: Those lawsuits failed in the end, correct, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, and it's kind of for the same I think, well,
Speaker 3: there are probably other reasons too. But you know, we've
Speaker 3: seen this movie over and over where shareholders and Elon
Speaker 3: Musk companies have basically agreed that like they're going to
Speaker 3: just do whatever Elon Musk wants. That it's hard to
Speaker 3: separate Elon Musk. They've basically gone along with the story.
Speaker 3: I just told that all these companies are basically one conglomerate.
Speaker 3: So my guess is that the shareholders of Xai, as
Speaker 3: much as they are, like Kurt says, bailing out a
Speaker 3: struggling social media company, they're probably going along.
Speaker 2: With this as just as just the price of doing business.
Speaker 2: I do want to.
Speaker 6: See also, by the way, in the case of Xai,
Speaker 6: it's a much smaller investor universe than you'd have in
Speaker 6: the case of Tesla, where you have I don't know,
Speaker 6: tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of investors.
Speaker 3: Perhaps Yeah, I do want to say, I think there's
Speaker 3: something here for these Xai shareholders. You know, as much
Speaker 3: as we're bailing out x the fundraising environment for AI
Speaker 3: companies is getting worse right now. If I were a
Speaker 3: prospective investor in a company like xa yeah, I would
Speaker 3: ask myself what exactly is the relationship between XAI and
Speaker 3: x That would be like a risk factor. And in
Speaker 3: a way, I think this clarifies it makes it easier
Speaker 3: for Elon musk to potentially package this to investors, as
Speaker 3: much as it's kind of week funky that he's combined
Speaker 3: this like troll farm slash social network slash political influence
Speaker 3: project that is x with this like world leading chatbot
Speaker 3: or what.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, Kurt. That is a good point, right
Speaker 6: where you have had up till now a pretty funky
Speaker 6: intercompany relationship where you know, x and XAI do business together.
Speaker 6: It seems like at some point, right XAI pays x by,
Speaker 6: like I will buy you five cups of coffee, you know,
Speaker 6: at a star by an in turn, you know you will, uh,
Speaker 6: we'll let you babysit for our Like it was all
Speaker 6: sort of weird, funky account Like why not They're just
Speaker 6: like this just simplifies the whole thing. Hey, it's all
Speaker 6: just one big company.
Speaker 9: I think that's right on paper.
Speaker 11: This makes sense when you think, okay, an AI company
Speaker 11: is buying a giant social network that has this proprietary
Speaker 11: data set. It's going to help GROCK reach millions of consumers.
Speaker 11: Like all of those things make sense. Where they don't
Speaker 11: make sense for a thirty three billion dollar acquisition is
Speaker 11: that the owner of both those companies is the same
Speaker 11: person who already has control over them. So it's not
Speaker 11: as if x was going to go suddenly do some
Speaker 11: data licensing deal with open Ai, because Elon would never
Speaker 11: do that. It's not as if Xai was going to go,
Speaker 11: you know, kick X to the curb and say, never mind,
Speaker 11: we're going to do our distribution over on Facebook, because
Speaker 11: Elon would never do that. So my point is that,
Speaker 11: while yes, this makes sense on paper, the lynchpin here
Speaker 11: is the Elon of it all, and because he owned
Speaker 11: and controls both companies, buying one of them for this
Speaker 11: amount of money to the other, to me feels like
Speaker 11: a weird financial transaction that didn't need to happen to
Speaker 11: get the benefits.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I get it, but there is a face
Speaker 6: saving value here to be able to start. You got out,
Speaker 6: everyone got out whole hold.
Speaker 3: But do you think Kurt anyone would use xai without
Speaker 3: GROC like without Twitter?
Speaker 2: Does xai have a business?
Speaker 11: I mean it has a business as much as open
Speaker 11: ai has a business.
Speaker 9: Right like they would they would, They would.
Speaker 11: Just have to find a different distribution model for their chatbots.
Speaker 6: So right in a different set of raw material to
Speaker 6: train off of. And I guess this is My other
Speaker 6: question for you, Kurt, is this truly the future of
Speaker 6: social media companies? That they are largely just human social
Speaker 6: posting farms or fast sorties, some iteration of soilent in
Speaker 6: essence to feed the romance.
Speaker 9: Well, let's think about it.
