Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 2: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 2: controlled by one man.
Speaker 1: Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 2: He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
Speaker 2: it will be different.
Speaker 3: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 1: on him.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 4: Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Elon, Inc.
Speaker 5: Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, January fourteenth.
Speaker 5: I'm Max Chafkin in for David Papadopolis, who's.
Speaker 2: On vacation this week. We had big news last night.
Speaker 5: TikTok is reportedly under consideration by Chinese officials to be
Speaker 5: sold or handed off. We're not totally sure what the
Speaker 5: terms of this would look like to none other than
Speaker 5: Elon Musk. We're gonna talk about the business implications, the
Speaker 5: political implications, and of course the implications for teenagers everywhere.
Speaker 5: And then, with the inauguration less than a week away,
Speaker 5: we're going to talk about the brewing feud between Steve Bannon,
Speaker 5: the kind of right wing influencer and podcaster, former Trump
Speaker 5: administration official, and good old Elon. And to do this,
Speaker 5: we've got a great cast of characters for you. Kurt
Speaker 5: Wagner is joining us. He is Bloomberg's social media reporter
Speaker 5: and my favorite high school quarterback.
Speaker 1: Hey, Kurt, i'm ax.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 5: And later Dana Hall, our Elon Musk reporter, and Josh Green,
Speaker 5: Bloomberg BusinessWeek political reporter, will be joining us to talk
Speaker 5: about political stuff.
Speaker 2: But Kurt, let's start here. There's some news.
Speaker 5: But to people who listen to the Elon podcast, it
Speaker 5: would have been a little bit familiar. I want to
Speaker 5: play a little bit of tape from our end of
Speaker 5: the year, our New Year's Eve special.
Speaker 3: I just don't see that being that beneficial for Elon,
Speaker 3: like to have true social I think it's more likely
Speaker 3: that he will will somehow end up with the US
Speaker 3: version of TikTok Kurt.
Speaker 5: This is why Sarah Fryar makes a big bucks, Am
Speaker 5: I right? I mean she called it.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The pay grade is high for Sarah Fryer for this
Speaker 4: very reason. Right, She is seeing around corners that you
Speaker 4: and I can only wish wish to be seen around.
Speaker 5: Max Okay, So Sarah was suggesting that Elon Musk could
Speaker 5: somehow take over TikTok. Why don't she just break down
Speaker 5: what Bloomberg reported last night. I mean this was a
Speaker 5: big this is big news in the world of business.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we are admittedly still aways from Sarah's prediction
Speaker 4: coming true. But what we reported was that senior officials
Speaker 4: in China are basically game planning what do we do
Speaker 4: if the TikTok ban goes into effect, right, which is
Speaker 4: supposed to happen this coming Sunday. And one of the
Speaker 4: options that has been discussed was the idea that, well,
Speaker 4: maybe Elon Musk would be a reasonable owner for this platform, right,
Speaker 4: And it kind of makes sense in a number of
Speaker 4: ways if you want it to. One is that he
Speaker 4: obviously already owns X. He has a very close relationship
Speaker 4: with incoming President Trump, so it, you know, in all likelihood,
Speaker 4: would be approved by the incoming administration, which is one
Speaker 4: part of this equation. But then he also has business
Speaker 4: in China, right with Tesla, and he has a huge
Speaker 4: sort of foot in that country. And if you are
Speaker 4: the Chinese government and you say well, is there someone
Speaker 4: we want to curry favor with?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Is there somebody that we want to if this has
Speaker 4: to be sold, if that's the only way for this
Speaker 4: thing to exist, is Elon Musk perhaps the most stomachable
Speaker 4: option for them, in part because they also maybe get
Speaker 4: some leverage in return, and so for all those reasons,
Speaker 4: it is sort of being discussed as a possibility. I
Speaker 4: want to be clear that this is not necessarily going
Speaker 4: to happen. That there's a whole bunch of other things
Speaker 4: that would have to happen for this to ever actually
Speaker 4: come to fruition. But again, senior officials in China sort
Speaker 4: of thinking about Elon as a possible owner of TikTok
Speaker 4: as a possibility.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to.
Speaker 5: Build on that for a second. So Number one, Byte
Speaker 5: Dance the parent company of TikTok. They are not directly
Speaker 5: controlled by the Chinese government. There is some question about
Speaker 5: whether just because Chinese officials are talking about this would
Speaker 5: Bite Dance to it, although, as as many people know,
Speaker 5: China's government has a huge amount of sway on its businesses.
Speaker 5: TikTok has actually called this report quote pure fiction. Responding
Speaker 5: to a different news outlet, Kurt has Elon commented on
Speaker 5: this yet, I.
Speaker 1: Haven't seen him comment, but he did.
