Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, Welcome to bear offline. I'm at Zetron. Since twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk has seeded his charitable foundation in innovatively called
Speaker 2: the Musk Foundation, with billions of dollars of test the stock,
Speaker 2: which has neted him a multi billion dollar tax break.
Speaker 2: Yet a massive New York Times investigation by reporters Ryan
Speaker 2: Mack and Dave vid Farenthald has found that the Musk
Speaker 2: Foundation has failed to donate the minimum amount of money
Speaker 2: required by law to get that tax break. The investigation
Speaker 2: found that Musk had not hired any staff for the
Speaker 2: foundation and that its board was made up of Musk
Speaker 2: and two volunteers, one of whom The Times reports works
Speaker 2: an average of six minutes a week on a charitable
Speaker 2: operation with billions of dollars of dry powder, and Musk's
Speaker 2: donations regularly benefited causes related to his own interests, like
Speaker 2: a school insert, a SpaceX compound, and a UN program
Speaker 2: to help countries find internet for rural schools, where two
Speaker 2: of them became Starlink customers. And Starlink is, of course,
Speaker 2: Musk's wireless internet company. And while Elon Musk initially promised
Speaker 2: to help and I quote fund fixing the water in
Speaker 2: any house in Flint, Michigan that has water contamination above
Speaker 2: FDA levels. He would only end up donating about a
Speaker 2: million dollars to local schools, installing water filters and buying
Speaker 2: laptops for students. While this is unquestionably a good thing,
Speaker 2: he failed to do much more than that. All he
Speaker 2: did was send the tes Lagoon down there to offer
Speaker 2: and I'm not kidding rides around the parking lot in
Speaker 2: his car. Since the middle of twenty nineteen, The Times
Speaker 2: reports that Musk has done little more for Flint than that.
Speaker 2: According to The Times, in twenty twenty one, the Musk
Speaker 2: Foundation fell forty one million dollars short of the minimum
Speaker 2: required donation, and in twenty twenty two missed it by
Speaker 2: an astonishing two hundred and thirty four million dollars. That year,
Speaker 2: Musk's foundation only gave away the two point twenty five
Speaker 2: percent of the five percent it was required to from
Speaker 2: its seven billion dollars in assets. Today, I'm joined by
Speaker 2: New York Times investigative report to David Tarenthald, who won
Speaker 2: a Pulitzer Price for his work at The Washington Post
Speaker 2: investigating our big Web President Donald J. Trump and his
Speaker 2: dodgy charitable deals. David, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2: So, on a very basic level, what makes this Elon
Speaker 2: Musk charity story so remarkable? What's so different about it?
Speaker 1: Well, there's two things that really stand out about the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation. One is how big it is. So the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation is more than five billion dollars in assets,
Speaker 1: mostly Tesla stock. That makes it one of the twenty
Speaker 1: largest foundations in the United States. But the second thing
Speaker 1: is how small it is in its actions. It's big
Speaker 1: in its resources and small in its actions. So the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation has repeatedly failed to give away just the
Speaker 1: bare minimum it's required to by law. And it also
Speaker 1: when it does give its money away, the money doesn't
Speaker 1: go very far. By that, I mean often mister Musk
Speaker 1: uses the money in his foundation to help himself or
Speaker 1: to help his businesses.
Speaker 2: So can you give me example of some of the
Speaker 2: ways he's using it to help himself.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the biggest ones was in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Jared Isaacman who's a billionaire in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He charters a rocket from SpaceX to go up into space,
Speaker 1: and as a way of sort of celebrating or ennobling
Speaker 1: what he's doing, he says, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: raise two hundred million dollars with this spaceflight for Saint
Speaker 1: Jude's Children's Research Hospital. He goes up into space, he
Speaker 1: comes back down and he hasn't raised two hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: They're still short, and so Elon Musk then jumps in
Speaker 1: to save his customer from failing on this charitable pledge
Speaker 1: and says, I'll give fifty million dollars. Eventually gives fifty
Speaker 1: five million dollars, not from his own pocket but from
Speaker 1: the Musk Foundation. A few weeks later, the same billionaire says,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to order three more flights
Speaker 1: from SpaceX. So he goes from being a good SpaceX
Speaker 1: customer to a really good SpaceX customer, and part of
Speaker 1: that process was the Musk Foundation. Another example was the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation had never given any money to Cameron County, Texas.
Speaker 1: That's an area of the very very southern tip of
Speaker 1: Texas where Musk has the SpaceX launch site. He never
Speaker 1: had never given any money down there until March twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one SpaceX rocket explodes there and rains metal down
Speaker 1: all over this area, an area, by the way, where
Speaker 1: he needs lots of regulatory approvals, goodwill, all kinds of
Speaker 1: help from the people who were the politicians down there.
Speaker 1: About an hour after the rocket explodes, the Musk Foundation
Speaker 1: starts giving to schools to downtown beautification. And the third
Speaker 1: example I'll bring up are these two schools that mister
Speaker 1: Musk has started and supported with the Musk Foundation. On paper,
Speaker 1: these are supposed to be, like every charity, to serve
Speaker 1: the public. Right, that's the point of the charity. It's
Speaker 1: not your it's not to serve you. It's not a
Speaker 1: even if it's got your name on it, it doesn't serve
Speaker 1: your interest. It serves the public. So there's a school
Speaker 1: called ad Astra mister Musk started. There's another school called
Speaker 1: the Foundation. That's its legal name, the foundation that mister
Speaker 1: Muskus give it a bunch of money to from the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation. So we went to look, Okay, where are
Speaker 1: these schools, who are they serving how are they serving
Speaker 1: the public? The answer is that one of them is
Speaker 1: behind the locked gates of a SpaceX compound in Boca Chica, Texas.
Speaker 1: You can only get in if you were a SpaceX employee.
Speaker 1: And the other one the foundation, it's bought a school
Speaker 1: a property to turn into a Montessori school that happens
Speaker 1: to be two minutes away from a huge subdivision mister
Speaker 1: Musk is building for his own employees outside Basstrop, Texas.
Speaker 2: So and which employees for SPICEX for.
Speaker 1: Well, he's got a whole complex there that includes SpaceX,
Speaker 1: but it's mainly boring company employees.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Both these places are rural areas. He's trying to bring
Speaker 1: these highly talented, sought after people to a pretty rural
Speaker 1: area of Texas. You can imagine one of the questions
Speaker 1: people would ask is, well, where are my kids going
Speaker 1: to go to school? Right? And so these two charities
Speaker 1: are helping Musk recruit by building schools to serve his employees.