Speaker 11: So x is doing this with xai, Facebook, Instagram are
Speaker 11: doing this with meta ai. Reddit has licensed its data
Speaker 11: to Google. What does that leave right? I think Snap
Speaker 11: has a relationship with Google as well. I believe so
Speaker 11: pretty much every social network out there is doing a
Speaker 11: version of this.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 11: Is that the only reason for them to exist? I
Speaker 11: would certainly say no. But has this become a you know,
Speaker 11: maybe unexpected business opportunity for all of these places? Certainly
Speaker 11: that seems to be the case.
Speaker 6: Okay, so there, I should keep posting. If I do post,
Speaker 6: if I were to post, which I don't, I should
Speaker 6: keep posting, appreciating that there's some other value out there
Speaker 6: beyond just informing the robots.
Speaker 11: I presume someone follows you, David, I don't know, so
Speaker 11: can I.
Speaker 9: Say that follower? Yeah, your follower might appreciate you still posting.
Speaker 6: But all right, who invited Kirk to this show? Can I?
Speaker 5: Was it you?
Speaker 6: Max? Why do we have Kerk first of all gloating
Speaker 6: about his grand prediction and second of all talking the host.
Speaker 6: But I will just say x I do have a
Speaker 6: few followers, which is kind of amazing because I've never
Speaker 6: posted on it. Now, Max, he goes here from six
Speaker 6: companies in the constellation of e in to five, Does
Speaker 6: it make his life any easier, simpler? Same difference.
Speaker 3: No, I think it's the same. Like I said, he
Speaker 3: was already running them like one company. I do wonder
Speaker 3: what this means for live front of the pod who, Kurt,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Do you have an understanding of what
Speaker 3: her role is going forward.
Speaker 11: Currently CEO of x Yeah, thoughts Kurt, I don't know.
Speaker 11: And that was one of the questions I posed after this, right,
Speaker 11: is what does this mean for her? In the one hand,
Speaker 11: she could continue to run X in the way she's
Speaker 11: already doing that as sort of maybe a business unit
Speaker 11: of XAI.
Speaker 9: Right, But as these.
Speaker 11: Companies become closer and closer together, usually when there's a
Speaker 11: merger like this, you know, you merge HR and you
Speaker 11: merge sales, and you merge engineering, and so it kind
Speaker 11: of becomes a little bit unless they're going to keep
Speaker 11: X completely independent of Xai, which feel like it would
Speaker 11: defeat the purpose of this merger. It sort of also
Speaker 11: feels like it would erode her power, right because she's
Speaker 11: not going to have as many people reporting to her,
Speaker 11: as many divisions or whatever. So I don't know, I
Speaker 11: don't know what's going to happen. She was obviously, you know,
Speaker 11: she was cheerleading this deal when it happened on Friday, and.
Speaker 6: Well it could just be a nice opportunity to actually
Speaker 6: exit stage last year for her.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, but I don't know what's going to happen,
Speaker 11: is the short answer.
Speaker 5: Got it?
Speaker 6: Kurt Wagner, as always, thank you for joining us, sir,
Speaker 6: Congratulations on your brilliant December twenty twenty four prediction.
Speaker 9: Thank you for having me hope to be back.
Speaker 13: It's one of those things that may seem like it's
Speaker 13: obviously important in the state of wisconstant, but I think
Speaker 13: it could actually be important for the country as well,
Speaker 13: and maybe for the world.
Speaker 6: So okay, we're joined now by our other regular Dana Hall. Dana,
Speaker 6: welcome back, he Hey, and Dan.
Speaker 5: Of course.
Speaker 6: Elon here is referring to the Supreme Court election coming
Speaker 6: up in Wisconsin. The vote ends today results. Maybe we'll
Speaker 6: know as soon as tonight. You have a terrific story
Speaker 6: out about the election this morning. Remind us of the
Speaker 6: particulars here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, Wisconsin is one of the states that has
Speaker 4: an open, you know, open election for its Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 4: And Elon, as Elon does, is kind of like doubling
Speaker 4: down on this race in Wisconsin. He flew to Wisconsin
Speaker 4: on Sunday, gave a town hall. He also did some
Speaker 4: kind of like tell a call about the race last night.
Speaker 4: And this is all a time when there is enormous
Speaker 4: backlash two Musk being involved with politics and the Trump
Speaker 4: administration and Doge, but he is basically repeating his playbook,
Speaker 4: you know, dangling money before voters. He wore a cheesehead
Speaker 4: on stage and like he sort of was like, you know,
Speaker 4: this is We've got to do this. People on his
Speaker 4: pack is texting everyone, and it'll be a real test
Speaker 4: of whether the political operation that he's built will endure
Speaker 4: beyond Trump and be able to impact these statewide races.
