Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 3: controlled by one man.
Speaker 2: Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 1: He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
Speaker 1: it will be different. He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 4: There is a reason the US government is still reliant
Speaker 4: on him. Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's
Speaker 4: done nothing.
Speaker 2: Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 3: Welcome to elan Ing, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: It's June fourth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. This week,
Speaker 3: with the US still reeling from Donald Trump's felony conviction,
Speaker 3: we have politics on the brain, particularly the strange on again,
Speaker 3: off again alliance that has been brewing between Musk and Trump.
Speaker 3: There's been new reporting from US at Bloomberg and from
Speaker 3: the Wall Street Journal about their meetings, plus news that
Speaker 3: X will be hosting town hall events for Trump and
Speaker 3: separately for RFK Junior. Before we dig into all that, though,
Speaker 3: we'll do a rundown on some developments in Elon's seemingly
Speaker 3: never ending legal troubles. To break down the latest on
Speaker 3: a pair of X related lawsuits, were joined by BusinessWeek
Speaker 3: senior writer and mister all around guy Clarksfield South High
Speaker 3: School two thousand, Max.
Speaker 5: Chafkins close, Thank you, great to be here, David, What
Speaker 5: I get wrong?
Speaker 2: Clarksfield, Clarkstown, Everyone knows that.
Speaker 3: And Kurt Wagner, author of Battle for the Bird and
Speaker 3: a reporter for US covering social platforms at Bloomberg.
Speaker 4: Kurt, David, how are you?
Speaker 6: Thank you? Thank you.
Speaker 3: Later on, we're going to be joined by Bloomberg national
Speaker 3: political correspondent Nancy Cook. But let's get right into this
Speaker 3: suddenly seeming maze of lawsuits in legal troubles that Musk
Speaker 3: is in again, Kurt, So bring us up to speed
Speaker 3: a little bit here, because it's been coming on the
Speaker 3: legal front fast and.
Speaker 6: Furious of late.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's probably a dozen or more legal disputes that
Speaker 4: Elon and X are dealing with right now, but the
Speaker 4: most prominent one is this SEC investigation into whether he
Speaker 4: violated laws by purchasing the Twitter stock in the way
Speaker 4: that he did back in early twenty twenty two. So
Speaker 4: to remind folks.
Speaker 6: Prior to the takeover you meet.
Speaker 4: That's right before he actually acquired the company, he was
Speaker 4: building a position in Twitter starting in late January of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two. The public didn't learn about that position,
Speaker 4: that that stake that he'd acquired and to two months later,
Speaker 4: and in those two months, Elon acquired more than nine
Speaker 4: percent of Twitter stock without ever publicly disclosing this. Now,
Speaker 4: the SEC's rules state that once you cross this five
Speaker 4: percent ownership threshold, you're supposed to file paperwork. It then
Speaker 4: becomes public everyone knows. Okay, Elon Musk is, you know,
Speaker 4: a major shareholder in Twitter because he did not do that. Now,
Speaker 4: the accusation is, did he keep the price of Twitter
Speaker 4: stock artificially low so that he was able to buy
Speaker 4: more of it at a lower price? Right because the
Speaker 4: minute he says, hey, I'm buying Twitter stock, the price
Speaker 4: just shoots up. So the longer he delays that, the
Speaker 4: better deal he gets.
Speaker 3: Just like when he says he's buying doge coin and
Speaker 3: the price shoots up. Now, that's what the SEC is
Speaker 3: looking into. And now there has also been a separate
Speaker 3: lawsuit from investors more or less around the exact same issue.
Speaker 6: Is that right, it is the same issue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is the wrote down the Oklahoma Firefighter's
Speaker 4: pension and retirement system them, So basically the pension fund
Speaker 4: for firefighters in Oklahoma are saying, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: we own stock in Twitter. They actually, I believe sold
Speaker 4: stock in Twitter during this period. And their complaint is
Speaker 4: because they didn't know that Elon was buying these shares,
Speaker 4: they sold that at a lower price than they could have. Right,
Speaker 4: And so this lawsuit's really interesting. They just issued an
Speaker 4: updated version of the lawsuit last week which had all
Speaker 4: kinds of juicy details about Elon and his business manager,
Speaker 4: Jared Birchall.
Speaker 6: And give us a couple of the best details.