Speaker 2: So, taking a step back on a very basic level,
Speaker 2: how does it actually work? So has he he's put
Speaker 2: this stock in escrow?
Speaker 1: ISU, what happened was in twenty twenty one, he's facing
Speaker 1: this giant tax bill. Is he he exercised a bunch
Speaker 1: of Tesla stock options and he says he owed eleven
Speaker 1: billion dollars in taxes. He takes five billion dollars of
Speaker 1: Tesla stock. Now, this is that's not what he paid
Speaker 1: for the stock. That's what it's appreciated too. He donates
Speaker 1: it to charity. And now the tax law allows you
Speaker 1: to take a deduction based on the appreciated value of
Speaker 1: the stock. So the deduction to him could have been
Speaker 1: worth as much as two billion dollars off of his
Speaker 1: tax bill. Right, he gives that stock to the Musk Foundation.
Speaker 1: Now it's confusing because it's got his he's in charge
Speaker 1: of the Musk Foundation. It's got his name on it.
Speaker 1: But again, the Musk Foundation is by law, a separate
Speaker 1: entity with its own strictly charitable goals. Even though it
Speaker 1: sounds like something that he's you know, that's like another
Speaker 1: sort of pocket of his wallet. It's a separate thing.
Speaker 1: So once the money go, once the shares go into
Speaker 1: the to the Musk Foundation. Now he's given himself a responsibility,
Speaker 1: he's given himself a job, and that is the IRIS
Speaker 1: requires foundations to give away five percent of their assets
Speaker 1: every year. You can imagine why. It's to keep people
Speaker 1: from just dumping money into their foundation, getting a tax
Speaker 1: break and never actually helping the world. You have to
Speaker 1: send five percent of your money out the door to
Speaker 1: the real world every year, and he hasn't. He has
Speaker 1: didn't in twenty twenty one, he didn't in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: In fact, by the end of twenty twenty two, he
Speaker 1: was two hundred and thirty four million dollars behind the
Speaker 1: minimum for what this foundation was supposed to have given away.
Speaker 2: Right, but as far as the stalt goes, does it
Speaker 2: sit separate to musk is in a separate holding?
Speaker 1: It is legally the property of this foundation now, which
Speaker 1: means he's still in control of it, but it belongs
Speaker 1: to the foundation.
Speaker 2: Does it have any liquid funds in there?
Speaker 1: There's some I think they've sold a few sids. There's
Speaker 1: a small amount of liquid cash. I think mostly what
Speaker 1: he does is it sells stock in order to make donations.
Speaker 2: When it does so, how does the tax break actually work?
Speaker 2: How much does he get off of his tax bill
Speaker 2: as a result of this?
Speaker 1: So this is complicated. But what we were told was
Speaker 1: that in that year they expected that the five billion.
Speaker 1: So he gives five billion dollars worth of Tesla stock
Speaker 1: to his charity. The folks we talked to said that
Speaker 1: they thought the actual break from that, the actual production
Speaker 1: in his taxes would be thirty seven percent of five
Speaker 1: billion dollars, which is about two billion dollars. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of other math involved in involving his income
Speaker 1: and other things, but that was the guess, was two
Speaker 1: billion dollars off his taxes?
Speaker 2: And who gave you this estimate? Just to a cliar.
Speaker 1: We talked to a couple of professors of tax law.
Speaker 2: Right, So what he gets out of this is just
Speaker 2: a tax break, but he's not donating enough money, right,
Speaker 2: actually giving away what he's meant to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's confusing to think about him and his foundation
Speaker 1: has separate entities. But in this case, he gives his
Speaker 1: foundation the five billion dollar. Enough. If he'd taken this
Speaker 1: five billion dollars worth of Tesla stock and given it
Speaker 1: to Saint Jude's or UNICEF or some other charity that
Speaker 1: he didn't control, that would have been the end of
Speaker 1: the story for him. He's given all the money, he's
Speaker 1: given these shares away. He takes the tax break, UNICEF
Speaker 1: or whoever's then uses the shares for whatever. Right, So
Speaker 1: now he's like taking off his hat as donor and
Speaker 1: putting on the hat as the guy who runs the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation, and now he has this responsibility, is the
Speaker 1: head of the Musk Foundation, to start giving this newfound
Speaker 1: money away. And that's when the five percent minimum matters
Speaker 1: to him. He has to give five percent of the
Speaker 1: foundation's assets away to other charities out to actually do
Speaker 1: good in the world every year.
Speaker 2: And he isn't doing this enough.
Speaker 1: No, he missed it in twenty twenty one by forty
Speaker 1: one million dollars, and then in twenty twenty two he
Speaker 1: missed it by two hundred and thirty four million.
Speaker 2: And so what's meant to happen to a regular person? Well, actually,
Speaker 2: one one quick question. Does he get this tax break
Speaker 2: every year for holding it? Or is it just the
Speaker 2: one off? He got a one off?
Speaker 1: You know, he gets it based on what he's donated
Speaker 1: to the foundation in that year.
Speaker 2: Okay, and how much is in there right now? Just
Speaker 2: a week clip, because I know there's a lot of
Speaker 2: numbers going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it depends on It's depended so much on
Speaker 1: the rise and fall of Tesla stock. But the last
Speaker 1: time we got a snapshot was at the end of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and it was a little bit more
Speaker 1: than five billion at that point.
Speaker 2: So what is meant to happen to him and who
Speaker 2: is meant to exact justice here?
Speaker 1: Well, there's two primary regulators of nonprofits. One is the IRS,
Speaker 1: the Internal Revenue Service. They're the ones who Okay, so
Speaker 1: we said at the end of twenty twenty two, he
Speaker 1: was this foundation was two hundred and thirty four million
Speaker 1: dollars behind. He has a one year grace period twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three to give that money away in addition to
Speaker 1: the five percent again for twenty twenty three. If he
Speaker 1: doesn't give a doesn't give the money away after that
Speaker 1: one year grace period, the foundation faces a thirty percent
Speaker 1: penalty tax, and if it still doesn't pay then then
Speaker 1: it faces one hundred percent penalty tax. So it would
Speaker 1: basically the IRS would confiscate all the money that they
Speaker 1: were supposed to give A but they did not, So
Speaker 1: that's what would happen. That's the IRS. The problem with
Speaker 1: that for me as a reporter is that the IRS
Speaker 1: all of that enforcement is private hidden. We can't see
Speaker 1: it unless somebody sues in tax court or federal court
Speaker 1: to stop it. So if it happened at the end
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three, we don't know about it. The
Speaker 1: other regulator in most states is the estate attorney general.
