WEBVTT - Musk's Uncharitable Charity ft. David Fahrenthold 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:03.560 All Zone Media. 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:19.840 Hello, Welcome to bear offline. I'm at Zetron. Since twenty twenty, 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.720 Elon Musk has seeded his charitable foundation in innovatively called 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:26.759 the Musk Foundation, with billions of dollars of test the stock, 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.440 which has neted him a multi billion dollar tax break. 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:32.840 Yet a massive New York Times investigation by reporters Ryan 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.160 Mack and Dave vid Farenthald has found that the Musk 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:38.960 Foundation has failed to donate the minimum amount of money 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:42.640 required by law to get that tax break. The investigation 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.320 found that Musk had not hired any staff for the 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:47.800 foundation and that its board was made up of Musk 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:50.920 and two volunteers, one of whom The Times reports works 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:53.519 an average of six minutes a week on a charitable 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:57.360 operation with billions of dollars of dry powder, and Musk's 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:01.160 donations regularly benefited causes related to his own interests, like 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:04.240 a school insert, a SpaceX compound, and a UN program 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:08.040 to help countries find internet for rural schools, where two 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.160 of them became Starlink customers. And Starlink is, of course, 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:16.720 Musk's wireless internet company. And while Elon Musk initially promised 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:19.399 to help and I quote fund fixing the water in 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:23.000 any house in Flint, Michigan that has water contamination above 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:25.720 FDA levels. He would only end up donating about a 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:28.880 million dollars to local schools, installing water filters and buying 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:32.240 laptops for students. While this is unquestionably a good thing, 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.560 he failed to do much more than that. All he 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.440 did was send the tes Lagoon down there to offer 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:41.080 and I'm not kidding rides around the parking lot in 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:44.240 his car. Since the middle of twenty nineteen, The Times 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:47.319 reports that Musk has done little more for Flint than that. 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:51.040 According to The Times, in twenty twenty one, the Musk 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:54.400 Foundation fell forty one million dollars short of the minimum 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:57.160 required donation, and in twenty twenty two missed it by 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:01.880 an astonishing two hundred and thirty four million dollars. That year, 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:04.880 Musk's foundation only gave away the two point twenty five 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.520 percent of the five percent it was required to from 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:18.079 its seven billion dollars in assets. Today, I'm joined by 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.880 New York Times investigative report to David Tarenthald, who won 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:23.960 a Pulitzer Price for his work at The Washington Post 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:27.040 investigating our big Web President Donald J. Trump and his 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:29.960 dodgy charitable deals. David, thank you so much for joining me. 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:31.160 Hey, it's great to be here. 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.600 So, on a very basic level, what makes this Elon 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:39.639 Musk charity story so remarkable? What's so different about it? 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:42.320 Well, there's two things that really stand out about the 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:44.800 Musk Foundation. One is how big it is. So the 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.560 Musk Foundation is more than five billion dollars in assets, 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.359 mostly Tesla stock. That makes it one of the twenty 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:53.760 largest foundations in the United States. But the second thing 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:56.480 is how small it is in its actions. It's big 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:58.960 in its resources and small in its actions. So the 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.160 Musk Foundation has repeatedly failed to give away just the 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:05.359 bare minimum it's required to by law. And it also 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:07.840 when it does give its money away, the money doesn't 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.799 go very far. By that, I mean often mister Musk 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.240 uses the money in his foundation to help himself or 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:15.160 to help his businesses. 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:18.160 So can you give me example of some of the 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:20.000 ways he's using it to help himself. 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:25.040 Well, one of the biggest ones was in twenty twenty one. 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.840 There's a guy named Jared Isaacman who's a billionaire in Pennsylvania. 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.440 He charters a rocket from SpaceX to go up into space, 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:34.280 and as a way of sort of celebrating or ennobling 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:36.800 what he's doing, he says, you know, I'm going to 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:40.040 raise two hundred million dollars with this spaceflight for Saint 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:43.480 Jude's Children's Research Hospital. He goes up into space, he 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:46.080 comes back down and he hasn't raised two hundred million dollars. 