Speaker 6: Okay, and the vote for the Supreme Court justice will
Speaker 6: whichever parties candidate gets it will effectively take control of
Speaker 6: the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Correct correct.
Speaker 4: Right now, it's a seven member court. Four to three
Speaker 4: majority hangs in the balance, and you know state Supreme
Speaker 4: Court does. It looks at everything from collective bargaining rights,
Speaker 4: abortion rights, registricting. Registricting is always very important when it
Speaker 4: comes to determining House seats, and so in Elon's mind,
Speaker 4: this is like another fork in the road of destiny
Speaker 4: for civilization, and he is, you know, encouraging everyone to
Speaker 4: vote and really pushing it very hard in the final days.
Speaker 6: One of the big questions we had at the time
Speaker 6: last week was would the value the money he's putting
Speaker 6: up ultimately be greater than the downside that he creates,
Speaker 6: But by attaching his name to the Republican candidate there,
Speaker 6: we weren't exactly sure at the time. Seven days later,
Speaker 6: any greater clarity on that point, well.
Speaker 4: I think, I mean, there's no question that Elon's involvement
Speaker 4: is helping is shaping the contours of the race. I mean,
Speaker 4: a lot of people went to see Elon speak on
Speaker 4: Sunday night. His pack has door knockers, they are running
Speaker 4: digital ads on Facebook. I mean, he is very much swinging,
Speaker 4: helping to swing the race in the way that he
Speaker 4: did when he barstormed across Pennsylvania for President Trump. But
Speaker 4: what's the different this cycle is that Trump himself is
Speaker 4: not on the ballot, and so it really remains to
Speaker 4: be seen how close this election will be and whether
Speaker 4: Musk's imprint had the suite that it did. Also, Elon
Speaker 4: is a far less popular person now than he was
Speaker 4: in October.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Democrats are I mean Elon's involvement. He
Speaker 3: is going to be a factor sort of on the
Speaker 3: Democratic side. Democrats are tying this race to Elon Musk,
Speaker 3: which would have happened probably even if he hadn't given
Speaker 3: any money, frankly, because Elon Musk is like one of
Speaker 3: the most unpopular parts of the Trace of Dose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: But the fact that he's giving all his money, of course,
Speaker 3: is going to make those attacks stickier. That said, like
Speaker 3: the money that Elon's giving is so so so much
Speaker 3: like well, I don't think we Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 3: little bit hard to even get your head around it.
Speaker 3: You know, last week how much what has been number?
Speaker 3: We don't know the total number because this is all
Speaker 3: happening so quickly. You know, last week we had Ted
Speaker 3: Man here saying that you know, third party estimates were
Speaker 3: putting it around fourteen million dollars out of somewhere in
Speaker 3: the seventies. This is already the most expensive state judicial
Speaker 3: race ever. And that's before we saw all this additional spending.
Speaker 3: Those were that was mostly TV money. Now we're seeing
Speaker 3: Musk writing, I think my count, Dana is three million
Speaker 3: dollar checks thus formed.
Speaker 5: I think that's right.
Speaker 3: We've seen he's he's paying one hundred dollars per petition signer.
Speaker 3: By the way, all these payments are sort of designed
Speaker 3: to be like right up to the edge of the
Speaker 3: election law.
Speaker 6: The senses they are indeed on the right side of
Speaker 6: the law.
Speaker 3: Who knows, no, I don't think that sense is at
Speaker 3: all clear. We were seeing repeated legal challenges, and you know,
Speaker 3: even during this event, Musk acknowledged and he did He
Speaker 3: did the same during the twenty twenty four race.
Speaker 2: He acknowledged. This is the point. The point is to
Speaker 2: to do these stunts and get media coverage when Democrats
Speaker 2: say you are breaking election law.
Speaker 6: Dan, did you have in that story today a hard
Speaker 6: number on how much Musk has spent so far.
Speaker 4: Well, the way that my brain thinks about the map
Speaker 4: is the race is above eighty million total Musk is
Speaker 4: put in I would say roughly twenty million. But to
Speaker 4: Max's point, like we're not going to get a final
Speaker 4: tally until later, but I would, I would. I think
Speaker 4: it's fair to think of like Musk has put in
Speaker 4: like a quarter or twenty five percent of all the
Speaker 4: spending there is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think we should think about twenty million. Again, Dana,
Speaker 3: this is a guestimate, but like it's a lower it's
Speaker 3: a lower limit. You know.