Speaker 4: Someone posted on Twitter last night that was like, here's
Speaker 4: all the TikTok users when Elon buys the company, and
Speaker 4: it was all these people like screaming and crying and
Speaker 4: being all sad. And Elon just responded to that tweet
Speaker 4: with the laughing face emoji, right, like he he didn't
Speaker 4: necessarily come out and say like this is crazy, I
Speaker 4: would never buy it. He's sort of like leaned into
Speaker 4: the joke, if you will. But no, you know, we
Speaker 4: tried to reach out to Elon before publishing the story,
Speaker 4: as you can imagine, Max, we did not hear back
Speaker 4: from him or his representatives. So but I think what
Speaker 4: you just said is important, right, which is the role
Speaker 4: of byte Dance and all this So ByteDance, of course
Speaker 4: is the Chinese parent company of TikTok, and it has
Speaker 4: said it has no intention of selling this business. Now,
Speaker 4: I think where the Chinese government comes in is if
Speaker 4: they're the only way forward for TikTok to exist in
Speaker 4: the US is a sale, and if they want to
Speaker 4: sell it with the algorithm included, right, So that's the
Speaker 4: technology that sort of determines what everyone.
Speaker 2: Says, that type of sale, with that.
Speaker 4: Type of technology changing hands would actually require Chinese government approval.
Speaker 2: Kurt, how unusual is this?
Speaker 5: I mean, just from the outside, you know, a world
Speaker 5: power sort of discussing handing one of the most successful
Speaker 5: companies to a foreign politically connected executive, Like it sounds
Speaker 5: so crazy, But I mean, like how I guess, I
Speaker 5: guess question is, like how crazy is this? Obviously Sarah
Speaker 5: Fryar predicted it, so it can't be that crazy, but still.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I'm not familiar of sort of a
Speaker 4: similar situation, certainly in like the consumer tech space, right, Like,
Speaker 4: nothing like this has ever happened from a social networking standpoint.
Speaker 4: I can say that with a lot of confidence. I'm
Speaker 4: not like a geopolitical expert when it comes to China
Speaker 4: and trade and and all that stuff. So perhaps there
Speaker 4: have been other businesses where there's been discussions like this,
Speaker 4: But I think this sort of you know, is exemplifies
Speaker 4: a little bit about like what is so unique about
Speaker 4: our current moment in time, right like President Trump coming
Speaker 4: back to office and all of sort of the unusual
Speaker 4: or untraditional methods that he operates under. Elon Musk and
Speaker 4: all of the sort of chaos that usually comes with him.
Speaker 4: This and that you know, we've been talking about for
Speaker 4: four years, but now is finally kind of coming together
Speaker 4: at this exact moment in time, when when there's a
Speaker 4: transition of power. So I do think that this is
Speaker 4: very unique, very you know, interesting time for both tech
Speaker 4: but also geopolitics. As you point out, I can't really
Speaker 4: think of anything off the top of my head at
Speaker 4: least that that sort of rivals this moment for me.
Speaker 5: Well, and as you hinted at earlier there, it's probably
Speaker 5: it's hard to think of another prominent American chief executive
Speaker 5: officer who is as close to China as Elon Musk. Right,
Speaker 5: he enjoys a very good relationship with Beijing. Tesla was
Speaker 5: able to open a car factory, you know, quicker than
Speaker 5: anybody else. They changed the rules effectively for ownership of
Speaker 5: car factories for Elon Musk, So like you can imagine
Speaker 5: him being a person that both Beijing could get comfortable
Speaker 5: with and Trump. Kurt, what about Elon and TikTok. I
Speaker 5: mean he has said in the past, unless I'm mistaken,
Speaker 5: and that he wanted X to be more like TikTok,
Speaker 5: So it seems like there's really a lot of synergy
Speaker 5: with this proposal.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean I think if you're Elon, this is like
Speaker 4: the biggest coup of all time, right, Like you suddenly
Speaker 4: get one of the most valuable, most exciting, up and
Speaker 4: coming social networks sort of gift wrapped to you.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: And I think one element of this that we just
Speaker 4: do not know is, let's pretend this all these stars
Speaker 4: align max, right, and the Chinese government says, hey, we
Speaker 4: want Elon to own this, And Trump says, hey, that
Speaker 4: solves our national security concerns. And Elon says, great. What
Speaker 4: does a deal actually look like here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Because we know that he is, you know, has a
Speaker 4: ton of loans that he has taken out over the
Speaker 4: years that use his Tesla stock as collateral. He's obviously
Speaker 4: the richest man in the world, no doubt he could
Speaker 4: find go out and find banks and other investors to
Speaker 4: help him finance something like this. But as we saw
Speaker 4: with the Twitter deal, it's not always like quite as
Speaker 4: easy as like, oh, he's super rich, he can totally
Speaker 4: do this thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what would TikTok go for? Like how much?
Speaker 5: What would be like a reasonable fair market value for
Speaker 5: Elon Musk to pay.