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.480 They're still short, and so Elon Musk then jumps in 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.520 to save his customer from failing on this charitable pledge 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.680 and says, I'll give fifty million dollars. Eventually gives fifty 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:58.080 five million dollars, not from his own pocket but from 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.640 the Musk Foundation. A few weeks later, the same billionaire says, 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:03.680 you know what, I'm going to order three more flights 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:06.200 from SpaceX. So he goes from being a good SpaceX 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:08.960 customer to a really good SpaceX customer, and part of 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:12.640 that process was the Musk Foundation. Another example was the 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:17.239 Musk Foundation had never given any money to Cameron County, Texas. 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:19.520 That's an area of the very very southern tip of 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:23.000 Texas where Musk has the SpaceX launch site. He never 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.200 had never given any money down there until March twenty 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.960 twenty one SpaceX rocket explodes there and rains metal down 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:31.920 all over this area, an area, by the way, where 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:35.360 he needs lots of regulatory approvals, goodwill, all kinds of 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:37.920 help from the people who were the politicians down there. 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.760 About an hour after the rocket explodes, the Musk Foundation 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:46.240 starts giving to schools to downtown beautification. And the third 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.560 example I'll bring up are these two schools that mister 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:53.120 Musk has started and supported with the Musk Foundation. On paper, 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:56.280 these are supposed to be, like every charity, to serve 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:58.280 the public. Right, that's the point of the charity. It's 0:04:58.279 --> 0:04:59.919 not your it's not to serve you. It's not a 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:01.960 even if it's got your name on it, it doesn't serve 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.599 your interest. It serves the public. So there's a school 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:08.200 called ad Astra mister Musk started. There's another school called 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.560 the Foundation. That's its legal name, the foundation that mister 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:13.240 Muskus give it a bunch of money to from the 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.720 Musk Foundation. So we went to look, Okay, where are 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:18.719 these schools, who are they serving how are they serving 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:20.920 the public? The answer is that one of them is 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:24.760 behind the locked gates of a SpaceX compound in Boca Chica, Texas. 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.479 You can only get in if you were a SpaceX employee. 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:31.279 And the other one the foundation, it's bought a school 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:34.400 a property to turn into a Montessori school that happens 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.240 to be two minutes away from a huge subdivision mister 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.320 Musk is building for his own employees outside Basstrop, Texas. 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.080 So and which employees for SPICEX for. 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:45.640 Well, he's got a whole complex there that includes SpaceX, 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:47.520 but it's mainly boring company employees. 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:48.039 Right. 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.080 Both these places are rural areas. He's trying to bring 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.080 these highly talented, sought after people to a pretty rural 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:56.480 area of Texas. You can imagine one of the questions 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:58.120 people would ask is, well, where are my kids going 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:00.679 to go to school? Right? And so these two charities 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.120 are helping Musk recruit by building schools to serve his employees. 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.920 So, taking a step back on a very basic level, 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.920 how does it actually work? So has he he's put 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.240 this stock in escrow? 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:17.560 ISU, what happened was in twenty twenty one, he's facing 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:20.320 this giant tax bill. Is he he exercised a bunch 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:22.400 of Tesla stock options and he says he owed eleven 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.440 billion dollars in taxes. He takes five billion dollars of 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:28.440 Tesla stock. Now, this is that's not what he paid 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.200 for the stock. That's what it's appreciated too. He donates 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.359 it to charity. And now the tax law allows you 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:36.960 to take a deduction based on the appreciated value of 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:38.719 the stock. So the deduction to him could have been 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:40.839 worth as much as two billion dollars off of his 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.800 tax bill. Right, he gives that stock to the Musk Foundation. 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:46.880 Now it's confusing because it's got his he's in charge 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:48.840 of the Musk Foundation. It's got his name on it. 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:51.960 But again, the Musk Foundation is by law, a separate 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:55.920 entity with its own strictly charitable goals. Even though it 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.159 sounds like something that he's you know, that's like another 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:01.000 sort of pocket of his wallet. It's a separate thing. 