Speaker 4: We just have to kind of remind our listeners that
Speaker 4: the conventional wisdom in Washington was Elon and Trump are
Speaker 4: not going to survive. They're going to have a big blowout.
Speaker 4: Doe's just going to be this like short lived experiment
Speaker 4: and then eventually Elon will take his ball and go
Speaker 4: home and focus on Tesla. That hasn't happened yet. Tesla
Speaker 4: stock is cratering, sales are going to be bad, and
Speaker 4: yet Elon is doubling down on politics and making it
Speaker 4: very clear that, you know, he it was not enough
Speaker 4: to elect Trumps. He really wants to like keep the
Speaker 4: House of Representatives, and he's going all in on these
Speaker 4: state races. He's also giving money in Florida into some
Speaker 4: house races there. So this is like a longer game
Speaker 4: political play by Musk that Max and I have told
Speaker 4: our listeners and our readers about for months now, Like
Speaker 4: people have got to think wider about Musk's political ambitions.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit about those votes in Florida.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you have two house races. One Florida's first,
Speaker 3: which is in the Panhandle. It's Matt Gates's seat. That
Speaker 3: race is thought to be you know, I mean, that's
Speaker 3: a very, very heavily Republican district, would be very hard
Speaker 3: for the Democrats to win.
Speaker 2: Florida's sixth, which is the.
Speaker 3: One where Elon Musk's pack came in at the very
Speaker 3: last minute, is also heavily Republican, although not as heavily Republican,
Speaker 3: and it looks like the Democrat might have kind of
Speaker 3: an outside chance at least to make it close. We've
Speaker 3: seen this kind of broader thing happen nationally where Republicans
Speaker 3: are suddenly realizing that the electoral environment be very poor.
Speaker 3: Trump pulled elist Stephonics nomination for UN Ambassador that was
Speaker 3: seen as another effort to sort of shore up the House.
Speaker 3: So you're seeing and that's one of the reasons.
Speaker 6: Like, and Elon, as you said, in Florida, he's pretty
Speaker 6: much involved, his packs involved pretty much in all these
Speaker 6: in one shaper.
Speaker 5: No, I think.
Speaker 3: I think the one we know about is Florida six, uh,
Speaker 3: the closer race, and he and it's not a ton
Speaker 3: of money. I checked yesterday and it was sixty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: You know again, we're this is just a few days ago,
Speaker 3: so you know, you could imagine it going up pretty quickly,
Speaker 3: like if he does a TV buy or something. But
Speaker 3: that said, this looks like more of a last minute thing,
Speaker 3: not a you know where where Elon is reacting to
Speaker 3: the same thing that Republicans nationally reacting.
Speaker 6: To like a holy smoke.
Speaker 3: Oh no, we need to like do it, do anything
Speaker 3: we can to help. Wisconsin has been a much more deliberate,
Speaker 3: basically series of acts of political because the whole way
Speaker 3: there's huge number of employees canvassers on the ground, a
Speaker 3: lot of money. Like Dannis said, and you know, musk
Speaker 3: Is during this town hall basically said I don't expect
Speaker 3: to win now. Politicians and activists say that all the
Speaker 3: time in a way to like, you know, lower expectations.
Speaker 3: Maybe if he does win, then then he gets to
Speaker 3: have a huge celebration. But but if you take him
Speaker 3: out of his word, I don't think we should think
Speaker 3: of this as like if Elon loses, he's out of
Speaker 3: Republican politics. My reading is he is no matter what
Speaker 3: after the Wisconsin Yeah, he is going to play. This
Speaker 3: is more like a signal of what is to come
Speaker 3: in the midterms rather than this is going to be
Speaker 3: a test for how he behaves in the midterms.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And Dana also referenced how his involvement, as we well know,
Speaker 6: is hurting His involvement in politics is hurting his company, Tesla,
Speaker 6: quite a bit, and when he spoke the other day
Speaker 6: in Wisconsin, he mentioned that this is what he had
Speaker 6: to say.
Speaker 13: It's well, you know, my Teslis stock and the stock
Speaker 13: of everyone who holst Tesla's gone went roughly in half.