Speaker 4: The biggest accusation in this lawsuit is that Elon was
Speaker 4: ignoring advice from his bankers at Morgan Stanley to get
Speaker 4: outside counsel as to when he should divulge these you know,
Speaker 4: these sale or these purchases excuse me of Twitter stock. Right,
Speaker 4: so Morgan Stanley's helping him out. We have all these
Speaker 4: emails that are Morgan Stanley bankers saying, just want to
Speaker 4: be sure we're approaching the five percent threshold. Okay, we
Speaker 4: just crossed the five percent threshold, Like are you going
Speaker 4: to disclose this? Are you getting outside legal advice on
Speaker 4: what to do here? And Jared Birchall basically responds, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 4: we're you know, don't worry about it. We're getting advice
Speaker 4: all this stuff. And the lawsuit claims that was all false,
Speaker 4: that they were not speaking with outside counsel, they were
Speaker 4: simply ignoring all of these warnings and essentially, you know,
Speaker 4: blowing past the stop sign that the sec had put
Speaker 4: up for them. And you know, it's a pretty damning
Speaker 4: accusation in my opinion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's the interesting thing here to me, Max,
Speaker 3: because going back a long long time in this country,
Speaker 3: the rule is pretty simple, like if you go above
Speaker 3: that threshold and stake in a company, thou shall declare
Speaker 3: your position.
Speaker 5: I mean, there are few things that are sort of
Speaker 5: fundamental to like Elon Musk's character. Like one is that
Speaker 5: he really likes to be funny, he likes to crack jokes.
Speaker 5: Another is like he really cares about sustainable transportation. And
Speaker 5: like the third I'd say is that he does not
Speaker 5: respect securities laws. He has a long history of kind
Speaker 5: of make of sort of ignoring or sidestepping or skirting
Speaker 5: the line ever so carefully around basic SEC laws, rules
Speaker 5: and norms, which has led to essentially like a long
Speaker 5: running dispute with the SEC.
Speaker 3: And he does that because he just find he finds
Speaker 3: them absurd, not where not worth his time.
Speaker 5: I think, though, yeah, I think it's those two things
Speaker 5: his whole attitude. Obviously it's not his fundamental nature, but
Speaker 5: he does really believe that like you should reduce these
Speaker 5: rules that like that the way you get to it
Speaker 5: comes up over and over again in that Isaacson book.
Speaker 5: You know anything, anything that's not physics is a suggestion,
Speaker 5: not a requirement, right, And I think for him, you know,
Speaker 5: all these SEC rules are just like these like ticki
Speaker 5: tac bs, things that he views as more or less optional,
Speaker 5: and that has that has led to a you know,
Speaker 5: a year's long dispute with the SEC where we're honestly
Speaker 5: like Musk, although he's settled at various times and he's
Speaker 5: lost some judge, you know, he's basically gotten the better
Speaker 5: of the SEC. He's he's more or less continued to
Speaker 5: behave the way he has always behaved, which is to
Speaker 5: you know, basically ignore many many securities laws, or at
Speaker 5: least seem to ignore many securities laws. I should say
Speaker 5: Elon Musk has in all of these cases denied wrongdoing.
Speaker 6: He constantly trash talks them.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Now the he's gonna have to give a deposition
Speaker 3: in front of the SEC for five hours. They set
Speaker 3: a five pretty precise five hours. Why five hours, Max?
Speaker 3: Everyone gets hungry after that out.
Speaker 6: Of the.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean, I assume they just ask for a big
Speaker 5: chunk of time and five hours, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's like, sounds like a full day right now. Max.
Speaker 3: While all this Twitter stuff in these Twitter lawsuits and
Speaker 3: the SEC deposition were come up, another totally unrelated to Twitter,
Speaker 3: another lawsuit dropped out of the blue.
Speaker 6: Tell us about this one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so this is a lawsuit from investors in Tesla.
Speaker 2: The accusation here.
Speaker 5: If you look back in twenty twenty two, Tesla's stock
Speaker 5: price fell a lot during that year, and the company
Speaker 5: went from having a very positive outlook with Elon Musk
Speaker 5: in October of twenty twenty two is saying essentially there's
Speaker 5: demand as far as I can see, you know, no
Speaker 5: demand issues. And then at the very end of the
Speaker 5: year or sorry, early January, Tesla has this very bad
Speaker 5: quarter the stock drops. You know, that was essentially a
Speaker 5: low point for Elon Musk. He sold a bunch of stock,
Speaker 5: I think a little over seven billion dollars worth of
Speaker 5: Tesla's stock in December. And the allegation is from this
Speaker 5: from these investors, that he had knowledge of how bad
Speaker 5: the quarter was going to be and that he was
Speaker 5: trading on that knowledge. Now, this kind of case happens
Speaker 5: a lot when you have big swings in the stock price.
Speaker 5: And also we should say Musk was selling a lot
Speaker 5: because he was buying Twitter. I mean, the acquisition had
Speaker 5: already closed at that point, but a lot of the
Speaker 5: share sales earlier in the year were I think related
Speaker 5: to like getting some cash for the Twitter acquisition. I
Speaker 5: don't think Musk has responded to this. Must said he
Speaker 5: needed dry powder, you know, he needed cash. That said, Like,
Speaker 5: over the course of that year, Musk made several statements
Speaker 5: that were like I'm done selling stock. He kept sort
Speaker 5: of promising that he was done selling stock and then
Speaker 5: selling some more stock. So you can sort of understand
Speaker 5: why investors are upset about it and why they might
Speaker 5: have a case. Now again, like these cases I think
Speaker 5: tend to be hard to prove so we'll see, Kurt.