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:03.680 So once the money go, once the shares go into 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:07.760 the to the Musk Foundation. Now he's given himself a responsibility, 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.440 he's given himself a job, and that is the IRIS 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:14.160 requires foundations to give away five percent of their assets 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:17.200 every year. You can imagine why. It's to keep people 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:19.760 from just dumping money into their foundation, getting a tax 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:22.600 break and never actually helping the world. You have to 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:24.720 send five percent of your money out the door to 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:27.880 the real world every year, and he hasn't. He has 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.120 didn't in twenty twenty one, he didn't in twenty twenty two. 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:31.880 In fact, by the end of twenty twenty two, he 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:35.800 was two hundred and thirty four million dollars behind the 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:38.520 minimum for what this foundation was supposed to have given away. 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.520 Right, but as far as the stalt goes, does it 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.720 sit separate to musk is in a separate holding? 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.040 It is legally the property of this foundation now, which 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:50.840 means he's still in control of it, but it belongs 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:51.520 to the foundation. 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:53.760 Does it have any liquid funds in there? 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.640 There's some I think they've sold a few sids. There's 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.080 a small amount of liquid cash. I think mostly what 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:01.280 he does is it sells stock in order to make donations. 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:05.800 When it does so, how does the tax break actually work? 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:07.760 How much does he get off of his tax bill 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:08.560 as a result of this? 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.960 So this is complicated. But what we were told was 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:19.040 that in that year they expected that the five billion. 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.800 So he gives five billion dollars worth of Tesla stock 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:23.920 to his charity. The folks we talked to said that 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.720 they thought the actual break from that, the actual production 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.960 in his taxes would be thirty seven percent of five 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:33.520 billion dollars, which is about two billion dollars. So there's 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:35.760 a lot of other math involved in involving his income 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:37.800 and other things, but that was the guess, was two 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:39.160 billion dollars off his taxes? 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:41.440 And who gave you this estimate? Just to a cliar. 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:43.800 We talked to a couple of professors of tax law. 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:48.200 Right, So what he gets out of this is just 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.720 a tax break, but he's not donating enough money, right, 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:53.360 actually giving away what he's meant to. 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.240 Yeah, it's confusing to think about him and his foundation 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:58.160 has separate entities. But in this case, he gives his 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.280 foundation the five billion dollar. Enough. If he'd taken this 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:04.000 five billion dollars worth of Tesla stock and given it 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:07.280 to Saint Jude's or UNICEF or some other charity that 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:09.200 he didn't control, that would have been the end of 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:11.120 the story for him. He's given all the money, he's 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.360 given these shares away. He takes the tax break, UNICEF 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.880 or whoever's then uses the shares for whatever. Right, So 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:20.600 now he's like taking off his hat as donor and 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:22.240 putting on the hat as the guy who runs the 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.360 Musk Foundation, and now he has this responsibility, is the 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:28.480 head of the Musk Foundation, to start giving this newfound 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.400 money away. And that's when the five percent minimum matters 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.000 to him. He has to give five percent of the 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:37.800 foundation's assets away to other charities out to actually do 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:39.400 good in the world every year. 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:41.600 And he isn't doing this enough. 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:43.559 No, he missed it in twenty twenty one by forty 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.000 one million dollars, and then in twenty twenty two he 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:47.679 missed it by two hundred and thirty four million. 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:53.520 And so what's meant to happen to a regular person? Well, actually, 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:55.920 one one quick question. Does he get this tax break 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:58.520 every year for holding it? Or is it just the 0:09:58.559 --> 0:09:59.600 one off? He got a one off? 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.480 You know, he gets it based on what he's donated 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:03.840 to the foundation in that year. 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:06.600 Okay, and how much is in there right now? Just 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:07.920 a week clip, because I know there's a lot of 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:08.679 numbers going on. 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:11.240 Yeah, No, it depends on It's depended so much on 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:13.480 the rise and fall of Tesla stock. But the last 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:15.160 time we got a snapshot was at the end of 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:17.000 twenty twenty two, and it was a little bit more 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:18.360 than five billion at that point. 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:21.640 So what is meant to happen to him and who 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:23.160 is meant to exact justice here? 