Speaker 13: I mean, it's a big deal. So not only is
Speaker 13: am I not getting I'm not getting paid definitely not
Speaker 13: stealing money and would never get away with it, but
Speaker 13: the value my Teslis stock is in half. So this
Speaker 13: is a very expensive job, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Can I just do a little fact check here, so
Speaker 2: the stock in half. I don't totally know what he's
Speaker 2: talking about it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I suppose what he's talking about is that
Speaker 3: the stock is down from reaching its peak of like
Speaker 3: post Trump euphoria in December. I think it's not about
Speaker 3: forty percent, not quite half, but like it's still like about.
Speaker 2: Where it was when the election happened.
Speaker 3: And we've seen Elon express similar sentiment elsewhere he was well,
Speaker 3: I guess Tim Waltz was being mean to him, Like
Speaker 3: he's definitely in a in a sort of mode where
Speaker 3: he's primed to feel aggrieved.
Speaker 6: But again, like, but here's the way to think about it,
Speaker 6: if you want to if you want to back him
Speaker 6: on the way he's framing the numbers. Trump wins. He
Speaker 6: plays a huge role in getting Trump elected. He's now
Speaker 6: in with the administration. He and his company stand to
Speaker 6: benefit a lot from that. Hence Tesla rips sores. It's
Speaker 6: only when the true role he's going to play with
Speaker 6: Doge and what Doge is going to do and the
Speaker 6: havoc is going to reek that you really start to
Speaker 6: see the stock crater believe, I mean, perhaps coming down
Speaker 6: of it, I get to be backing Trump. I could
Speaker 6: be his big you know, financial arm. I could be
Speaker 6: tight with him and I don't need to do Doge.
Speaker 6: Why do I need to do Doge in in order
Speaker 6: to be close to Trump? I guess would be the
Speaker 6: spin he's putting on it. But Den, while all this
Speaker 6: is swirling, you also had Trump announced auto tariffs, which
Speaker 6: we've been expecting a lot of tariffs, and a lot
Speaker 6: of tarriffs are apparently coming tomorrow. We didn't quite expect
Speaker 6: auto tariffs to come, and there's been a lot of
Speaker 6: debate as to whether Tesla benefits from these auto tariffs
Speaker 6: or is hurt by them.
Speaker 4: I don't know why people, I mean I expected auto
Speaker 4: tariffs to come. I mean Trump campaigned on like America first,
Speaker 4: and Tesla's CFO said, we are our profitability is going
Speaker 4: to be hurt by tariffs on the last earnings call.
Speaker 4: So like what shape the tariffs took, you know, people
Speaker 4: were confused about. I think I think what people have
Speaker 4: gotten wrong is they think that test somehow exempt from tariffs,
Speaker 4: and they're not because it's not just cars, it's parts,
Speaker 4: and Tesla does import a fair number of parts from
Speaker 4: other countries, and so they're not like immune from tariffs.
Speaker 4: They just start a slightly better position because they don't.
Speaker 4: You know, the cars that they sell the United States
Speaker 4: are made in the United States. They're not importing cars
Speaker 4: from Mexico.
Speaker 3: It could be a big day tomorrow, right because we've
Speaker 3: Liberation Day. Well, we're gonna learn yeah, because it's liberation
Speaker 3: Day and we're gonna find out exactly how these tariffs shakeout.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's come on, that's wishful thinking. But anyway,
Speaker 3: there'll be some kind of tariff update. We're gonna get
Speaker 3: the results.
Speaker 6: We're not gonna be liberated tomorrow.
Speaker 3: We're gonna Dan and I will be staying up late,
Speaker 3: but most normal people will get the results from the
Speaker 3: Wisconsin election in the morning, and then TESLA is about
Speaker 3: to report what most analysts believe is going to be
Speaker 3: a very very, very bad quarter.
Speaker 6: That's right. I did mean to ask this. This comes
Speaker 6: out tomorrow evening, Daniel, tomorrow morning, Tomorrow morninging. Okay, wow,
Speaker 6: it is, Yeah, it is a big day.
Speaker 2: I mean, it could be like it's like a triple witchy.
Speaker 6: It could be like a.
Speaker 3: Perfect storm of bad. On the other hand, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe who knows, Maybe it's all good. Maybe maybe they
Speaker 3: romp in Wisconsin and and Tesla does a little bit.