Speaker 4: So I believe our analysts at Bloomberg have pegged the
Speaker 4: value of the US business. You know, the US version
Speaker 4: of TikTok is somewhere between forty and fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 4: So this is not the kind of thing that you
Speaker 4: just like pop over to the bank and withdraw from
Speaker 4: your savings account to make this thing happen. So I
Speaker 4: do think there, you know, that is a probably significant hurdle.
Speaker 4: You could imagine perhaps the Chinese government again if the
Speaker 4: if it ultimately comes down to them saying, hey, this
Speaker 4: is a deal, we really want this guy to have this.
Speaker 4: Maybe they give him a sweetheart deal, right, because they
Speaker 4: know in return they're buying sort of a relationship with
Speaker 4: Elon Musk that's even greater than the one, as you
Speaker 4: mentioned that they already have.
Speaker 5: I mean, you're using a lot of language that is
Speaker 5: going to set off alarm bells with critics, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: the prospect of this hugely successful social media company just
Speaker 5: being handed to Elon Musk, a politically connected both to
Speaker 5: the the leaders of both countries, Like, I mean, this
Speaker 5: sounds like just a I don't even want to bring
Speaker 5: up anti trust, but like hugely problematic in terms of
Speaker 5: self dealing, in terms of all the concerns that supposedly
Speaker 5: prompted Elon Muck to buy Twitter in the first place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I want to be clear, like I'm sort
Speaker 4: of a game scenario planning here, right. I Like what
Speaker 4: we know is in the story, which is what we
Speaker 4: talked about at the very beginning, Max, which is like,
Speaker 4: these discussions are happening at the top levels of the
Speaker 4: Chinese government. That's really where we are right now, right.
Speaker 4: Everything else is sort of like a hypothetical situation. So
Speaker 4: I do want to be clear about that. But I
Speaker 4: also think it's fair for people to say, WHOA, this
Speaker 4: feels a little bit questionable, This feels like a little
Speaker 4: bit you know, maybe even scary, right, because it's not
Speaker 4: as we've talked about on this pod, and as y'all
Speaker 4: have covered much closer even than I have, Like, Elon
Speaker 4: is someone who has relationships with a lot of world leaders,
Speaker 4: not all of them necessarily friends of the United States
Speaker 4: in the traditional sense, right, And so I think there
Speaker 4: is a feeling from some of Elon's critics in particular,
Speaker 4: that like this idea of him having any type of
Speaker 4: advanced relationship with the Chinese government could be a questionable thing,
Speaker 4: a questionable decision for the Trump administration to make. So
Speaker 4: there's a lot that we don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean, what happens now, what are you going to
Speaker 5: be watching over the next week or so as we
Speaker 5: proceed to the inauguration and then the deadline for TikTok
Speaker 5: potentially being banned from the US.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, I mean, the most immediate kind of domino
Speaker 4: to fall here is the Supreme Court ruling. So on
Speaker 4: Friday of last week, TikTok's lawyers and the US government's
Speaker 4: lawyers argued before the Supreme Court about whether or not
Speaker 4: this band should be upheld. We're still waiting for the
Speaker 4: court to ultimately come up with the decision on that. Now,
Speaker 4: the expectation is that the law will be upheld, the
Speaker 4: ban will be upheld, and we will then get to Sunday,
Speaker 4: this coming Sunday, the nineteenth, and it will go into effect, right,
Speaker 4: and so that will mean Apple and Google and Oracle
Speaker 4: like the people who make it possible for a mayors
Speaker 4: to download this app taking it off of the App Store,
Speaker 4: no longer supporting sort of the cloud infrastructure for TikTok
Speaker 4: in the US, and then Monday comes along and President
Speaker 4: Trump is inaugurated, and suddenly now the ball is sort
Speaker 4: of in his court. Right, this app has been banned,
Speaker 4: he said he doesn't want to be banned. What can
Speaker 4: he do? We don't entirely know. There's a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of different sort of theories as to what he could do.
Speaker 4: Could he tell the Justice Department, hey, don't enforce this ban, right,
Speaker 4: just simply let it happen and don't enforce the law.
Speaker 4: Could he convince you know, Congress to basically, you know,
Speaker 4: somehow reverse this law in some way or tweak it
Speaker 4: so that it's delayed to the point where he can
Speaker 4: try to negotiate. So I think immediately it's Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: and then after that it's a lot of we don't know,
Speaker 4: right because as the one thing we do know is
Speaker 4: that President Trump is a bit of a wild card,
Speaker 4: and so it's hard to sit here and really predict
Speaker 4: what he's going to do. But I think we have
Speaker 4: to get through the Supreme Court thing this week to
Speaker 4: really have an idea of what the other options really
Speaker 4: even are.
Speaker 2: All Right, Well, we'll be watching Kurt.