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:27.959 Well, there's two primary regulators of nonprofits. One is the IRS, 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:31.720 the Internal Revenue Service. They're the ones who Okay, so 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:33.679 we said at the end of twenty twenty two, he 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:36.679 was this foundation was two hundred and thirty four million 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.920 dollars behind. He has a one year grace period twenty 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:42.120 twenty three to give that money away in addition to 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:45.480 the five percent again for twenty twenty three. If he 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:48.080 doesn't give a doesn't give the money away after that 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:50.880 one year grace period, the foundation faces a thirty percent 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.839 penalty tax, and if it still doesn't pay then then 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:55.720 it faces one hundred percent penalty tax. So it would 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:59.080 basically the IRS would confiscate all the money that they 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:01.960 were supposed to give A but they did not, So 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.240 that's what would happen. That's the IRS. The problem with 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:07.640 that for me as a reporter is that the IRS 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:11.400 all of that enforcement is private hidden. We can't see 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.240 it unless somebody sues in tax court or federal court 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:16.320 to stop it. So if it happened at the end 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:18.680 of twenty twenty three, we don't know about it. The 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:21.960 other regulator in most states is the estate attorney general. 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.600 They also can regulate people who bilate tax laws. I mean, 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:29.440 one example that just ended was the New York Attorney 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:32.200 General and the National Rifle Association. She had the right 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:34.960 to regulate and sue the NRA because it was a 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.520 New York nonprofit. The Musk Foundation is a Texas nonprofit. 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.440 So the authority lands with Ken Paxton, an Attorney General 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:43.960 of Texas. Not to say it won't happen, but he's 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.840 a very political actor and a very political actor who's 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:47.640 very friendly to Musk. 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.319 Wasn't he also threatening media matters when Musk suit them 0:11:51.320 --> 0:12:07.280 as well? He seems very much in his pocket. So 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:10.440 let's go back to this ad Astra school. What exactly 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:13.560 happened there, because it's very bizarre. There is a school 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:14.640 inside SpaceX. 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:19.240 Yes, so it began as a school basically for Musk's children. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.439 He started it back in California when he and SpaceX 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:23.120 were both there. 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:24.359 And it's a nonprofit. 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:26.720 Right, it's a nonprofit. So again from the beginning, it 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:29.320 faced this requirement to serve the public and not the 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:33.000 private good of its leader. The first class fourteen students, 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:36.400 five of whom were Musk's owned children. Later it moves 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:40.600 from his house to the SpaceX campus in Hawthorne, California, 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.880 so it's within the gates of SpaceX. There. We talked 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:45.559 to the guy who was the headmaster. He said about 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:49.200 half the students were related to SpaceX employees, and Musk's 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.559 owned children also went there for a long time. Then 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:56.559 in twenty twenty, Musk starts to shift his own residency, 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:59.520 his own company center of Gravity, to Texas. So then 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:03.199 the Astro school picks up from California, moves to Texas, 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:06.200 and from what we can tell, this sort of small 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:08.600 amount of openness they had, you know, the fifty percent 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:10.920 of students they had who were not employees of SpaceX. 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.160 They seem to have changed their model where now they're 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:17.720 behind this security gate. I went down there. If you 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:19.920 could picture, if you've ever seen pictures of where the 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.840 SpaceX rocket launch site is in South Texas, it's a 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:25.280 very remote area close to the Gulf of Mexico. There's 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.080 nothing around there, there's no people, there's no other schools, 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:30.920 and as you drive down there, there's a little fence 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.600 on the side of the highway and you see you 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:36.240 could see behind it, there's a building, there's some basketball courts. 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:38.200 You can see what looks like a school, but there's 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:40.480 no sign for a school. There's nothing that tells you 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:42.199 there's a school there. Certainly nothing tells you there's a 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:43.839 school there that you might go to if you're a 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:46.400 member of the public. The only signs say, you know, 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.040 keep out, no trespassing, and there's a security guard who 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:51.720 you know if you stop for ten seconds, sieted come 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:52.720 over and ask what you're doing. 