Speaker 1: They also can regulate people who bilate tax laws. I mean,
Speaker 1: one example that just ended was the New York Attorney
Speaker 1: General and the National Rifle Association. She had the right
Speaker 1: to regulate and sue the NRA because it was a
Speaker 1: New York nonprofit. The Musk Foundation is a Texas nonprofit.
Speaker 1: So the authority lands with Ken Paxton, an Attorney General
Speaker 1: of Texas. Not to say it won't happen, but he's
Speaker 1: a very political actor and a very political actor who's
Speaker 1: very friendly to Musk.
Speaker 2: Wasn't he also threatening media matters when Musk suit them
Speaker 2: as well? He seems very much in his pocket. So
Speaker 2: let's go back to this ad Astra school. What exactly
Speaker 2: happened there, because it's very bizarre. There is a school
Speaker 2: inside SpaceX.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it began as a school basically for Musk's children.
Speaker 1: He started it back in California when he and SpaceX
Speaker 1: were both there.
Speaker 2: And it's a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: Right, it's a nonprofit. So again from the beginning, it
Speaker 1: faced this requirement to serve the public and not the
Speaker 1: private good of its leader. The first class fourteen students,
Speaker 1: five of whom were Musk's owned children. Later it moves
Speaker 1: from his house to the SpaceX campus in Hawthorne, California,
Speaker 1: so it's within the gates of SpaceX. There. We talked
Speaker 1: to the guy who was the headmaster. He said about
Speaker 1: half the students were related to SpaceX employees, and Musk's
Speaker 1: owned children also went there for a long time. Then
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, Musk starts to shift his own residency,
Speaker 1: his own company center of Gravity, to Texas. So then
Speaker 1: the Astro school picks up from California, moves to Texas,
Speaker 1: and from what we can tell, this sort of small
Speaker 1: amount of openness they had, you know, the fifty percent
Speaker 1: of students they had who were not employees of SpaceX.
Speaker 1: They seem to have changed their model where now they're
Speaker 1: behind this security gate. I went down there. If you
Speaker 1: could picture, if you've ever seen pictures of where the
Speaker 1: SpaceX rocket launch site is in South Texas, it's a
Speaker 1: very remote area close to the Gulf of Mexico. There's
Speaker 1: nothing around there, there's no people, there's no other schools,
Speaker 1: and as you drive down there, there's a little fence
Speaker 1: on the side of the highway and you see you
Speaker 1: could see behind it, there's a building, there's some basketball courts.
Speaker 1: You can see what looks like a school, but there's
Speaker 1: no sign for a school. There's nothing that tells you
Speaker 1: there's a school there. Certainly nothing tells you there's a
Speaker 1: school there that you might go to if you're a
Speaker 1: member of the public. The only signs say, you know,
Speaker 1: keep out, no trespassing, and there's a security guard who
Speaker 1: you know if you stop for ten seconds, sieted come
Speaker 1: over and ask what you're doing.
Speaker 2: So, do you know how one sends one's kids?
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 2: Is it a private school?
Speaker 1: Like it is private? It does not have a website,
Speaker 1: which it used to in California, but it does not
Speaker 1: now in Texas. We asked Musk and the people who
Speaker 1: run the other people who are the directors of that school? Yeah,
Speaker 1: how you get in? Who chooses it? What's the criteria?
Speaker 1: Can you go if you're not a SpaceX employee? And
Speaker 1: we did not get answers to any of those questions.
Speaker 2: Does it seem to flown any nonprofit guidelines you've seen
Speaker 2: or is it just classic craven capitalism?
Speaker 1: It is a nonprofit that it remains legally a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: The IRS is given a tax exem status, so if
Speaker 1: you donate money to it, you can get a tax
Speaker 1: break for it. But you know, that's the question here is,
Speaker 1: you know, if this is really a nonprofit, it's truly
Speaker 1: serving the public and not the private benefit of mister
Speaker 1: Musk or the private benefit of SpaceX. You know, where's
Speaker 1: the evidence of that? And that's what we asked them
Speaker 1: for and didn't get a response.
Speaker 2: So in this other school, the foundation, what is that?
Speaker 2: This feels? See this is the thing with things like this.
Speaker 2: When people talk about conspiracy theories and the rich doing
Speaker 2: weird things, they always point to made up stuff versus this.
Speaker 2: So this other secret school that Musk gave what one
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars do what if you found there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was really surprising. So the Musk Foundation, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that it's very big, doesn't give very many
Speaker 1: really large donations. And then the exception, one of the exceptions,
Speaker 1: was this thing called the Foundation and they first the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation gave it money in twenty twenty two. You
Speaker 1: can pull the IRS documents for the foundation to see
Speaker 1: what it is and what they told the IRS they
Speaker 1: were going to do when they got tax exempt status
Speaker 1: and you can see that it's very very closely tied
Speaker 1: to Elon Musk. So he's not on the board of directors,
Speaker 1: but the head of it is his money manager. The
Speaker 1: two other directors are his accountants. So there are people
Speaker 1: who are very close to him. And if you look
Speaker 1: at the what they told the irs they were going
Speaker 1: to do, and this got some attention at the time
Speaker 1: last year, it sounds grand. We're going to start a school,
Speaker 1: We're going to start a secondary school, We're going to
Speaker 1: start a university in Austin, Texas. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people cover that at the time and said, ooh, you knows,
Speaker 1: mister Musk is he's starting sort of a competitor or
Speaker 1: the University of Austin is you know, what would an
Speaker 1: Elon Musk university be like? Is this where he's going
Speaker 1: to combat you know, the forces of wokeness or you
Speaker 1: know the other things he talks about a lot. And
Speaker 1: so my question was just you know, where is this school?
Speaker 1: Does it exist? Does it has it done anything? Because
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a web presence, it doesn't have you know,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence. You know, if you if you or
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I want to go to the
Speaker 1: University of Elon Musk or you know, whatever this is
Speaker 1: going to be. There's there's no way to find information
Speaker 1: about it, and so it took a lot of sleuth thing.
Speaker 1: But here's what we found. The foundation, the entity that
Speaker 1: the startup charity that is run by Musk's associates. It
Speaker 1: has a shell company. The shell company last year bought
Speaker 1: a former horse farm in Bastrop, Texas a forty acre
Speaker 1: horse farm. Okay, so maybe that's the college, maybe that's
Speaker 1: the University of Elon Musk. When you go look at
Speaker 1: that property, you can see that it actually matches well.
Speaker 1: You can see two things about it. One is that
Speaker 1: it's right around the corner from this company town essentially
Speaker 1: that Musk wants to build for his employees outside Bastrop.