Speaker 5: I assume we'll be checking in on this, you know,
Speaker 5: as soon as next week, depending on what happens. Thanks
Speaker 5: again for joining us, and yeah.
Speaker 4: We'll see you soon, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 5: All right, let's bring in Josh Green, BusinessWeek's political reporter.
Speaker 2: Josh welcome to Elon Inc.
Speaker 1: Good to be back with you.
Speaker 5: And Dana Hall Elon Musk reporter and podcast regulator.
Speaker 2: Dana welcome to Elon Inc.
Speaker 5: Hey, Max, So, Josh, your book, Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency got into
Speaker 5: basically the rise of Steve Bannon and the influence he
Speaker 5: had on Trump and trump Ism. I want to play
Speaker 5: a clip from Bannon's war Room podcast from earlier this
Speaker 5: month in which Bannon a tax Elon, Let's give it
Speaker 5: a listen.
Speaker 2: This is the United States of America.
Speaker 7: We're not gonna be lectured by a bunch of white
Speaker 7: guys from South Africa.
Speaker 1: Don't need it.
Speaker 2: We loving converts.
Speaker 7: But the converts sit in the back and study for
Speaker 7: years and year and years to make sure you understand
Speaker 7: the faith, and you understand the nuances of the faith
Speaker 7: and understand how you can internalize the faith. Don't come
Speaker 7: up and go to the pulpit in your first week
Speaker 7: here and start lecturing people about the way things are
Speaker 7: going to be. If you're gonna do that, we're gonna
Speaker 7: get and we're gonna rip your face off.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 5: So those are some that's some tough language from see Bannon. Josh,
Speaker 5: what are the dynamics here? I mean, obviously Bannon doesn't
Speaker 5: mean it literally, but what does he mean?
Speaker 8: I mean, look, Bannon, you know, as I wrote in
Speaker 8: Devil's Part, Bannon was sort of the intellectual architect of
Speaker 8: a lot of trump Ism and kind of maga economics.
Speaker 8: He kind of pulled together this stuff into a philosophy
Speaker 8: and sees himself as the kind of high priest. Is
Speaker 8: that is that quote sort of reflected the trouble with
Speaker 8: with Elon from Bannon's standpoint is that he sees him
Speaker 8: as as a threat, but also it's kind of a
Speaker 8: useful idiot in terms of being able to or being
Speaker 8: willing to donate to get Trump elected, to keep him
Speaker 8: in power, to help Republicans. The real fight, though, is
Speaker 8: at the central tension in the new Trump administration is
Speaker 8: shaping up to be between the Bannon camp and the
Speaker 8: Elon camp. That's the way I think of it, the
Speaker 8: kind of like analog one point zero populist nationalists, the
Speaker 8: Bannon guys, and the kind of new breed of Silicon
Speaker 8: Valley right wing provocateur Elon types, who include a whole
Speaker 8: crowd of guys David Zachs, Vivek Ramaswami and others who
Speaker 8: are trying to put their stamp on the incoming Trump administration.
Speaker 8: And what Bannon's fulminating anger reflects is that there's a
Speaker 8: big kind of intellectual tug of war going on right
Speaker 8: now for who is going to control Trump, who is
Speaker 8: going to be in Trump's ear, and Bannon is doing
Speaker 8: everything he can to try and ensure that Elon does
Speaker 8: not become that guy.
Speaker 5: I mean, these are basically the people who, as they
Speaker 5: see it, built the MAGA movement, and now there's this,
Speaker 5: you know, new guy who put a lot of money up,
Speaker 5: but you know, is a newcomer.
Speaker 2: Essentially.
Speaker 5: It didn't didn't believe any of this stuff until very recently.
Speaker 5: I mean, Dana, I'm kind of curious watching this and
Speaker 5: particularly watching Bannon bring up critiques that we've heard of
Speaker 5: Elon Musk, but often from the left, like what do
Speaker 5: you make of of what we've seen so far.
Speaker 6: Well, I have to admit, and I'm Josh, I'm so
Speaker 6: glad you're here, Like I've kind of lost the plot
Speaker 6: on this whole like Bannon Musk feud because I sort
Speaker 6: of see it as like, Okay, you've got like Bannon
Speaker 6: and Laura Lumer and all these people who were like
Speaker 6: very central to Trump rise in twenty sixteen, like in
Speaker 6: one camp, and then you have Elon and David Sachs
Speaker 6: and all these other kind of tech bros. Is like
Speaker 6: the Johnny cum latelies right, who are like yeah, right,
Speaker 6: And so there's like a little bit of like wait,
Speaker 6: like we were here first, like attention about the newcomers.
Speaker 6: But isn't it also this big fight about immigration?
Speaker 3: Like I thought that the.
Speaker 6: Whole H one B visa issue was central to this feud,
Speaker 6: and I'm still a little stuck on, like I don't
Speaker 6: really know what Bannon thinks about H one B visas.