Speaker 3: There is just in general, though, a long litany of
Speaker 3: lawsuits backed up going you know, going back months and
Speaker 3: months against Twitter since he took over.
Speaker 4: Now a huge list. Yeah, you know, we talked about
Speaker 4: the two.
Speaker 6: Do you have an Do we have a number more
Speaker 6: or less? Let's see.
Speaker 4: I tried to write them down. I would say over
Speaker 4: a dozen that I'm aware of. We talked about the
Speaker 4: two related to his stock purchases. I briefly mentioned this
Speaker 4: arbitration case to actually is like thousands of arbitration cases.
Speaker 4: I believe there's more than two thousand employees that are
Speaker 4: sort of signed up with this one lawyer for a
Speaker 4: mass arbitration. But I think they may have to do
Speaker 4: them all individually, which means you know, thousands of those.
Speaker 4: There's a National Labor Relations Board case where they fired
Speaker 4: an employee at X who's now suing him. You may
Speaker 4: recall that the C suite at Twitter was due more
Speaker 4: than one hundred million dollars in golden parachutes when Elon
Speaker 4: took over and fired them, which he withheld. So the
Speaker 4: C suite at Twitter's suing him. And then lastly, tons
Speaker 4: of vendors, right, so a private Jet Company Law, a
Speaker 4: law firm that did work for him. A lot of
Speaker 4: the places where they just stopped paying rent at Twitter's offices,
Speaker 4: those people are all coming to collect as well. So
Speaker 4: it's been a steady stream. The line to sue Elon
Speaker 4: is out the door and around the block.
Speaker 6: At this point.
Speaker 3: Trump has a track record allegedly of not paying people,
Speaker 3: so similar pattern here for Musk.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's very similar, and I mean it's
Speaker 5: there are a lot of aggressive business people who kind
Speaker 5: of do this in one way or another, and I
Speaker 5: do think it's part of why, you know, we saw
Speaker 5: after Trump was convicted in New York, Musk, you know,
Speaker 5: sent out a flurry of replies essentially in support of
Speaker 5: Donald Trump. And I think part of that is just,
Speaker 5: you know, general he's now basically an anti Biden. The
Speaker 5: fact of Trump support. A part of this is just
Speaker 5: kind of political signaling. But I think part of it
Speaker 5: is like he genuinely believes that it is dangerous and
Speaker 5: he may worry in fact personally because he, like President
Speaker 5: Trump formed. President Trump has tangled with with the government
Speaker 5: and there are DOJ investigations and so on. And when
Speaker 5: you see, you know, a successful business person being prosecuted.
Speaker 5: I think that affects people, and it can affet people
Speaker 5: on an emotional level.
Speaker 3: All right, now we're gonna bring in our national political correspondent,
Speaker 3: Nancy Cook to talk about the on again, off again
Speaker 3: Trump and Musk relationship.
Speaker 6: Nancy, Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Okay, Nancy, So, if the on again, off again relationship
Speaker 3: is on again, what exactly does on look like?
Speaker 1: So on looks like at this point, Well, it looks
Speaker 1: pretty on, I have to be honest. You know, Trump
Speaker 1: and Elon sort of had this relationship where they would
Speaker 1: fight with each other. But really the Trump campaign for
Speaker 1: the last several months has been on the hunt for donors.
Speaker 1: They really want to close the fundraising gap between the
Speaker 1: former president and President Biden, and so he has been
Speaker 1: having a lot of meetings and breakfasts with rich people.
Speaker 1: That's just the easiest way to put it. And so
Speaker 1: in March in Palm Beach, he had a meeting with
Speaker 1: a bunch of wealthy people at this donor's house in
Speaker 1: Palm Beach and Trump went there. It was a brunch
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk was there, and that's when they first
Speaker 1: sort of started to speak again. I would say, behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, which was what was happening during then, is
Speaker 1: that Vivic Ramas, who as you remember, ran for president
Speaker 1: in the Republican primary, had really started to broker this
Speaker 1: truce between.
Speaker 2: The two of them.
Speaker 1: Why why vivec Well, so Vivic is really auditioning to
Speaker 1: be a vice president if Trump wins, or a cabinet member.
Speaker 1: He is sucking up to Trump twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: He's going on TV, he's going to campaign events with Trump,
Speaker 1: and so one key way to curry favor with the
Speaker 1: Trump people at this point is to bring them rich
Speaker 1: people who are donors. And so Vivic really brokeer this
Speaker 1: cold war truce.