Speaker 1: Bastrop is is an extra of a Austin, But where
Speaker 1: he's building is kind of in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: There's no schools or development. But he's put a boring
Speaker 1: company installation, a giant SpaceX warehouse, he's got a there's
Speaker 1: like a live music venue and a store, and he's
Speaker 1: putting in one hundred and ten home subdivision. He's going
Speaker 1: to call it Snailbrook, just sort of like an inside joke.
Speaker 1: I guess in the world of the boring Company, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, the boring company moves as fast as a snail.
Speaker 1: So this is Snailbrook. So but the one thing that
Speaker 1: he's trying to convince people to move from Austin San Francisco,
Speaker 1: where you know, wherever people who have choices about what
Speaker 1: they're going to live, he's going to say, move to
Speaker 1: this rural part of central Texas. And the thing that
Speaker 1: that subdivision did not have was a school. And so
Speaker 1: the foundation, again nominally independent, not supposed to be serving
Speaker 1: mister Musk's interest, is just supposed to be doing its
Speaker 1: own charitable thing. The place they've selected for their first
Speaker 1: campus is right around the corner from this place where
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's company needs a school. And if you look,
Speaker 1: you can find job listings on the internet for another
Speaker 1: ad Astra school that's being opened, and if you compare it,
Speaker 1: it's the same place. So they're going to open another
Speaker 1: ad Astra school in this building. And that's what really
Speaker 1: struck me was the huge contrast between what these folks
Speaker 1: told the irs they were going to be university for Austin,
Speaker 1: Texas and all they've done so far, which is it
Speaker 1: looks like build a monassory school for Elon Musk's employees.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the Musk Foundation itself. So by
Speaker 2: the sounds of it, it's what three people including Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Can you just break down the vast corporate structure here?
Speaker 2: Is this? This bit drove me a little insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is really different too. So you know the
Speaker 1: you remember the company that they keep right and we're
Speaker 1: talking about the top twenty largest foundations in the United States.
Speaker 1: That's you know, the Gates Foundation, that's the you know,
Speaker 1: the George Soros's group, the Walton.
Speaker 2: How big of them? How big are those organizations by comparison?
Speaker 1: So the most foundation is I mean, the Gates Foundation
Speaker 1: is a lot bigger. It's in the hundreds of hundreds
Speaker 1: of billions. But these other groups are it's around the
Speaker 1: size of other groups like the Walton Family Foundation, things
Speaker 1: like that. It's in the same ballpark.
Speaker 2: And the Walton Families, the Walmart the Walmart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they and they support charter schools and other things.
Speaker 1: It's common, although not always, but most of these places
Speaker 1: have pay roles in the you know, dozens or hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars. They have lots of employees figuring
Speaker 1: out where they should give their money. By contrast, the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation, as you said, has no paid employees at all.
Speaker 1: It's never had paid employees. It has three directors, all
Speaker 1: of whom are volunteers. There's Elon Musk who says he
Speaker 1: works for an hour a week on it. This guy,
Speaker 1: Jared birch Hall, who is Musk's longtime sort of money
Speaker 1: manager consiglieri, he also works for an hour a week.
Speaker 1: And then a woman named Matilda Simon who works for
Speaker 1: the money manager, and this part was striking. She says
Speaker 1: she works forer point one hours a week, which is
Speaker 1: six minutes.
Speaker 2: Are they compensated at all?
Speaker 1: No, they work for free. So yes, there's no And
Speaker 1: you know we've asked them, do you have board meetings?
Speaker 1: You know? What do you you know? How you have
Speaker 1: this huge responsibility now you have to give out three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars a year. How are you
Speaker 1: handling that? We know, how much time do you spend
Speaker 1: on that? We didn't get answers about that.
Speaker 2: Did they not answer at all?
Speaker 1: They didn't answer it at all?
Speaker 2: Okay, but in practice though.
Speaker 1: Well, and what we've found was that in some cases
Speaker 1: when there was something that complicated that needed to be done.
Speaker 1: I mean, so for instance, I talked about how after
Speaker 1: the rocket exploded in South Texas, Musk says, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give thirty million dollars to all these different groups
Speaker 1: in the area where the rocket exploded. Okay, So now
Speaker 1: he's made a that's he's taken on sort of a
Speaker 1: task that either is too complicated for these three volunteers.
Speaker 1: He needs somebody to find the school districts in the area,
Speaker 1: listen to their project ideas, decide how much money each
Speaker 1: one of them should get. So he deputizes this guy
Speaker 1: named Igor Kirganov, who, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: was never an employee of the foundation, but he was
Speaker 1: seeming to act in its stead. So he was He's
Speaker 1: a professional poker player or a former professional poker player,
Speaker 1: friend of Musks. So now he's in charge and you
Speaker 1: can see him. It was really funny because we got
Speaker 1: a lot of emails back and forth between him and
Speaker 1: the school districts that he's giving the Musks Foundations money to.
Speaker 1: And it's fascinating to see this guy supposedly has you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars to give away. But he
Speaker 1: was extremely detail oriented and like pressing these these schools
Speaker 1: and the city of Brownsville on the smallest details of
Speaker 1: the things they were going to use and the smallest
Speaker 1: dollar figures. Just to give one example, the city of
Speaker 1: Brownsville says, Hey, we want to use some of the
Speaker 1: money that the Musk Foundations giving us to put up
Speaker 1: Christmas lights for a Christmas We're gonna have a big
Speaker 1: display in downtown Bronswelle with children. Yeah, and here's the
Speaker 1: here's the estimate we got from the contractor. You know,
Speaker 1: this is how much it'll cost to put those lights up.
Speaker 1: Will you pay for it? And Kirganov says, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the color the temperature of
Speaker 1: the lights that you've chosen. You've chosen cool white, and
Speaker 1: I don't believe cool white is appropriate. I think it
Speaker 1: should be a warmer color. So then they scramble around
Speaker 1: and find some warmer lights. So it's funny. It was
Speaker 1: a huge contrast between the sort of general what seemed
Speaker 1: to be kind of hands off approach that the Foundation
Speaker 1: normally runs on, and then all of a sudden there
Speaker 1: was this guy who was extremely hands on in a
Speaker 1: way that I think people found sort of hard to
Speaker 1: deal with.
Speaker 2: So do you think the reason they're not investing comes
Speaker 2: down to like mismanagement or is there something else going
Speaker 2: on here?