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:57.000 So, do you know how one sends one's kids? 0:13:57.040 --> 0:13:57.199 There? 0:13:57.320 --> 0:13:58.560 Is it a private school? 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.360 Like it is private? It does not have a website, 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:04.360 which it used to in California, but it does not 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:07.480 now in Texas. We asked Musk and the people who 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:10.800 run the other people who are the directors of that school? Yeah, 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:13.120 how you get in? Who chooses it? What's the criteria? 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:15.480 Can you go if you're not a SpaceX employee? And 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:17.320 we did not get answers to any of those questions. 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:20.760 Does it seem to flown any nonprofit guidelines you've seen 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.680 or is it just classic craven capitalism? 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:27.360 It is a nonprofit that it remains legally a nonprofit. 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:29.600 The IRS is given a tax exem status, so if 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:31.320 you donate money to it, you can get a tax 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:35.120 break for it. But you know, that's the question here is, 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:38.720 you know, if this is really a nonprofit, it's truly 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.080 serving the public and not the private benefit of mister 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:43.640 Musk or the private benefit of SpaceX. You know, where's 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:45.680 the evidence of that? And that's what we asked them 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:46.680 for and didn't get a response. 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:51.680 So in this other school, the foundation, what is that? 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:54.960 This feels? See this is the thing with things like this. 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.320 When people talk about conspiracy theories and the rich doing 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.560 weird things, they always point to made up stuff versus this. 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:04.720 So this other secret school that Musk gave what one 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.680 hundred million dollars do what if you found there? 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:10.920 Yeah, that was really surprising. So the Musk Foundation, despite 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:12.800 the fact that it's very big, doesn't give very many 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.280 really large donations. And then the exception, one of the exceptions, 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:20.480 was this thing called the Foundation and they first the 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.720 Musk Foundation gave it money in twenty twenty two. You 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:26.880 can pull the IRS documents for the foundation to see 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:29.360 what it is and what they told the IRS they 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:31.520 were going to do when they got tax exempt status 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:33.600 and you can see that it's very very closely tied 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:36.440 to Elon Musk. So he's not on the board of directors, 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.480 but the head of it is his money manager. The 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.600 two other directors are his accountants. So there are people 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:45.400 who are very close to him. And if you look 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:47.680 at the what they told the irs they were going 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:49.240 to do, and this got some attention at the time 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:52.120 last year, it sounds grand. We're going to start a school, 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:54.040 We're going to start a secondary school, We're going to 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:56.480 start a university in Austin, Texas. And a lot of 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:58.240 people cover that at the time and said, ooh, you knows, 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:01.360 mister Musk is he's starting sort of a competitor or 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:03.280 the University of Austin is you know, what would an 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.720 Elon Musk university be like? Is this where he's going 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.120 to combat you know, the forces of wokeness or you 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:10.360 know the other things he talks about a lot. And 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.360 so my question was just you know, where is this school? 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:15.920 Does it exist? Does it has it done anything? Because 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:18.120 it doesn't have a web presence, it doesn't have you know, 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:20.280 there's no evidence. You know, if you if you or 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:21.440 I said, you know, I want to go to the 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:23.600 University of Elon Musk or you know, whatever this is 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.240 going to be. There's there's no way to find information 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:28.760 about it, and so it took a lot of sleuth thing. 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.520 But here's what we found. The foundation, the entity that 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:35.960 the startup charity that is run by Musk's associates. It 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.480 has a shell company. The shell company last year bought 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.560 a former horse farm in Bastrop, Texas a forty acre 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:46.200 horse farm. Okay, so maybe that's the college, maybe that's 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:48.600 the University of Elon Musk. When you go look at 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.640 that property, you can see that it actually matches well. 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:53.720 You can see two things about it. One is that 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:56.720 it's right around the corner from this company town essentially 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.480 that Musk wants to build for his employees outside Bastrop. 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.560 Bastrop is is an extra of a Austin, But where 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:04.320 he's building is kind of in the middle of nowhere. 