Speaker 2: Between these because he knows Elon as well.
Speaker 1: He does know Elon as well. You know, Elon had
Speaker 1: expressed admiration and some support for Vivic during the Republican primary.
Speaker 1: They had their own relationship, and so Vivic tried to
Speaker 1: sort of then steer that support around to Trump.
Speaker 3: Okay, so they find themselves in this same launch and
Speaker 3: they spoke directly then, and they begun speaking more frequently since, Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were at this donor breakfast with a bunch of
Speaker 1: donors or a handful of them, and then after that
Speaker 1: they really started talking directly more to one another. And
Speaker 1: so Trump loves to just call people on the phone.
Speaker 1: He is, you know, old school that way. He likes
Speaker 1: to you know, likes to pick up the phone. He's
Speaker 1: never liked to email or text. He doesn't like to
Speaker 1: leave a paper trail. So he has this whole informal
Speaker 1: kitchen cabinet of people who he calls on the phone,
Speaker 1: you know, rich people, economic people, TV hosts, Fox News people,
Speaker 1: and he'll ask them their opinion on who he should
Speaker 1: pick for vice president, or what they think of inflation
Speaker 1: or you know, did they see that hit on CNN
Speaker 1: last night? And so Elon has sort of joined this
Speaker 1: list of people who Trump calls now and my reporting
Speaker 1: shows that they do speak to one another directly with
Speaker 1: some frequency now.
Speaker 3: Now, Nancy apparently among other things they've been talking about,
Speaker 3: Donald and Elon are our crypto that Elon has been
Speaker 3: giving Trump advice on crypto.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little about that.
Speaker 1: So the term campaign has started to think more about
Speaker 1: crypto policy. I think in a bid to appeal to
Speaker 1: younger voters, particularly young male voters, they're really going after
Speaker 1: that demographic, and so they have really turned to you know,
Speaker 1: silicon Valley and tech people much more for advice on this,
Speaker 1: and so they have asked Elon about it. Also, they've
Speaker 1: asked just a bunch of Silicon Valley people who with
Speaker 1: ties to Elon about it as well. And so it's
Speaker 1: sort of this like little orbit where they're not just
Speaker 1: reaching out to him about it, but they're also reaching
Speaker 1: out to a bunch of his friends. And then his
Speaker 1: friends are like, oh, you should talk to Elon about it.
Speaker 1: He's smart, and so I feel like I was told
Speaker 1: that just sort of keeps reinforcing his influence.
Speaker 3: Now now Max, I think Mosk has denied having discussed it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we should also say, like there's the possibility of
Speaker 5: like a crypto voter demographic. But I think another possible explanation,
Speaker 5: and one that I would credit a little bit more,
Speaker 5: is the idea that there's a lot of money in
Speaker 5: crypto to spend the election. You know, there's this massive
Speaker 5: political Action committee, you know, more than one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 5: You have a bunch of big name venture capitalists pouring
Speaker 5: money into politics right now because of they want to
Speaker 5: influence crypto regulations. You also have a bunch of you know,
Speaker 5: kind of prominent crypto figures who have like suddenly become
Speaker 5: like big time maga people. So it feels like part
Speaker 5: of what's happening anyways, like the Trump campaign has figured
Speaker 5: out that crypto is a way to appeal to Silicon
Speaker 5: Valley types, and not just Elon Musk, but you know,
Speaker 5: David Sachs and a lot of these other guys, like
Speaker 5: a lot of big name vcs have crypto investments.
Speaker 3: Okay, And when we spoke about politics some last week,
Speaker 3: the sense was from mister Chafkin and others was that
Speaker 3: must still hadn't cut Trump a check. Does that remain
Speaker 3: the case as we understand it.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, we have not seen the
Speaker 1: Federal Election Commission report filing yet, which is what the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign has file with the federal government, which is
Speaker 1: basically like a verified list of donations. But I do
Speaker 1: think that if he did cut a check, the Trump
Speaker 1: people would be so excited that we would know about
Speaker 1: it at this point. And you have to remember that
Speaker 1: the DeSantis campaign also were very confident that they would
Speaker 1: get a check edit that never arrived. And so I'm
Speaker 1: not really holding my breath as to whether or not
Speaker 1: Elon becomes a donor but even if he is a
Speaker 1: supporter and sort of in the Trump orbit and giving advice,
Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty significant political development.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, remember a
Speaker 5: lot of people talk about Peter Teel and Trump. Teal
Speaker 5: actually gave that his million dollar check pretty late in
Speaker 5: the cycle and spoke at the Republican National Convention in
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen, you know, before he donated any money or
Speaker 5: any significant money.
Speaker 2: You can imagine the same thing happening here, right.