Speaker 3: You know, the expectations are so low right now with
Speaker 3: Tesla's deliveries, you know, notwithstanding last week's conversation where you know,
Speaker 3: of course we talked to a bull, but like if
Speaker 3: you talk to a lot of analysts, they are very
Speaker 3: down on this because of the political stuff, because of
Speaker 3: what we've.
Speaker 2: Seen from Europe.
Speaker 3: So if you know, I guess there's a possibility he
Speaker 3: could surprise somehow.
Speaker 6: Okay, super hard pivot here, Max, away from Tesla auto
Speaker 6: sales and tariffs. Let's talk babies, all right.
Speaker 3: So this is baby number thirteen. I believe that we
Speaker 3: know thirteen. There are fourteen?
Speaker 4: Well, there are fourteen. I guess it's like are we counting?
Speaker 4: Ashley's is number thirteen and Chavon's fourth is number fourteen,
Speaker 4: and we don't know the order in which they were born.
Speaker 6: I was, can you show your math?
Speaker 2: Max? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So sorry, Yeah, this is in the order that we
Speaker 3: learned of the babies existing. Yes, this is maybe thirteen
Speaker 3: or fourteen. And essentially we saw sort of a Twitter
Speaker 3: spat between Elon Musk and the mother of this child,
Speaker 3: Ashley Saint Clair, who is a conservative influencer. She showed
Speaker 3: up in sort of a paparazzi video, essentially saying that
Speaker 3: she was selling her Tesla in order to pay for
Speaker 3: the cost of, you know, raising your children because Elon Musk,
Speaker 3: according to her, has you know, cut her all, you know,
Speaker 3: basically essentially stopped paying as much in.
Speaker 6: Child This is another thing driving consumers with one more
Speaker 6: Tesla owner who who if you were bearished before, you're
Speaker 6: bearish now.
Speaker 2: Growing one step further than the sticker.
Speaker 3: Musk responded, I don't know if the child is mine
Speaker 3: or not, but don't sell your car. Put him not
Speaker 3: against finding out finding out?
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 4: But then she responded, well, we asked you to take
Speaker 4: a paternity test before the child was even born, and
Speaker 4: you refuse and you're a petulant child. Like it's just
Speaker 4: gotten very ugly. Laura Lumer is sort of adjacent to
Speaker 4: all this too.
Speaker 2: It's just like, what's Laura she's attacking?
Speaker 3: So so Ashley Sinclair because she is beefing with Elon
Speaker 3: Musk is now on the wrong side of the conservative
Speaker 3: Twitter ecosystem. They are, including Lumur, are kind of talking
Speaker 3: about her as a essentially as a turncoat and and worse.
Speaker 2: You know, you can imagine some of the kind.
Speaker 3: Of sexist tropes that are being deployed against the you know,
Speaker 3: the mother of one of his children, particularly locked in
Speaker 3: a you know, dispute over her child support. Obviously, it's
Speaker 3: it's not pretty. I can't imagine, and it does it does?
Speaker 2: I have to say it is.
Speaker 3: It is does show you maybe this was obvious, This
Speaker 3: is probably obvious to most normal people. But Musk has
Speaker 3: sort of gone around acting like he can have as
Speaker 3: many children as he wants without any negative consequences. And
Speaker 3: now we see, you know, he's in a dispute with
Speaker 3: Ashley Saint Clair, He's in a dispute with Grimes, who's
Speaker 3: a musician and the mother of another one of his children.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's getting messy.
Speaker 4: Let's not forget about Vivian, his biological child, who is
Speaker 4: just on the cover of teen Vogue. She is being
Speaker 4: very brave speaking out and giving her side of the
Speaker 4: story about what it was like to have Elon Musk
Speaker 4: as a father.
Speaker 6: Okay, we're going to rap, but as we do, Dana
Speaker 6: On Elon ink here you are the keeper of such
Speaker 6: things and I have to say, at the very beginning
Speaker 6: of this little segment, I was confused, what is the
Speaker 6: official number of children that you say? And as a
Speaker 6: result we say, Elon Musk currently has This.
Speaker 4: Is the line that I use. Elon Musk has fathered
Speaker 4: at least fourteen children that we know of.
Speaker 2: Very important. You use that you have that last.
Speaker 6: Clad Very good, you know. I in hindsight, somebody in
Speaker 6: the December twenty twenty four predictions should have come up
Speaker 6: with a forecast on how many kids.
Speaker 3: We had one a week Dan Harmony yeh senior editor
Speaker 3: and there on this very show. I can't remember, but
Speaker 3: she predicted more children and it has come true. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: but that's not a prediction.