Speaker 1: You know, it's difficult to tell that. The thing I
Speaker 1: think you can it's hard to mean to know what
Speaker 1: his motivations are. The two things I would say is
Speaker 1: number one, he mister Musk has always said philanthropy is
Speaker 1: a mistake. You know, he has always said publicly philanthropy
Speaker 1: is not the way to save the world. My companies
Speaker 1: do that for me, you know, Tesla, SpaceX, they make
Speaker 1: a difference in the world is far greater than any
Speaker 1: philanthropic effort could. He's mocked Bill Gates for believing that
Speaker 1: philanthropy is a way to change the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a fine attitude to have. It's a weird attitude
Speaker 1: to square with a guy who now has given him,
Speaker 1: you know, set up a five billion dollar charity. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is talking to people. My co co
Speaker 1: reporter Ryan Mack talk to some people who knew mister
Speaker 1: Musk well from Tesla and SpaceX and other places, and
Speaker 1: what they said was just that like this is not
Speaker 1: something he talks about or thinks about. He's got a
Speaker 1: lot going on, He's got a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of balls in the air, and this was just not
Speaker 1: something they ever heard him thinking about or really considering.
Speaker 2: So could it also be that he just wanted to
Speaker 2: park some Tesla stock without it being sold, just to
Speaker 2: be clear, to invest money from that stock, you would
Speaker 2: have to liquidate shortly or can charities donate stock directly?
Speaker 1: Like they can donate stock directly too.
Speaker 2: That's so it's so interesting because if he's not talking
Speaker 2: about it, this feels like just a basic tax dotch
Speaker 2: just a the lowest possible hanging through because three people
Speaker 2: does not feel including one of them being in musk,
Speaker 2: that doesn't feel like enough people to run a small
Speaker 2: business let alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, three people who work a total of two hours
Speaker 1: and six minutes a week. Yeah, it is something that,
Speaker 1: you know, way he's doing it is not the way
Speaker 1: a lot of other people do it, either, other people
Speaker 1: of his size of his with charities of his size
Speaker 1: either higher a big staff, or they just choose one
Speaker 1: cause and give all their money to that, you know. So,
Speaker 1: but he's kind of got them in between where he's
Speaker 1: not hasn't chosen one cause to sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: focus all his giving around, and he also hasn't picked
Speaker 1: out any staff to handle a diffuse kind of giving.
Speaker 1: So he's sort of in the middle.
Speaker 2: So if regulators wake up and go, hey, this is
Speaker 2: very obviously bad, what would be the process that worked
Speaker 2: against Musk? What would happen?
Speaker 1: I think the thing that would happen would be in
Speaker 1: an audit from the IRS. The IRS would start setting
Speaker 1: him letters and say, look, we think that you're you know,
Speaker 1: we have questions about the way you're operating these charities,
Speaker 1: either the Musk Foundation or one of the schools. You know,
Speaker 1: we've we believe you doing this that you know there's
Speaker 1: a rules to get in the tax code against using
Speaker 1: your nonprofit for private benefit. We think maybe you're violating that.
Speaker 1: Tell us more, and in the end they could shut
Speaker 1: it down. They could make him pay you know, back,
Speaker 1: payback basically the tax benefits he got. Those remedies are
Speaker 1: pretty rare. The IRS is a pretty weak regulator of
Speaker 1: this space, but that would be how it would work.
Speaker 2: Is there any historical regulation of people who have messed
Speaker 2: up at this scale?
Speaker 1: There are not that many foundations of this scale. I
Speaker 1: actually it's a good point. I'm not aware of the
Speaker 1: IRS coming down on anybody who is a foundation this big.
Speaker 2: It feels like stuff like this just incentivizes more activity
Speaker 2: like this because this is in public, like this is
Speaker 2: out there. This is very obvious.
Speaker 1: One of the real I mean. So I read a
Speaker 1: lot about Donald Trump's foundation back in the day, and
Speaker 1: that is a lot was a lot smaller than this,
Speaker 1: that he had much much less less money than the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation does, but it operated in sort of in
Speaker 1: a similar way. In that case in the New York
Speaker 1: Attorney General came down on them. It wasn't the IRS
Speaker 1: as far as we know. I think the IRS has
Speaker 1: always been understaffed, and you have to think you have
Speaker 1: to remember about them. I've always been told this by
Speaker 1: IRS veterans is the point of the IRS is not
Speaker 1: to police. The point of the IRS is to collect money,
Speaker 1: and so they prioritize the things that bring in the
Speaker 1: most money, and in nonprofit law often is not that.
Speaker 1: So they do it, they regulate it, but it's not
Speaker 1: something they put a lot of energy into. And they've
Speaker 1: obviously shied away in recent years from fights with rich
Speaker 1: people and fights with people who are politically conservative. They've
Speaker 1: been burned by that in the past, so they would
Speaker 1: really have to be to gird their loins before taking
Speaker 1: on somebody like Elon Musk who was obviously both rich
Speaker 1: and now very conservative.
Speaker 2: And would such an effort be, I'm guessing be quite expensive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that would last a long time. You know.
Speaker 1: They also have to consider sort of cost benefit. You know,
Speaker 1: how much money in time would you have to spend
Speaker 1: on this and how much money would you get back?
Speaker 2: So how does this compare You mentioned mister Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: how does it compare to his situation? How agregious is
Speaker 2: it in comparison?
Speaker 1: They're different in a couple of ways. As I said,
Speaker 1: the Musk Foundation is much bigger than the Trump Foundation
Speaker 1: ever was. Trump foundation was like two million dollars at
Speaker 1: the most. They were similar in that they often use
Speaker 1: the money. If you look hard enough, they're charitable get ways,
Speaker 1: you'd realize that they were spending money in ways that
Speaker 1: helped themselves. Trump was a little more direct about it,
Speaker 1: and that's what got him into trouble. He would use
Speaker 1: it to He would use his foundation to do things
Speaker 1: like buy a portrait of himself and then hanging on
Speaker 1: the wall of his golf club. He would use it
Speaker 1: to pay off legal settlements for his businesses. He would
Speaker 1: use it to, you know, buy an autographed football helmet
Speaker 1: for himself. He was using it in a way that
Speaker 1: was like directly benefiting himself, not and mister Musk is
Speaker 1: doing it in a way that's a little more oblique.