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:07.800 There's no schools or development. But he's put a boring 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:11.920 company installation, a giant SpaceX warehouse, he's got a there's 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:14.600 like a live music venue and a store, and he's 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:16.840 putting in one hundred and ten home subdivision. He's going 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.560 to call it Snailbrook, just sort of like an inside joke. 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:21.960 I guess in the world of the boring Company, Oh yeah, 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.439 I guess, the boring company moves as fast as a snail. 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:27.199 So this is Snailbrook. So but the one thing that 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.360 he's trying to convince people to move from Austin San Francisco, 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:32.560 where you know, wherever people who have choices about what 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:34.080 they're going to live, he's going to say, move to 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:38.760 this rural part of central Texas. And the thing that 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:42.159 that subdivision did not have was a school. And so 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:46.080 the foundation, again nominally independent, not supposed to be serving 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:47.880 mister Musk's interest, is just supposed to be doing its 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.960 own charitable thing. The place they've selected for their first 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.560 campus is right around the corner from this place where 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:56.520 Elon Musk's company needs a school. And if you look, 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.959 you can find job listings on the internet for another 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.080 ad Astra school that's being opened, and if you compare it, 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:04.880 it's the same place. So they're going to open another 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.960 ad Astra school in this building. And that's what really 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.199 struck me was the huge contrast between what these folks 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:14.240 told the irs they were going to be university for Austin, 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.280 Texas and all they've done so far, which is it 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.280 looks like build a monassory school for Elon Musk's employees. 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:25.360 So let's talk about the Musk Foundation itself. So by 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.560 the sounds of it, it's what three people including Elon Musk. 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:31.360 Can you just break down the vast corporate structure here? 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:33.840 Is this? This bit drove me a little insane. 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:36.440 Yeah, this is really different too. So you know the 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.119 you remember the company that they keep right and we're 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:42.919 talking about the top twenty largest foundations in the United States. 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.480 That's you know, the Gates Foundation, that's the you know, 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:47.720 the George Soros's group, the Walton. 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.440 How big of them? How big are those organizations by comparison? 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:53.080 So the most foundation is I mean, the Gates Foundation 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:54.919 is a lot bigger. It's in the hundreds of hundreds 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:57.960 of billions. But these other groups are it's around the 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:00.720 size of other groups like the Walton Family Foundation, things 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:02.640 like that. It's in the same ballpark. 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:04.719 And the Walton Families, the Walmart the Walmart. 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:07.280 Yeah, so they and they support charter schools and other things. 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:11.560 It's common, although not always, but most of these places 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.119 have pay roles in the you know, dozens or hundreds 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:17.399 of millions of dollars. They have lots of employees figuring 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.040 out where they should give their money. By contrast, the 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:23.639 Musk Foundation, as you said, has no paid employees at all. 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:27.000 It's never had paid employees. It has three directors, all 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:29.480 of whom are volunteers. There's Elon Musk who says he 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.000 works for an hour a week on it. This guy, 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:35.600 Jared birch Hall, who is Musk's longtime sort of money 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.840 manager consiglieri, he also works for an hour a week. 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:41.840 And then a woman named Matilda Simon who works for 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:45.160 the money manager, and this part was striking. She says 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:47.560 she works forer point one hours a week, which is 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:48.399 six minutes. 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:50.040 Are they compensated at all? 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:55.520 No, they work for free. So yes, there's no And 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:57.800 you know we've asked them, do you have board meetings? 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:00.879 You know? What do you you know? How you have 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:02.719 this huge responsibility now you have to give out three 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:05.119 hundred and fifty million dollars a year. How are you 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:07.040 handling that? We know, how much time do you spend 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:08.480 on that? We didn't get answers about that. 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:10.280 Did they not answer at all? 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:11.240 They didn't answer it at all? 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:14.200 Okay, but in practice though. 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.960 Well, and what we've found was that in some cases 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.680 when there was something that complicated that needed to be done. 