Speaker 5: Like Elon Musk, for all all the ways he's like controversial,
Speaker 5: he is a famous, rich and successful businessman, and Donald
Speaker 5: Trump respects. Donald Trump supporters respect that like he brings
Speaker 5: even in his extremely red pilled ship posting persona, he
Speaker 5: brings a level of respectability to you know, the Trump
Speaker 5: campaign that is very valuable. Not only that, but he
Speaker 5: has the potential to bring in other donors. You know,
Speaker 5: the there are all these other rich guys who really
Speaker 5: care about Elon Musk. Just one thing I'm keeping an
Speaker 5: eye on later this week. You know, David Sachs I
Speaker 5: mentioned him earlier. He's a good friend of Elon Musk.
Speaker 5: I think he's probably the person in Silicon Valley, who
Speaker 5: has Elon's ear in the most sustained way, is having
Speaker 5: a big fundraiser, you know, up to five hundred thousand
Speaker 5: dollars per couple. That's the highest tier in San Francisco.
Speaker 5: We don't know who's going to be there, but it
Speaker 5: is possible that Elon Musk will show up and so
Speaker 5: like this, you know, by the end of the week,
Speaker 5: we may have some serious developments.
Speaker 2: He also may just post about it, which seems you know,
Speaker 2: i'd say a.
Speaker 6: New Sun and Kurt.
Speaker 3: The way Musk has X tacking it's it's public posture
Speaker 3: has to be also has to square a bit with
Speaker 3: and get them more aligned with the Trump camp.
Speaker 4: Now I think so, I mean, I think donation aside
Speaker 4: what Elon's doing with X and the opportunities that he's
Speaker 4: providing Trump, you know, with this upcoming town hall that
Speaker 4: they're going to do with everything that Elon usually says
Speaker 4: about Biden and pushing back on Biden's agenda, like that's
Speaker 4: more valuable, I would imagine, honestly than you know, some
Speaker 4: check that he's going to write to him anyway, because
Speaker 4: Elon's out here the setting the stage for Donald Trump
Speaker 4: and this town hall is going to be a huge
Speaker 4: moment only because it'll be you know, one, Elon's going
Speaker 4: to make sure that everybody on the service, you know,
Speaker 4: basically sees it. And two, it's kind of a return
Speaker 4: of sorts for Donald Trump to this platform that he
Speaker 4: really rode for four years as president. And so that
Speaker 4: moment is going to be so, in my opinion, so
Speaker 4: big for President Trump that you know, I don't think
Speaker 4: the donation. I think that's a secondary thing, to be
Speaker 4: honest with.
Speaker 3: You, Curtin, Yeah, tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 3: those planned X town halls.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so X is going to broadcast essentially a live
Speaker 4: town hall, one with Donald Trump and one with Robert F.
Speaker 4: Kennedy Junior. And these are separate town halls, but you
Speaker 4: know they'll be part of this new X video strategy
Speaker 4: that they're trying to lean into this idea of like
Speaker 4: live newsy video, and they're partnering with News Nation, which
Speaker 4: is a TV network, to do this. But you know,
Speaker 4: I think the big thing here is, and I kind
Speaker 4: of alluded to this, this would be a return of
Speaker 4: sorts for Donald Trump to X. Right, he was so
Speaker 4: prevalent on what was then Twitter for years. He got banned.
Speaker 4: You'll remember in the days after the January sixth, right,
Speaker 4: and he's only tweeted one time, one time since then,
Speaker 4: and that was his mugshot when he was booked in
Speaker 4: I believe, Georgia several months ago. And so you know,
Speaker 4: this would be a chance for him to come back.
Speaker 4: He has like eighty plus million followers there. He's obviously
Speaker 4: known to be a Twitter person. So for me, this
Speaker 4: would be a homecoming of sorts, and I wonder if
Speaker 4: it would be the beginning of him starting to tweet
Speaker 4: and use that platform in that audience more regularly. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't be shocked.
Speaker 3: But the risk there for him is he's got his
Speaker 3: own social platform that is at a very lofty valuation.
Speaker 3: The only scenario in which it makes even an iota
Speaker 3: of sense that valuation is if Trump sticks on true
Speaker 3: Social never goes back to any other platform. He wins
Speaker 3: the presidency, and suddenly a whole bunch of people are
Speaker 3: forced onto truth social because he's the president.
Speaker 6: You have to follow his post. If he's suddenly back.
Speaker 3: On Twitter or X, I should say, well, then even
Speaker 3: that far fetched idea dies.
Speaker 5: You're right, But also, like the evaluation of truth Social,
Speaker 5: I mean, to my eye, is just based on the
Speaker 5: fact that a lot of people like Donald Trump, they
Speaker 5: think he's going to be pre you know, like it's sort.
Speaker 2: Of vibe based.