Speaker 1: And I think that matters under the law. It certainly
Speaker 1: would matter to the irs. They if they want to
Speaker 1: take on an open and shutcase, the Musk Foundation may
Speaker 1: not be it. But the thing that I kept so
Speaker 1: striking to me is the same way that when I
Speaker 1: was covering the Trump Foundation, you would find things that
Speaker 1: looked innocuous or donations that looked just like regular charity,
Speaker 1: and if you pulled on the string hard enough, you'd realize,
Speaker 1: actually there was a story underneath where it was Trump
Speaker 1: helping himself. Then the Musk the same way. I mean,
Speaker 1: just to give you another example, he gave five million
Speaker 1: dollars to UNICEF, who you know, the sort of like
Speaker 1: buy word for an unimpeachable charity, classic charity. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: when you when you pull on that a little bit,
Speaker 1: you realize that he was giving money to a UNISF
Speaker 1: program that helped countries around the world identify schools that
Speaker 1: need connection to the internet. So let's find a schools
Speaker 1: in Rwanda or Kazakhstand or whatever that aren't connected to
Speaker 1: the internet, and then help those countries find ways to
Speaker 1: connect those schools. So effectively, he was investing in a
Speaker 1: program that created customers for Starlink, his satellite service. So
Speaker 1: at least two cases the countries that the UNSEF helped,
Speaker 1: then once they realized where their schools needed connections, they
Speaker 1: paid mister Musk's company to connect them. So you know,
Speaker 1: even there, even in the UNISF, there's there's a line
Speaker 1: that goes back to his own interests.
Speaker 2: That's it's genuinely despicable. But here's another Did you find
Speaker 2: anything or much about open ai, which is of course
Speaker 2: the nonprofit wing of the company that makes chat GPT.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Musk has had always said that he'd given one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to open up to get started. Obviously
Speaker 1: he was on the original board. He was one of
Speaker 1: the co founders of open ai when it was a
Speaker 1: nonprofit or when it started as a nonprofit. What we
Speaker 1: found was that he gave about ten million dollars from
Speaker 1: the Musk Foundation to open Ai at the start, and
Speaker 1: then he and open Ai agree that he gave about
Speaker 1: thirty four milk more million dollars out of his own pocket.
Speaker 1: So he gave forty four million dollars between September twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen or six twenty sixteen and twenty twenty apart from
Speaker 1: the foundation, apart from his own pocket. So that's a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot less than he had gone around
Speaker 1: saying for years that he gave.
Speaker 2: And that kind of seems to be the theme with
Speaker 2: a lot of his maybe good donations. He says he'll
Speaker 2: do one thing and then he does another. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about Flint, Michigan, where what he promised there in what
Speaker 2: he actually did.
Speaker 1: So there was a period in the Musk Foundation when
Speaker 1: it had a lot of money, but not billions of
Speaker 1: dollars in which he this is like twenty sixteen, seventeen,
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen. It seemed like the motivator behind a lot
Speaker 1: of his giving was Twitter, Like he was doing it
Speaker 1: in response to people who kind of called him out
Speaker 1: on Twitter. He was becoming more of a Twitter celebrity,
Speaker 1: and so like mister Beast would say, hey, I'm raising
Speaker 1: money to plant trees. You know, Elon, will you give
Speaker 1: you money? And Elan will say yes, I'll give you
Speaker 1: a million dollars to plant a million trees. That came
Speaker 1: from the Musk Foundation. Dave Portnoy, the guy from Barstool Sports,
Speaker 1: was raising money to help small businesses during COVID. You know,
Speaker 1: he pushes Musk and Musk responds with the million dollars
Speaker 1: from the Musk Foundation. One of the more unusual sort
Speaker 1: of instances of that was there was a girl in Flint, Michigan.
Speaker 1: I think she was ten at the time, little Miss Flint,
Speaker 1: Mariy Copeney, and she had tweeted at Musk like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know he was thinking of buying Twitter. This is
Speaker 1: an earlier iteration of him thinking of buying Twitter. You
Speaker 1: know you have that much money, why don't you use
Speaker 1: it to buy, you know, supplies for Flint, Michigan where
Speaker 1: we have this horrible water crisis. And he responds and says,
Speaker 1: I will pay to fix every home in Flint that
Speaker 1: has too much lead in the water. This is at
Speaker 1: a time, obviously, when they had been this huge epondemic
Speaker 1: of lead and water pipes and water supply and still
Speaker 1: kind of a problem today as well. Yes, and so
Speaker 1: the mayor reaches out to him. The mayor says, actually,
Speaker 1: you know what we need right now is helping the schools.
Speaker 1: You know, the schools they need help. You know, the water,
Speaker 1: you know, water and houses is being handled by the state.
Speaker 1: And so he gives about a million dollars in the
Speaker 1: Musk Foundation to schools in Flint, both to put water
Speaker 1: filters in the school and to buy laptops for middle schoolers.
Speaker 1: He also gives a little bit more to the to
Speaker 1: a back charity that was sort of associated with little
Speaker 1: Miss Flint now Flint. People that you know, the mayor
Speaker 1: and other people in the city of Flint see how
Speaker 1: rich he is and see that he cares about Flint,
Speaker 1: and they want more. They ask for more, they said,
Speaker 1: you know, they sent him this letter that said, you know,
Speaker 1: you've you know, you have the potential to make such
Speaker 1: a huge difference in Flint. Can you give us more
Speaker 1: to do things like replace large scale water infrastructure too.
Speaker 2: I mean, just just the one thing, the exact thing
Speaker 2: that Musk said, and quoting both the article in the
Speaker 2: Eland Musk himself, he will fund fixing the water in
Speaker 2: any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels.
Speaker 2: So just to be clear, he promised the world they
Speaker 2: were not asking him for too much. This is just
Speaker 2: what city do.
Speaker 1: I think He's followed up by saying like no kidding
Speaker 1: or something. So yeah, so they ask, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: we also want can you invest in this fund to
Speaker 1: help us build small businesses here? Will you move one
Speaker 1: of your own businesses here? And it seems like out
Speaker 1: of that came only one, you know, beyond the things
Speaker 1: I already mentioned. The only additional thing they did was
Speaker 1: send a guy from Tesla. He came sort of a
Speaker 1: guy from Tesla who was thinking about setting up like
Speaker 1: an operation there, some sort of Tesla building or operation.
Speaker 1: And so he came and sort of met people at
Speaker 1: the city hall, gave rides in the Tesla around the
Speaker 1: city hall parking lot, and that was it. Nothing more
Speaker 1: came of it, just.
Speaker 2: Just around the parking lot.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, just around the parking line, but
Speaker 1: just around the parking lot.
Speaker 2: Very bizarre.
Speaker 1: And so the mayor said, you know, look, we were
Speaker 1: happy he gave something. You know, I didn't have to
Speaker 1: give anything. She said that this was a time when
Speaker 1: you know, that twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen was a time
Speaker 1: when they were hearing from sort of a lot of celebrities,
Speaker 1: you know, well meeting celebrities, but they were sort of
Speaker 1: being innundated by offers from various celebrit But he said,
Speaker 1: become Flint had become that much of a cause celebrity people.