Speaker 5: Well she'll have more.
Speaker 6: That's like saying the sun's gonna come up. How many children?
Speaker 6: Is really the prick that's gonna be one of my
Speaker 6: December twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: I feel like you're just ben because Chancer or whoever
Speaker 3: the hell you pick to win the derby runs.
Speaker 6: This is injured runs this weekend. Max. Before I say
Speaker 6: goodbye to you and Dana, remind us one more time.
Speaker 3: Yep, everybody's business. It'll be in your feed on Friday.
Speaker 3: Please let us know what you think and give us chance.
Speaker 3: We're really excited about this show and we think you're
Speaker 3: gonna really like it.
Speaker 5: Terrific.
Speaker 6: Max Dana, thanks as always, thanks for having us.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 6: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Masirakis is
Speaker 6: our editor, and Rayhan Harmansi our senior editor. Blake Maples
Speaker 6: handles engineering in Dave percellfactchecks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson.
Speaker 6: The Elaning theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa
Speaker 6: and Alex Sudijira. Brandon Francis Newnham is our executive producer,
Speaker 6: and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A
Speaker 6: big thanks as always to our supporters Joel Weber and
Speaker 6: Brad Stone. I'm David Papadoppolos. If you have a minute,
Speaker 6: rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 5: See you next week. Hey, there, don't go yet.
Speaker 6: I want to tell you about a new series for
Speaker 6: my colleagues here at Bloomberg. It's called Levittown. It's about
Speaker 6: a technology that's moving faster than the law, about dozens
Speaker 6: of young women in a New York suburb who discovered
Speaker 6: manipulated photos of themselves in a porn website. Told there
Speaker 6: isn't much the police or anyone else can do, decide
Speaker 6: to fight back, joining a global battle against deep fakes.
Speaker 6: Please note the trailer for the show you were about
Speaker 6: to hear features adult themes.
Speaker 12: Five years ago, this was a vast checkerboard at Potato
Speaker 12: Farms on New York's Long Island. Today this is Levittown,
Speaker 12: one of the most remarkable housing developments ever conceived.
Speaker 7: Levettown, New York, America's first suburb, row after row after
Speaker 7: row of cookie cutter homes, the picture of the American dream.
Speaker 7: But recently, underneath the facade of perfect order, a group
Speaker 7: of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.
Speaker 1: Someone was posting photos of many of the girls that
Speaker 1: we had gone to school with. There was one picture
Speaker 1: of me in a bathing suit, and I didn't have
Speaker 1: a bathing suit on anymore. It was just me naked,
Speaker 1: well not me, but me with someone else's body parts
Speaker 1: that looked exactly like my own.
Speaker 8: Over the last few years, rapid breakthroughs and machine learning
Speaker 8: have made it a lot easier and cheaper to make
Speaker 8: real looking photos or videos of pretty much anything you
Speaker 8: can think of. But innovation comes at a price.
Speaker 3: I felt gross.
Speaker 5: I felt like I needed to take a shower. I
Speaker 5: felt like I wanted to cry.
Speaker 2: I wanted to throw up, I wanted to scream.
Speaker 7: This is a story about a technology that is moving
Speaker 7: faster than the law, where everyone is a suspect, even
Speaker 7: your neighbors.
Speaker 1: It was always in the back of my head, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's someone that I know. How you'll find out who
Speaker 1: that someone is? When you know so many people from school, soccer,
Speaker 1: all these things.
Speaker 8: What we discovered in Levertown led us on a winding journey.
Speaker 8: I just always had in the back of my mind
Speaker 8: that any of them could.
Speaker 2: Be the one.
Speaker 8: Through the darkest corners of the Internet, they.
Speaker 11: Call it an arms race between law enforcement and technology,
Speaker 11: and it's just we're losing.
Speaker 9: We are absolutely losing.
Speaker 8: Where online vigilantes and enterprising detectives are joining forces.
Speaker 6: If you're given prey, you want to go and get it.
Speaker 7: In this story, the victims flip the script, band together
Speaker 7: and fight back alongside some unexpected global allies.
Speaker 8: I'm Margie Murphy and I'm Olivia Carvill. This is Levitown,
Speaker 8: a new Pops series from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 8: Listen to Levettown starting on March twenty, first on Bloomberg's
Speaker 8: Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 8: or wherever you get your podcasts.