Speaker 6: I mean, clearly Musk is very pro H one B visa.
Speaker 6: His companies have thrived because of a lot of talent
Speaker 6: from elsewhere. You know, Musk always says that like it's
Speaker 6: like if you're fielding an NBA team. You want to
Speaker 6: be able to hire the best of the brightest. And
Speaker 6: so could you maybe walk us through a little bit
Speaker 6: why immigration is kind of central to this beef.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 8: I Mean the way, like one way to think about
Speaker 8: it is that like there's going to be a year's
Speaker 8: long fight now in the Republican Party over what Trump
Speaker 8: does and what he stands for, and the fight over
Speaker 8: H one b Visas. It's kind of like the first
Speaker 8: shots at Fort Sumter in the Civil War, like this,
Speaker 8: this is where the fight's happening first. It's going to
Speaker 8: spread to a lot of other areas. So Bannon's complain
Speaker 8: on H one b Visas is he is a nativist.
Speaker 8: He is a you know, populous nationalist, is what he
Speaker 8: calls himself. And he believes that immigrants should not be
Speaker 8: allowed to come in, including high skilled immigrants, to take these
Speaker 8: jobs that ought to go to Americans instead. And one
Speaker 8: little twist Bannon has added lately, he spent four months
Speaker 8: in prison and befriended a lot of black and Hispanic
Speaker 8: folks and said, you know, if Elon weren't importing Indian workers,
Speaker 8: these are abandoned words, you know, guys, like I was
Speaker 8: hanging out with in prison, Hispanics Blacks would have the
Speaker 8: opportunities to become trained and hired as engineers. And essentially
Speaker 8: Bannon's contention is that Elon and his crowd are screwing
Speaker 8: over hardworking American citizens and privileging foreigners because doing so
Speaker 8: makes it cheaper and more profitable for them to run
Speaker 8: their businesses. And to me, like the key quote from Bannon,
Speaker 8: he gave an interview I think it was to Bright
Speaker 8: Barton News about a week ago that really kind of
Speaker 8: laid out his beef with Elon. He said, quote, he
Speaker 8: will do anything to make sure that any of his
Speaker 8: companies is protected or has a better deal, or he
Speaker 8: makes more money his aggregation of wealth and then through
Speaker 8: wealth power.
Speaker 1: That's what Elon is focused on Bannon.
Speaker 8: And I think that that sort of reflects what's at
Speaker 8: the heart of a lot of these fights that Bannon
Speaker 8: thinks Elon isn't a true believer and he's going to
Speaker 8: have this sort of death match with Elon to try
Speaker 8: and prevail and hold on to his influencer Trump.
Speaker 5: I mean the thing to me, h one b has
Speaker 5: been basically like a tech lobbyist issue for a really
Speaker 5: long time because it's a way for big tech companies
Speaker 5: to get less expensive engineers, and big tech companies, including
Speaker 5: Elon Musk right, have been complaining that they don't have
Speaker 5: enough engineers or whatever. So like, it's kind of interesting
Speaker 5: because as much as Elon has adopted these sort of
Speaker 5: like super hard right positions, you know, at the same
Speaker 5: time this is going on, he's banging the drum on
Speaker 5: X about Tommy Robinson, who's you know, this this very
Speaker 5: far right wing British guy who's in prison now, Like
Speaker 5: he's adopting some issues that are like kind of just normal,
Speaker 5: like help out my tech company type stuff.
Speaker 2: And that is what I mean, that's what Bannon's keying
Speaker 2: in on.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I mean the weird thing about all this
Speaker 8: is I did a story for Bloomberg News last week
Speaker 8: as part of a team that looked at Elon trying
Speaker 8: to extend his political influence into Europe, getting involved in
Speaker 8: politics there, and I ended up interviewing Bannon for the piece,
Speaker 8: and Bannon supports what Elon is doing in Europe. He said,
Speaker 8: you know, the enemy of my enemy is my is
Speaker 8: my friend, and therefore I'm four square behind Elon going
Speaker 8: after these kind of center left snooty European governments, and
Speaker 8: I hope he puts as much you know, money and
Speaker 8: manpower and tech savvy into those as he did into
Speaker 8: the US election. So, you know, I think that Bannon
Speaker 8: views Elon as a threat, but he also views him
Speaker 8: as an instrument that he'd like to be able to
Speaker 8: wield in a lot of political fights, both in the
Speaker 8: US and abroad.
Speaker 6: Didn't Bannon kind of walk back some of his comments
Speaker 6: today at some kind of political event, you know, he's like, well,
Speaker 6: he like deserves a seat, you know, he's urged a
Speaker 6: seat at the table because he strokes this big check.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, look, Ben, let's let's let's back up a little bit.