Speaker 1: All these people wanted to help, and so Elon was
Speaker 1: one of them, and he gave. You know, it sounds
Speaker 1: like he gave about a million dollars. They definitely wanted more,
Speaker 1: but they were happy with what they got.
Speaker 2: It's weird because a situation like that, it's good. He
Speaker 2: gave like money for water filters and laptops of kids,
Speaker 2: like unquestionably be good. But also he didn't actually fix
Speaker 2: the problem, didn't actually fix Flint's water problem, and it
Speaker 2: sounds like that was a problem with celebrities in general.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, I mean, I think his problem was his
Speaker 1: promise to fix the water in the houses was more specific,
Speaker 1: and he also probably had the capacity to do it
Speaker 1: more than a lot of the other celebrities that offered.
Speaker 1: But yes, that is the striking thing is Yes, the
Speaker 1: city steered him into schools and the mayor said we
Speaker 1: steered him into schools first, thinking that, you know, we
Speaker 1: let the state try to fix the houses and if
Speaker 1: that didn't work, then Elon could fix those two. So
Speaker 1: he didn't do the thing that he was going to
Speaker 1: he said he was going to do in this tweet.
Speaker 2: So on a large scale, it seems like a lot
Speaker 2: of tech people outside of maybe Bill Gates, seem very
Speaker 2: bad at the philanthropy thing, Like Mark Zuckerberg is the one.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of his one hundred million dollars to what's
Speaker 2: New York schools systems? Why is it the this is
Speaker 2: a very dumb guy question of it is why is
Speaker 2: it just having a lot of money doesn't help? How
Speaker 2: is it that? Is it an organized Is it actually
Speaker 2: quite difficult to deploy this capital?
Speaker 1: I think it is. The answer is yes, that it.
Speaker 1: It is a very it's hard to give this much
Speaker 1: money away. You can do it in one of two ways.
Speaker 1: You can do it the Mackenzie Bezos way. I mean
Speaker 1: that she's an example of somebody who has a lot
Speaker 1: of money and has given away a lot of money.
Speaker 1: But she's not you know, it's she is like dropping
Speaker 1: it from heaven. You know, there's she's not trying to
Speaker 1: sort of come in and help you manage your organization.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want a grand proposal. She just shows up
Speaker 1: and gives you a lot of money and then leaves.
Speaker 1: Other folks who have tried to sort of invest in
Speaker 1: something over the longer term. You mentioned Mark Zuckerberg. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it also is just a matter of time,
Speaker 1: Like it's really really hard to give money away effect,
Speaker 1: especially for trying to like have a specific outcome in
Speaker 1: the world. And maybe these guys are too busy. I mean,
Speaker 1: the one of the other sort of people who have
Speaker 1: a foundation about as big as Elons is Larry Page,
Speaker 1: the guy from Google, and his foundation both fails to
Speaker 1: make its minimum payouts but also gives its money, all
Speaker 1: of its money into something called the donor Advised Fund,
Speaker 1: which is basically like a warehouse for money, and it
Speaker 1: disappears into there. We don't know where it when or
Speaker 1: if any of it actually went out into the world.
Speaker 1: So it does seem like maybe these folks don't have
Speaker 1: the time or the you know, the bandwidth to put
Speaker 1: money into the to like put the attention commensurate with
Speaker 1: the money they're putting in.
Speaker 2: So but just to be clear, Larry Page, co founder
Speaker 2: for Google. He has he is doing a similar thing.
Speaker 1: He is doing a similar well, it's not similar in
Speaker 1: that I don't have any proof that he's doing things
Speaker 1: that benefit himself. But he is a huge amount of money.
Speaker 1: He's failed to meet that goal or that minimum of
Speaker 1: five percent payout, And what he's doing with his money
Speaker 1: in some ways is you know, he basically is giving
Speaker 1: it to a middleman, and then there's no sense of
Speaker 1: a charitable middleman, the special sort of class of charitable middleman,
Speaker 1: and we don't know what happens to it after that.
Speaker 1: So he is what he's doing is less transparent than
Speaker 1: what Musk is doing.
Speaker 2: Are the other tech people doing similar maybe not saying size,
Speaker 2: but there are other other philanthropic efforts failing to invest.
Speaker 1: And no if you look at the people who were
Speaker 1: above Musk. So the shortfall that Musk had at the
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty two where he was his foundation
Speaker 1: was two hundred and thirty four million dollars under what
Speaker 1: it should have given away. There are only three foundations
Speaker 1: that were worse than that had a bigger shortfall that year,
Speaker 1: Larry Page's one, the Hewlett Foundation was another, and then
Speaker 1: the Lily Foundation, tied to the drugmaker ELI. Lilly was
Speaker 1: the first. So there are not that many. Out of
Speaker 1: the hundreds and hundreds of foundations in the US, those
Speaker 1: four had the biggest shortfalls.
Speaker 2: But they still managed to get billions of dollars in
Speaker 2: tax breaks out of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a field that is not that well policed,
Speaker 1: as I said, by the IRS or anybody else.
Speaker 2: And is it just that expensive and time consumed? Would
Speaker 2: there be a massive legal fight to try and actually
Speaker 2: get this thing done?
Speaker 1: I mean, Congress could change the laws, or they could
Speaker 1: give the IRS more money to go after it. I
Speaker 1: think the Yeah, this has suffered from a sense of
Speaker 1: neglect and also the IRS is general weakness that they're
Speaker 1: going to use political capital. They're going to use it
Speaker 1: on collecting taxes, not fighting nonprofits.
Speaker 2: So where do you think this goes from here? Do
Speaker 2: you think it just continues doing nothing or doing less
Speaker 2: than the bare minimum?
Speaker 1: Well, we will not know the reporting, you know, the
Speaker 1: filing deadlines are so slow that we won't know until
Speaker 1: this November whether the Musk Foundation made its goals for
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, unless they choose to tell us first.
Speaker 1: The actual required deadline for them to release something publicly
Speaker 1: is not till November, and we may know then if
Speaker 1: the IRS has taken some action against them, but we
Speaker 1: may never know if they take an action against them.
Speaker 1: So we're going to keep watching it and see what
Speaker 1: else it's done. But there's no expectation that I have
Speaker 1: that we're going to see any changes anytime soon.
Speaker 2: I am with a personal question, does any of this
Speaker 2: work kind of depress you make you a little cynical
Speaker 2: because you see these people just getting these massive benefits.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I mean, the reason I so
Speaker 1: I cover nonprofits, That's that's what I do all the time.