Speaker 5: So you could imagine situation where he came back to
Speaker 5: Twitter in some way. Like the thing that I've been
Speaker 5: thinking about is, you know, he has supposedly has this
Speaker 5: deal where he's supposed to, you know, have his tweets
Speaker 5: on truth Social rather than Twitter. Now, what about spaces,
Speaker 5: right these these audio calls, maybe that is a loophole.
Speaker 5: You know, audio is much bigger on Twitter. Elon Musk
Speaker 5: loves spaces. You know, you could imagine a situation where
Speaker 5: like Kurt's kind of hinting at you know, this News
Speaker 5: Nation X town Hall, which feels like a TV thing
Speaker 5: that's going to be broadcast, could lead to sort of
Speaker 5: more what what we more think of as like native
Speaker 5: Twitter content and you know, spaces audio getting on X
Speaker 5: you know a couple of times a month with Elon,
Speaker 5: which you know you could totally see Trump doing.
Speaker 3: So, Nancy, So Trump goes to X spaces and Musk
Speaker 3: potentially goes to the Republican Convention and speaks there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is some discussion about having him speak at
Speaker 1: their Republic invention. I mean, my reporting shows that that's
Speaker 1: not totally nailed down yet, but I think that there
Speaker 1: is interest from the Trump campaign and potentially having him
Speaker 1: speak there.
Speaker 5: They should look for a video of Elon Musk speaking anywhere,
Speaker 5: because like he never does, like I like, honestly, one
Speaker 5: thing they'll have to figure out is like, I don't
Speaker 5: think Elon Musk has ever I don't know, I mean.
Speaker 6: When he when he did SNL, I mean presumably there
Speaker 6: was a right, there.
Speaker 5: Was SNL, but normally it's it's in the context of
Speaker 5: an interview, like he almost always is interviewed. He doesn't
Speaker 5: give these kind of speeches, and so they would have
Speaker 5: to figure out a way. I guess that, you know,
Speaker 5: they'll study the SNL.
Speaker 6: Tape, right.
Speaker 3: And the other thing I'll just say is, uh, Teal
Speaker 3: wasn't much of a public speaker before he spoke at
Speaker 3: the at the convention back in sixteen, right, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, Teal had given some talks.
Speaker 5: He's not a very I don't think he's you would
Speaker 5: anyone call him like a polished public speaker. But it's
Speaker 5: a little bit different than Elon, who I say, even
Speaker 5: as unpolished if Peter teel as Elon is even more
Speaker 5: off the cup. You know, a lot of these appearances
Speaker 5: in recent months have been like on zoom, He's like
Speaker 5: holding the phone, Like you could imagine a universe of
Speaker 5: this where Elon says like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll speak
Speaker 5: of the Republican Convention and then it turns out he's
Speaker 5: going to be like facetiming in from it would be
Speaker 5: a real letdown.
Speaker 1: The reporting that I do have about the convention so far,
Speaker 1: the convention planning, is that they are thinking about it
Speaker 1: in a different way, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Just because conventions have always sort of been handled a
Speaker 1: certain way doesn't mean that the Trump campaign has to
Speaker 1: do it that way. And we saw that when Trump
Speaker 1: was president, like he blew up that last State of
Speaker 1: the Union and did it totally differently. He gave Rush
Speaker 1: Limbau the Medal of Freedom like in the middle of
Speaker 1: the State of the Union, Like it was like really
Speaker 1: kind of highly a high TV production, lots of surprises,
Speaker 1: surprise guests, people popping up. I mean, I could see
Speaker 1: them doing the same with the convention. And so rather
Speaker 1: than having Elon come and just talk at a podium
Speaker 1: for like thirty minutes, which I agree might be weird.
Speaker 1: Maybe they do do an interview, maybe they video, maybe
Speaker 1: they record him talking ahead of time and then play
Speaker 1: it and it's only ten minutes. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they would love to have him, and so I could
Speaker 1: see them really being like, hey, you know, Trump did
Speaker 1: the Apprentice. Surely we can figure out like a kind
Speaker 1: of cool TV way to do this for Elin.
Speaker 3: It would be pretty cool if if they put Elin
Speaker 3: in a rocket ship and then they they blasted off
Speaker 3: and they had him do it from like you know,
Speaker 3: orbiting Earth or something that would it's there.
Speaker 2: It seemed like there are a lot of cool options.
Speaker 3: Okay, now, Max, you're our feud guy here, mister feud.
Speaker 6: Uh weren't these two feuding? Uh?
Speaker 2: They had? I mean they had one of my favorite feuds.
Speaker 3: And in fact, you know, Donald Trump, do I have
Speaker 3: a ranking on it?
Speaker 5: I mean, it never rose to the top five because,
Speaker 5: as Nancy says, there was kind of always a little
Speaker 5: bit of a question of.
Speaker 2: Like how you know, how real is?