Speaker 8: We talked about this on this podcast before. And be clear,
Speaker 8: Bannon was wrong about Elon Musk. I mean he told
Speaker 8: me a year ago, try two years ago, that Elon
Speaker 8: was never going to be a big player in right
Speaker 8: wing maga politics because he was a cheap skate, as
Speaker 8: Bannon put it, he'll never stroke a check. Well, Elon
Speaker 8: ended up stroking a lot of big checks during the
Speaker 8: last presidential race, and his promise to keep stroking them
Speaker 8: for all sorts of Republican incumbents Republican challengers to help
Speaker 8: Trump and Republicans maintain a grip on power.
Speaker 1: So Bannon has had to backpedal a little bit on that.
Speaker 8: And the fact of the matter is that the fact
Speaker 8: that Elon is willing to do this has really bought
Speaker 8: him a prime position in Trump's inner circle. Like I
Speaker 8: expected Trump to very quickly tire of Elon and his
Speaker 8: annex and you get a lot of leaks from folks,
Speaker 8: and I've heard this myself along the lines of, you know,
Speaker 8: Trump doesn't want any co stars. Trump is sick of Elond.
Speaker 8: I had a source in the administration the other day
Speaker 8: say that, you know, Trump asked him if Elon was
Speaker 8: on the spectrum, And so you can tell there's an
Speaker 8: annoyance factor there. And yet because Elon is both willing
Speaker 8: to give money and has this big and an influential
Speaker 8: platform in Twitter and X, you know, Trump doesn't want
Speaker 8: to throw him overboard. And so he's there and he's influential,
Speaker 8: and he's someone that Bannon is going to have to
Speaker 8: contend with.
Speaker 5: To me, one of the things that's been most interesting
Speaker 5: about this is the extent to which Bannon and like
Speaker 5: Laura Lumer and some.
Speaker 2: Of these right wing figures.
Speaker 5: They kind of have Elon's number, Like they're bringing up
Speaker 5: issues that I think sting a little bit right, Like
Speaker 5: Bannon and Lumer have brought up issues around China, you know,
Speaker 5: Elon's proximity to Beijing, Elon's like the history around Tesla.
Speaker 5: One of the things that Bannon has said is that,
Speaker 5: you know, Elon's goal is to become the world's first trillionaire.
Speaker 5: And Dan, I'm kind of curious, like, do you buy
Speaker 5: that as a motivation? Is that is that his goal is?
Speaker 5: Is Steve Bannon? I mean, he's a perceptive guy. He
Speaker 5: might be right about this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I think that people need to recognize that,
Speaker 6: like Musk is amassing all this wealth for his number
Speaker 6: one goal, which is to get to Mars, and like
Speaker 6: all of his wealth accumulation is really in service of
Speaker 6: the Mars mission, which has been like the animating force
Speaker 6: in his life since he was like twelve years old
Speaker 6: or thirteen or whatever. And read Isaac Asimov. I mean,
Speaker 6: all everything that Elon does is about getting to Mars.
Speaker 6: He is a man in a hurry. He really wants
Speaker 6: to get to Mars before he dies. He would like to,
Speaker 6: you know, so It's like all of this accumulation is
Speaker 6: in the service of that. It's not like to be
Speaker 6: rich just to be rich. It's like to be rich
Speaker 6: so that he can colonize another planet. And I think
Speaker 6: that like you're looking at Tesla's stock price, and you're
Speaker 6: looking at the valuation of SpaceX, and you're looking at now,
Speaker 6: you know, as we just had in our first segment,
Speaker 6: the possibility that must could buy TikTok at the US,
Speaker 6: and you're looking at you know, all of his other companies,
Speaker 6: and Yeah, I could totally see it. I would be
Speaker 6: shocked if anyone else became the first trillion air besides him.
Speaker 5: So, Josh, let's talk about Doge for a second. I
Speaker 5: mean this relates to the banned stuff. We've seen a
Speaker 5: couple of reports come out around Doge, one in the
Speaker 5: New York Times last night suggesting that Elon would have
Speaker 5: office space in the Executive Office building. Now I'm curious,
Speaker 5: just one of the things that Bannon has been railing
Speaker 5: about is kind of trying to keep Musk from having
Speaker 5: too much influence over Trump.
Speaker 2: Is this good real estate or bad real estate?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 5: How good is it to have an office in the
Speaker 5: Executive Office building, Like, what does this tell us about
Speaker 5: how much influence Elon has and how important Doge is,
Speaker 5: at least in the mind of Trump and the people
Speaker 5: who are close to him.
Speaker 8: Well, let's back, it's good to have that kind of
Speaker 8: real estate because it means you're a short walk away
Speaker 8: from the West Wing and the president. And fights over
Speaker 8: real estate and access go back probably a couple hundred years.
Speaker 8: In US politics, every administration is you know, everybody is
Speaker 8: jockeying to get close to the president. And that's especially
Speaker 8: true when you have a president like Donald Trump or
Speaker 8: like Ronald Reagan, who's particularly prone to listening to the
Speaker 8: advice of the last person to have his ear. And
Speaker 8: so Bannon's big fear. We talked about this the other day.