Speaker 1: And the reason I got into this is because there
Speaker 1: is such a like obviously, the find nonrofit sector does
Speaker 1: such amazing work. There's so many incredible things that nonprofits too,
Speaker 1: but it also is a shield. You know, we give
Speaker 1: nonprofits legal rights, we give them text breaks, and we
Speaker 1: also give them this sort of you know, veneer of
Speaker 1: do gooderism that makes people both in government and outside
Speaker 1: government and not want to look any closer. And so
Speaker 1: some people use that, you know, they use that good will,
Speaker 1: they use that those privileges as kind of a shield
Speaker 1: to hide self dealing, to hide, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: foreign influence, to hide enrichment, embezzlmoun all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And so that's the sort of stuff that I do
Speaker 1: every day, is to try to find out what people
Speaker 1: are doing beyond behind that kind of screen of of
Speaker 1: philanthropy or screen of sort of good will. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't depress me. It's just that's what I do every day,
Speaker 1: and I think it makes it for it makes a
Speaker 1: fascinating beat, this contrast of like the great potential and
Speaker 1: the great trust and the reality of these of these groups.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, David, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: So what's remarkable about this story to me is that
Speaker 2: Musk has, for all intents and purposes, received a multi
Speaker 2: billion dollar tax break in exchange for about a quarter
Speaker 2: of a billion dollars. That which he has spent has
Speaker 2: mostly gone to things that directly benefit him, and the
Speaker 2: few times he's actually spent it well on people that
Speaker 2: need it, he's gone the Musk row of over promising
Speaker 2: and under delivering. It's genuinely despicable to watch him send
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars to an barely incorporated school in Texas.
Speaker 2: Now campus exists. They own some land, and it's very
Speaker 2: clearly lining up with the other companies. And that's about
Speaker 2: one hundred times more than they provided to Flint, Michigan,
Speaker 2: a place where he promised and he received a ton
Speaker 2: of positive press for fixing their contaminated water system. He
Speaker 2: didn't do it. He did some stuff, and it's good
Speaker 2: that he did something. But you can see how much
Speaker 2: money this man deploys, and you see how little he's
Speaker 2: actually done with it. And it's also sickening to watch
Speaker 2: this unfathomably rich man, this ultra rich ghoul, receive a
Speaker 2: massive massive return for doing very little and actively conning
Speaker 2: the nonprofit system. And as David kind of hinted at,
Speaker 2: there just isn't the regulatory framework or action or political
Speaker 2: capital to actually fight a man like Elon Musk. As
Speaker 2: I've said before, the US government just and Queezer society
Speaker 2: are just not capable of dealing with billionaires. But there
Speaker 2: is another side of this story. Musk doesn't want this
Speaker 2: money spent. Most of this they have a terribly small
Speaker 2: amount of money, less than a hundred thousand dollars. I
Speaker 2: believe he doesn't want this money spent anywhere because he
Speaker 2: wants to hoard that Tesla stock as much as he can.
Speaker 2: Putting any downward pressure on Tesla would be a bad idea,
Speaker 2: and almost all the money that this foundation has is
Speaker 2: Tesla stock. But this is still a very important story
Speaker 2: even if nothing changes, because it's another way of showing
Speaker 2: how empty the legend of Elon Musk really is. He
Speaker 2: got so much positive press around this foundation. He promised
Speaker 2: to fix Flint, Michigan's water system. He got tons of
Speaker 2: press in twenty eighteen, and he's given away what a
Speaker 2: million dollars for him, that is something he finds in
Speaker 2: his pockets or between the couch cushions, probably has more there.
Speaker 2: He got another bunch of press for giving away eleven
Speaker 2: point six million Tesla shares to charity, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of close to what the Wall Street Journal actually wrote.
Speaker 2: He didn't give away anything, by the way. He put
Speaker 2: it in a charity literally with his name on it,
Speaker 2: or a nonprofit in this case, and as we've heard,
Speaker 2: he hasn't really spent it. And he even at one
Speaker 2: point tweeted that he sent this to the UN saying
Speaker 2: he would spend six billion dollars to fight world hunger,
Speaker 2: but only only if they tell him how they'd spend it,
Speaker 2: which I don't know. There's always a condition with this man,
Speaker 2: there's always a trick, and I just think it's because
Speaker 2: he doesn't really care that much, and he'll continue to
Speaker 2: do stuff like this as long as the media is
Speaker 2: unable or unwilling to call him out, and indeed, as
Speaker 2: long as they're willing to buy his bullshit. This man
Speaker 2: is a liar, He's a billionaire con artist. He's mastered
Speaker 2: exploiting the law and society and the media to get
Speaker 2: even richer. Yet I'm not freaking out too much because
Speaker 2: every farrenh Old he's won a Pulitzer for work exactly
Speaker 2: like this with Donald Trump. There is more to this
Speaker 2: story that I'm sure David will bring out, and his
Speaker 2: colleague Grime Mack, who worked on the story with him,
Speaker 2: is one of the most industrious Elon Musk reporters out there.
Speaker 2: The media is turning on this man, and this work
Speaker 2: is deep, it's dangerous, and it's going up against the
Speaker 2: man who has proven to a hostile relationship to the
Speaker 2: press and to society. But these stories are so important
Speaker 2: and as they accumulate, most reality distortion field will fall apart.
Speaker 2: More it's already going. And I'm not saying this man
Speaker 2: can be brought down. I don't think there's anything that
Speaker 2: could truly, quote unquote stop Elon Musk, but we can
Speaker 2: close the wound that he's opened in society where he's
Speaker 2: just drinking money from the blood of others. And I
Speaker 2: really want you to read David's work, and I put
Speaker 2: a link to it in the show notes of this episode.
Speaker 2: It's important you read this. It's important you try and
Speaker 2: understand exactly how little Elon Musk is done for the world,
Speaker 2: because it's time to turn on this man. It's time
Speaker 2: to stop calling him an inventor. He didn't invent anything.
Speaker 2: It's time to even stop calling him a philanthropist. At
Speaker 2: the scale he's done things here, it's barely done anything.
Speaker 2: You should check out David's story. You can find him
Speaker 2: on Twitter at farenthal that's fahr e nt hold. He's
Speaker 2: a great guy. Thank you for listening, Thank you for
Speaker 2: listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the
Speaker 2: Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out
Speaker 2: more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com.
Speaker 2: M A T T O S O w s Ki
Speaker 2: dot com. You can email me at easy at better
Speaker 2: offline dot com or check out better offline dot com
Speaker 2: to find my newsletter and more links to this podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a
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