Speaker 5: But I have to say, you know, Trump obviously master
Speaker 5: of kind of a put down, and he had I
Speaker 5: think one of the best all time you know, insults
Speaker 5: Elon Musk, he called him a yes artist. In twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two, around the time that that Elon Musk was,
Speaker 5: you know, trying to buy Twitter, and of course, you know,
Speaker 5: Trump has had a competing service, so there there was
Speaker 5: a little bit of that. And then there was this
Speaker 5: like lengthy tweet with very colorful like he was begging
Speaker 5: on his knees.
Speaker 2: I guess, well, that's.
Speaker 3: One of Trump's favorite lines. So and so came to
Speaker 3: me begging on their knees, asking for forgiveness or this
Speaker 3: or that thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it kind of cut it did It did.
Speaker 5: Cut to certain things about Elon Musk because of course
Speaker 5: he has been incredibly effective at getting you know, money
Speaker 5: from from government and the form of subsidies or attacks,
Speaker 5: incentives and so on, and of course that's part of
Speaker 5: what's going on here right Elon Musk is you know,
Speaker 5: no doubt he's had some sort of political evolution. He's
Speaker 5: he's much more conservative or far right or whatever than
Speaker 5: he was previously. But he is also making a calculation,
Speaker 5: making a I think what is like a self conscious
Speaker 5: bet on the person who he thinks is going to
Speaker 5: be president. And that you know, matters to Tesla and
Speaker 5: space and really to.
Speaker 6: About all his companies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: So I think there's a there's definitely like a self
Speaker 5: interest component here, and he has almost like backed himself
Speaker 5: into the corner a little bit where he's become so
Speaker 5: anti Biden and so you know, so opposed to the
Speaker 5: Democrats and so unwilling. It seems anyway that bridge has
Speaker 5: been burned that you know, he almost has no choice.
Speaker 1: Max is right. Elon really understands something about Trump that
Speaker 1: like a raft of lobbyists in DC are are sort
Speaker 1: of missing where you don't if you want to get
Speaker 1: to Trump and influence him, you don't like hire a
Speaker 1: bunch of lobbyists who have been in DC forever who
Speaker 1: work at law firms. What you do is like, if
Speaker 1: you're a business person and you want to influence him,
Speaker 1: you want to have his cell phone number and you
Speaker 1: just want to reach out to him directly. And that
Speaker 1: is basically what Elon is setting up in case Trump wins,
Speaker 1: and it could mean a lot for his business interests.
Speaker 1: You know, if Trump wins, you know the White House
Speaker 1: wants to do something in space. Elon can call Trump directly,
Speaker 1: same thing with electric vehicles. He will call Trump directly.
Speaker 1: Trump does not like all these intermediaries and lobbyists and
Speaker 1: lawyers and advisors and chiefs of staff. He just wants
Speaker 1: to deal with the CEO directly. And that's what Elon
Speaker 1: has set up.
Speaker 6: Nancy.
Speaker 3: Is there's no sort of explicit quid pro quo here
Speaker 3: in the dealings between Musk and Trump.
Speaker 6: Is there no?
Speaker 1: But I think that Trump is trying to position himself,
Speaker 1: particularly after the trial, as someone who is scooping up support,
Speaker 1: you know, among these different sort of donor groups. So
Speaker 1: you know, he has made a big play with oil executives,
Speaker 1: sort of trying to say, oh, look, they're all supporting me.
Speaker 1: And I think he's trying to make that same play
Speaker 1: with Silicon Valley. You know, Wall Street hasn't totally come
Speaker 1: around him yet, although it seems like they're you know,
Speaker 1: more people are real way little and so I think
Speaker 1: he's using Elon as sort of a proxy to help
Speaker 1: to get to more tech people and they want to
Speaker 1: be able to say, oh, look, all these influential and
Speaker 1: rich different sectors of the economy are starting to support me,
Speaker 1: and Elon is part of that.
Speaker 3: Now, does or do these conversations in this growing dialogue
Speaker 3: do they lead to an actual cabinet post. I've heard
Speaker 3: and seen some reporting to that fact, or what exactly
Speaker 3: are we talking about here? And if Trump is indeed
Speaker 3: the next president of this country.
Speaker 1: So Trump is really superstitious and does not like to
Speaker 1: think about who will fill government posts before he wins.