Speaker 8: He said, mark my words, Elon is not going to
Speaker 8: get a blue pass to the White House. A blue
Speaker 8: pass is the best pass. It gives you all access,
Speaker 8: it gives you drop in privileges and the president of
Speaker 8: the Oval Office. Bannon doesn't want that to happen because
Speaker 8: he knows that if Elon is sitting there talking in
Speaker 8: Trump's ear, then Elon is the one with influence and
Speaker 8: Bannon is not.
Speaker 5: Wait, so if you have the office in the Executive
Speaker 5: Office building. Do you get the blue pass or is
Speaker 5: that Are there levels here?
Speaker 1: No, that's separate.
Speaker 8: Look, the Executive Office Building is the building kind of
Speaker 8: like it's a short walk from the West Wing, but
Speaker 8: it's not an office in the West Wing. I mean,
Speaker 8: what you ideally want to have is what Bannon had
Speaker 8: when Trump was first selected in twenty seventeen. That's in
Speaker 8: office in the West wing of the White House, you know,
Speaker 8: ten feet from the Oval office, where you can kind
Speaker 8: of drop in and you're talking to the president all day.
Speaker 1: You can control the paper flow of what.
Speaker 8: He sees, presuming the president reads, which I guess we
Speaker 8: shouldn't presume anything, but in a normal White House, that's
Speaker 8: that's what you want, is you want to be able
Speaker 8: to control the flow of information. And that's the big
Speaker 8: concern that Bannon has with Elon that if he's allowed
Speaker 8: to be in Trump's inner orbit to have his ear,
Speaker 8: then he's going to convince Trump. As Trump said, you
Speaker 8: know a couple of weeks ago, I think that every
Speaker 8: foreign college graduate in the US should have a visa
Speaker 8: staple to his diploma. That's the kind of language that
Speaker 8: Steve Bannon and his ilk have nightmares about that's the
Speaker 8: sort of thing that Elon's pushing for and that a
Speaker 8: lot of other people frankly would love.
Speaker 1: To have him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's tech lobbyist language.
Speaker 1: Well, tech lobbyist language.
Speaker 8: And you know, look, a lot of kind of you know,
Speaker 8: pro business folks on the left and the right would
Speaker 8: love to have you know, more foreign educated students stay
Speaker 8: in the US help grow US productivity. But it's absolutely
Speaker 8: not what a Steve Bannon or a Steven.
Speaker 1: Miller wants to have.
Speaker 8: And so the fact that Doze is going to be
Speaker 8: in the Executive Office building means like, you know, it's
Speaker 8: sort of a formal designation. You're part of this administration,
Speaker 8: and you're very close to the West wing, but you're
Speaker 8: not all the way into the West wing. So there's
Speaker 8: still gonna be a question of is Elon going to
Speaker 8: like do what normal EOB workers do and like get
Speaker 8: your coffee at Starbucks every morning and sort of trudge
Speaker 8: up to your office and work there all day. I
Speaker 8: kind of doubt it, So, you know, I wouldn't read
Speaker 8: too much meaning into like where their office space is
Speaker 8: going to be. But you know, again, it's another kind
Speaker 8: of like move on the chess board of Elon trying
Speaker 8: to get closer to Trump and Bannon trying to checkmate
Speaker 8: him and sort of knock all his pieces off the table.
Speaker 1: It isn't.
Speaker 6: I mean, Elon is close to Trump. Like Elon has
Speaker 6: been camped out at mar A Lago, like renting some
Speaker 6: little cottage like right there in Palm Beach. He's like
Speaker 6: constantly flying back and forth. He's been at mari A
Speaker 6: Lago like ever since the election, and he'll probably be
Speaker 6: at inauguration on Monday, I would assume, Like, and they
Speaker 6: talk to each other directly, Like there's no intermediary between
Speaker 6: Elon and Donald. They like are texting each other and
Speaker 6: talking to each other all the time. So like, isn't
Speaker 6: Elon Musk closer to Trump than Bannon is at this point?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Look, you know, I think what happens when a president
Speaker 8: goes into the White House is that the situation changes.
Speaker 8: The people around him are very very tightly controlled, not
Speaker 8: just by the Secret Service, but you know, if Trump
Speaker 8: needs to go down to the situation room, like Elon
Speaker 8: can't just sort of follow him in.
Speaker 1: There are rules that even Trump and.
Speaker 8: Elon can't flout, you know, And a lot of the
Speaker 8: challenge for Susie Wiles, President Trump's incoming chief of staff
Speaker 8: is going to be and this is true in the
Speaker 8: last Trump administration, controlling who has access to the president.