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.359 I mean, so for instance, I talked about how after 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.040 the rocket exploded in South Texas, Musk says, I'm going 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:27.800 to give thirty million dollars to all these different groups 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.080 in the area where the rocket exploded. Okay, So now 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:34.280 he's made a that's he's taken on sort of a 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:37.560 task that either is too complicated for these three volunteers. 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.200 He needs somebody to find the school districts in the area, 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:42.720 listen to their project ideas, decide how much money each 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:45.160 one of them should get. So he deputizes this guy 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:47.880 named Igor Kirganov, who, as far as I can tell, 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.119 was never an employee of the foundation, but he was 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:53.160 seeming to act in its stead. So he was He's 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:56.000 a professional poker player or a former professional poker player, 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.720 friend of Musks. So now he's in charge and you 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:02.680 can see him. It was really funny because we got 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:04.639 a lot of emails back and forth between him and 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.480 the school districts that he's giving the Musks Foundations money to. 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.399 And it's fascinating to see this guy supposedly has you know, 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:13.959 hundreds of millions of dollars to give away. But he 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:17.880 was extremely detail oriented and like pressing these these schools 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:20.760 and the city of Brownsville on the smallest details of 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:22.200 the things they were going to use and the smallest 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:25.240 dollar figures. Just to give one example, the city of 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:27.000 Brownsville says, Hey, we want to use some of the 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.320 money that the Musk Foundations giving us to put up 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:31.080 Christmas lights for a Christmas We're gonna have a big 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:35.199 display in downtown Bronswelle with children. Yeah, and here's the 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:37.639 here's the estimate we got from the contractor. You know, 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:39.359 this is how much it'll cost to put those lights up. 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:43.239 Will you pay for it? And Kirganov says, you know, 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:45.960 I want to talk about the color the temperature of 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:49.280 the lights that you've chosen. You've chosen cool white, and 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:51.000 I don't believe cool white is appropriate. I think it 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:53.440 should be a warmer color. So then they scramble around 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:57.080 and find some warmer lights. So it's funny. It was 0:21:57.080 --> 0:21:59.600 a huge contrast between the sort of general what seemed 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:01.760 to be kind of hands off approach that the Foundation 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:03.840 normally runs on, and then all of a sudden there 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:06.440 was this guy who was extremely hands on in a 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:08.000 way that I think people found sort of hard to 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:08.440 deal with. 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:13.560 So do you think the reason they're not investing comes 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:17.480 down to like mismanagement or is there something else going 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:17.840 on here? 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:22.919 You know, it's difficult to tell that. The thing I 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:24.439 think you can it's hard to mean to know what 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:27.040 his motivations are. The two things I would say is 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:31.040 number one, he mister Musk has always said philanthropy is 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:33.800 a mistake. You know, he has always said publicly philanthropy 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:36.040 is not the way to save the world. My companies 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:38.920 do that for me, you know, Tesla, SpaceX, they make 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:40.880 a difference in the world is far greater than any 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:45.960 philanthropic effort could. He's mocked Bill Gates for believing that 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:48.480 philanthropy is a way to change the world. I mean, 0:22:49.200 --> 0:22:51.160 that's a fine attitude to have. It's a weird attitude 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:52.800 to square with a guy who now has given him, 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:55.919 you know, set up a five billion dollar charity. And 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:58.639 the other thing is talking to people. My co co 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:01.320 reporter Ryan Mack talk to some people who knew mister 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:04.040 Musk well from Tesla and SpaceX and other places, and 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:05.639 what they said was just that like this is not 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:07.800 something he talks about or thinks about. He's got a 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:10.000 lot going on, He's got a lot of a lot 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:11.439 of balls in the air, and this was just not 0:23:11.480 --> 0:23:14.200 something they ever heard him thinking about or really considering. 0:23:14.880 --> 0:23:17.359 So could it also be that he just wanted to 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:20.760 park some Tesla stock without it being sold, just to 0:23:20.760 --> 0:23:23.480 be clear, to invest money from that stock, you would 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:27.080 have to liquidate shortly or can charities donate stock directly? 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:28.560 Like they can donate stock directly too. 