Speaker 1: There are people around him that are thinking about like who,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of spitballing ideas of like who could
Speaker 1: fill the top economic jobs. But it is not at
Speaker 1: the level where like he is picking people because remember,
Speaker 1: he just got out of many weeks of a trial
Speaker 1: in New York. You know, he hasn't even sort of
Speaker 1: focused on the VP stuff yet. What I was told
Speaker 1: in my reporting was that there has been some discussion about,
Speaker 1: you know, Elon playing some advisory role if Trump wins
Speaker 1: the White House. So that could be on one of
Speaker 1: these like you know, CEO advisory boards, or they could
Speaker 1: make a special role for Elon. But again, like an
Speaker 1: advisory role, it wouldn't be a cabinet post where he
Speaker 1: would have to give up his stakes and his companies
Speaker 1: because I don't think that. I think Trump Blake's having
Speaker 1: him out there and sort of influential, and I can't
Speaker 1: imagine Elon really doing that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean he's not going to be like
Speaker 5: under secretary for Technology, I mean whatever. He's not going
Speaker 5: to have some mid level government job. But remember, like
Speaker 5: during the first Trump administration, this is exactly how they
Speaker 5: tried to use him. And I think Elon was valuable
Speaker 5: then for pretty much the same reasons he's valuable now,
Speaker 5: except he's more famous, he's richer, and of course there
Speaker 5: is I think more so than there was last time,
Speaker 5: where Elon had this kind of centrist identity. There really
Speaker 5: is a chance that he could be more partisan, either
Speaker 5: in his statements or well, he's already being partisan in
Speaker 5: his statements, but by writing a huge check.
Speaker 3: All right, But let's pretend indeed that Trump wins and
Speaker 3: he gives Mosque a cabinet seat. All right, Mac, I
Speaker 3: need you to tell me what cabinet seat is it
Speaker 3: that Elon musk.
Speaker 5: So I would guess that they will create a new
Speaker 5: cabinet position.
Speaker 2: What are cabinet secretaries? Are they?
Speaker 5: Secretaries may be Secretary of Romance, because Trump will come
Speaker 5: around to the well, this is done serious Secretary of
Speaker 5: Romantary of procreation, and there will be a you know,
Speaker 5: the Elon is very worried about the population christ We've
Speaker 5: seen as in other countries, we see, you know, Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 5: when you know, other other world leaders have have become
Speaker 5: concerned about, you know, not having enough babies. I could
Speaker 5: see Trump coming around to that point of view and
Speaker 5: Elon Musk it's one of his interests and you know
Speaker 5: who better.
Speaker 3: All right, Uh, I don't know how you follow that.
Speaker 3: But what post do you envision Musk getting in this scenario.
Speaker 1: I think that it would be, you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of advisory role on technology or electric vehicles, not appropriation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not going to touch that. I don't
Speaker 1: I want no part of that.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg was separately Max, Okay, I was joking.
Speaker 5: I don't think that's actually going to happen, And I
Speaker 5: was hoping Nancy would also make it.
Speaker 6: Give a joke answer, But Nancy, Nancy is a serious journalist.
Speaker 5: I think more realistic is like the CEO Council's. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'll be on some some boring council.
Speaker 2: He won't be telling us all to have more babies.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, And so Nancy, you're sticking to the
Speaker 3: advisory role.
Speaker 6: Kurt, what do you got for us?
Speaker 4: Is the is the head of Space Force a position?
Speaker 3: See that is good because that's simultaneously a little fun
Speaker 3: and clever and also almost could be a thing.
Speaker 2: If you're like, don't you have to be a general
Speaker 2: to be the Space Force? Is like a branch.
Speaker 4: Unless you musk, unless you're Elon Musk, in which kill.
Speaker 2: Trump will just give him like four or five stars.
Speaker 3: All right, here we go, because Kurt, Kurt, because you
Speaker 3: passed that test with flying colors. The last question in
Speaker 3: the segment, I'm going to start with you and try
Speaker 3: to set an example for the others. Here I am
Speaker 3: setting in again in this scenario in which he does
Speaker 3: now he is now a cabinet member. I am setting
Speaker 3: the over underline and how many days he stays in
Speaker 3: that post between before he's either fired or quits at
Speaker 3: sixty days? Do you take the over sixty or under sixty?
Speaker 4: I would take under.
Speaker 6: I would take under.
Speaker 2: That's like five mooches.
Speaker 3: I guess it's like five max over under sixty. I think, God,
Speaker 3: this is not a difficult question.
Speaker 2: I'm can I take the line.
Speaker 6: I's cambling, I've never don it again.
Speaker 1: Answer over over Nancy, under under it's.
Speaker 3: Totally under by the way, Nancy's got that right.
Speaker 6: Nancy, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Good luck guys on that.
Speaker 6: Max Kurt, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Great to be here.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 3: Rayhan Harmansi are senior editors. The idea for this very
Speaker 3: show also came from Rayhan. Blake Maples handles engineering, and
Speaker 3: we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott and Antonio Muffarech.
Speaker 3: Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 6: The Elon Inc.
Speaker 3: Theme has written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugira.
Speaker 3: Brendon Francis Newman is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
Speaker 3: is the head of Bloomberg Podcast.
Speaker 6: I'm David Papadopoulos.
Speaker 3: If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
Speaker 3: it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 6: See you next week.