Speaker 8: If you let enough crazies in there, if you let
Speaker 8: Laura Lumer in there, if you let Rudy Giuliani in there,
Speaker 8: if you let all these kind of wacko election denihilists
Speaker 8: you know who were in there kind of causing chaos
Speaker 8: last time around, the things pretty quickly go off the rails.
Speaker 8: And that's not what the kind of serious people in
Speaker 8: trus Orbit want to happen. It's also not what like
Speaker 8: Bannon and the MAGA hardcore people want to happen. So
Speaker 8: it's not going to be quite as easy for Elon
Speaker 8: to drop in on Trump in the White House as
Speaker 8: it is in mar A Lago, where there's kind of
Speaker 8: like an open door policy and any rich person or
Speaker 8: celebrity it can just kind of come trapesing in and
Speaker 8: shout up the President.
Speaker 1: I think it'll be a little tougher this summer.
Speaker 5: Else, I just want you to know, both of you,
Speaker 5: you have access to me unfettered. Anytime to Max, I
Speaker 5: will I will pick up the phone, the blue pass
Speaker 5: to my intellect.
Speaker 2: Finally, we're going to have an update from the world
Speaker 2: of sports E sports.
Speaker 5: Actually, we talked about Musk's very, very high ranking in
Speaker 5: the game Diablo. For Josh this may come as news
Speaker 5: to you, but he has apparently spent a huge amount
Speaker 5: of time.
Speaker 2: Playing this video game, playing video games.
Speaker 5: He streams video games, and during our year end specials,
Speaker 5: Ryan Broderick, our guest, suggested that Musk might have a
Speaker 5: ghost player. He might have someone essentially juicing his video
Speaker 5: game stats, getting him better in the in the ratings
Speaker 5: so he could like look better in.
Speaker 2: The world of Diablo. Now there's news here.
Speaker 5: There's a news development, and I just didn't want to
Speaker 5: let this podcast end without bringing it up. So Musk
Speaker 5: streamed himself playing another game. It's called Path of Exile
Speaker 5: two and it basically he was sort of clumsy about
Speaker 5: it in a way that sent a bunch of content
Speaker 5: creators into a frenzy. The sort of leader of this
Speaker 5: of these whistleblowers or would be whistleblowers, was a guy
Speaker 5: named Quinn sixty nine TV. Quinn sixty nine TV identified
Speaker 5: behavior that seemed inconsistent with having reached such a high level, Dana,
Speaker 5: I just got to ask you, is Elon Musk doing
Speaker 5: video game doping?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 6: Well, you know this is the investigative like reporting line
Speaker 6: that I think we have just really put top of
Speaker 6: mind as we head into twenty twenty five. I mean,
Speaker 6: Elon is a gamer, right, He's always been a video gamer.
Speaker 6: Is how he unwinds.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of.
Speaker 6: His references are to video games. He is like fundamentally
Speaker 6: like a thirteen year old boy in terms of so
Speaker 6: much it wouldn't surprise me. But I don't have definitive proof.
Speaker 6: And I think that he often plays video games when
Speaker 6: he's like on his plane and at weird hours and
Speaker 6: he's streaming because he's trying to like gain impressions and
Speaker 6: like make X be this big thing. And so there's
Speaker 6: a lot of motivations as to why I don't have
Speaker 6: definitive proof, just like I don't have definitive proof about
Speaker 6: Adrian Dittman.
Speaker 5: Josh, if this scandal proves to be true, how damaging
Speaker 5: do you think it'll be to the incoming administration? I mean,
Speaker 5: is this this is gonna be the thing that finally
Speaker 5: does Trump ban after all these years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this will be like Watergate for sure.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 8: I love the fact, by the way, that there's like
Speaker 8: video game truthers out there kind of like examining his
Speaker 8: playing style and drawing these conclusions about what's real and
Speaker 8: what's not real. But I don't know, Maybe maybe Congress
Speaker 8: can appoint a special panel to investigate and get to
Speaker 8: the bottom of this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, this is one of the problems with
Speaker 5: Elon controlling Doge. This would be a perfect problem for
Speaker 5: DOGE to tackle. But anyway, Yeah, I tried to dig
Speaker 5: into this and honestly did not know enough about the
Speaker 5: world of virtual goods to be able to evaluate the claims.
Speaker 5: But listeners, we can promise you we will be following
Speaker 5: this story, and you know, if you have thoughts about
Speaker 5: this or any of the more serious topics we discussed
Speaker 5: on the podcast, you can email us Eloninc. At Bloomberg
Speaker 5: dot Net. Josh Dana, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yes.
Speaker 5: This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Maserakas is
Speaker 5: our editor and Rayhan Harmansi, our senior editor. The idea
Speaker 5: for this very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples
Speaker 5: handles engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising producer
Speaker 5: is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 1: The Elon Inc.
Speaker 5: Theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sagiera.
Speaker 5: Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
Speaker 5: is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to
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