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:33.080 That's so it's so interesting because if he's not talking 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:35.879 about it, this feels like just a basic tax dotch 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:40.760 just a the lowest possible hanging through because three people 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:42.680 does not feel including one of them being in musk, 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:45.600 that doesn't feel like enough people to run a small 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:46.879 business let alone. 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:49.440 Yeah, three people who work a total of two hours 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:52.840 and six minutes a week. Yeah, it is something that, 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:54.840 you know, way he's doing it is not the way 0:23:55.000 --> 0:23:57.440 a lot of other people do it, either, other people 0:23:57.440 --> 0:23:59.480 of his size of his with charities of his size 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:02.760 either higher a big staff, or they just choose one 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:04.960 cause and give all their money to that, you know. So, 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:07.040 but he's kind of got them in between where he's 0:24:07.080 --> 0:24:09.919 not hasn't chosen one cause to sort of, you know, 0:24:10.440 --> 0:24:12.600 focus all his giving around, and he also hasn't picked 0:24:12.600 --> 0:24:15.000 out any staff to handle a diffuse kind of giving. 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:16.000 So he's sort of in the middle. 0:24:16.600 --> 0:24:20.720 So if regulators wake up and go, hey, this is 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:23.640 very obviously bad, what would be the process that worked 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:24.919 against Musk? What would happen? 0:24:25.680 --> 0:24:27.040 I think the thing that would happen would be in 0:24:27.080 --> 0:24:30.760 an audit from the IRS. The IRS would start setting 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:33.320 him letters and say, look, we think that you're you know, 0:24:33.640 --> 0:24:36.000 we have questions about the way you're operating these charities, 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:38.439 either the Musk Foundation or one of the schools. You know, 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:40.640 we've we believe you doing this that you know there's 0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:43.000 a rules to get in the tax code against using 0:24:43.000 --> 0:24:45.959 your nonprofit for private benefit. We think maybe you're violating that. 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:48.520 Tell us more, and in the end they could shut 0:24:48.520 --> 0:24:50.600 it down. They could make him pay you know, back, 0:24:51.080 --> 0:24:54.199 payback basically the tax benefits he got. Those remedies are 0:24:54.200 --> 0:24:56.520 pretty rare. The IRS is a pretty weak regulator of 0:24:56.520 --> 0:24:58.240 this space, but that would be how it would work. 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:01.760 Is there any historical regulation of people who have messed 0:25:01.800 --> 0:25:02.479 up at this scale? 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:05.760 There are not that many foundations of this scale. I 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:08.159 actually it's a good point. I'm not aware of the 0:25:08.200 --> 0:25:11.359 IRS coming down on anybody who is a foundation this big. 0:25:12.320 --> 0:25:15.480 It feels like stuff like this just incentivizes more activity 0:25:15.600 --> 0:25:18.879 like this because this is in public, like this is 0:25:19.000 --> 0:25:21.560 out there. This is very obvious. 0:25:22.640 --> 0:25:24.440 One of the real I mean. So I read a 0:25:24.440 --> 0:25:26.560 lot about Donald Trump's foundation back in the day, and 0:25:26.600 --> 0:25:28.840 that is a lot was a lot smaller than this, 0:25:28.960 --> 0:25:30.920 that he had much much less less money than the 0:25:31.000 --> 0:25:33.440 Musk Foundation does, but it operated in sort of in 0:25:33.480 --> 0:25:35.560 a similar way. In that case in the New York 0:25:35.600 --> 0:25:37.720 Attorney General came down on them. It wasn't the IRS 0:25:37.760 --> 0:25:40.439 as far as we know. I think the IRS has 0:25:40.480 --> 0:25:42.439 always been understaffed, and you have to think you have 0:25:42.480 --> 0:25:44.480 to remember about them. I've always been told this by 0:25:44.480 --> 0:25:47.439 IRS veterans is the point of the IRS is not 0:25:47.520 --> 0:25:50.119 to police. The point of the IRS is to collect money, 0:25:50.400 --> 0:25:52.520 and so they prioritize the things that bring in the 0:25:52.520 --> 0:25:56.080 most money, and in nonprofit law often is not that. 0:25:56.560 --> 0:25:58.240 So they do it, they regulate it, but it's not 0:25:58.240 --> 0:25:59.880 something they put a lot of energy into. And they've 0:26:00.200 --> 0:26:02.800 obviously shied away in recent years from fights with rich 0:26:02.840 --> 0:26:06.680 people and fights with people who are politically conservative. They've 0:26:06.680 --> 0:26:08.840 been burned by that in the past, so they would 0:26:08.840 --> 0:26:10.960 really have to be to gird their loins before taking 0:26:10.960 --> 0:26:13.479 on somebody like Elon Musk who was obviously both rich 0:26:13.560 --> 0:26:14.720 and now very conservative. 0:26:15.440 --> 0:26:18.919 And would such an effort be, I'm guessing be quite expensive. 0:26:19.920 --> 0:26:22.040 Yeah, and that would last a long time. You know. 0:26:22.320 --> 0:26:24.720 They also have to consider sort of cost benefit. You know, 0:26:24.720 --> 0:26:26.200 how much money in time would you have to spend 0:26:26.240 --> 0:26:27.680 on this and how much money would you get back? 0:26:38.720 --> 0:26:42.200 So how does this compare You mentioned mister Donald Trump, 0:26:42.280 --> 0:26:45.040 how does it compare to his situation? How agregious is 0:26:45.040 --> 0:26:45.920 it in comparison? 0:26:47.080 --> 0:26:48.720 They're different in a couple of ways. As I said, 0:26:48.720 --> 0:26:50.879 the Musk Foundation is much bigger than the Trump Foundation 0:26:50.960 --> 0:26:53.439 ever was. Trump foundation was like two million dollars at 0:26:53.480 --> 0:26:57.080 the most. They were similar in that they often use 0:26:57.200 --> 0:27:00.320 the money. If you look hard enough, they're charitable get ways, 0:27:00.320 --> 0:27:02.280 you'd realize that they were spending money in ways that 0:27:02.320 --> 0:27:05.119 helped themselves. Trump was a little more direct about it, 0:27:05.160 --> 0:27:06.959 and that's what got him into trouble. He would use 0:27:06.960 --> 0:27:08.920 it to He would use his foundation to do things 0:27:08.960 --> 0:27:11.560 like buy a portrait of himself and then hanging on 0:27:11.560 --> 0:27:12.960 the wall of his golf club. He would use it 0:27:13.000 --> 0:27:15.240 to pay off legal settlements for his businesses. He would 0:27:15.280 --> 0:27:18.280 use it to, you know, buy an autographed football helmet 0:27:18.280 --> 0:27:20.399 for himself. He was using it in a way that 0:27:20.560 --> 0:27:23.760 was like directly benefiting himself, not and mister Musk is 0:27:23.800 --> 0:27:25.560 doing it in a way that's a little more oblique. 0:27:26.480 --> 0:27:28.800 And I think that matters under the law. It certainly 0:27:28.800 --> 0:27:30.560 would matter to the irs. They if they want to 0:27:30.560 --> 0:27:33.240 take on an open and shutcase, the Musk Foundation may 0:27:33.240 --> 0:27:36.080 not be it. But the thing that I kept so 0:27:36.160 --> 0:27:38.800 striking to me is the same way that when I 0:27:38.840 --> 0:27:41.520 was covering the Trump Foundation, you would find things that 0:27:41.600 --> 0:27:44.800 looked innocuous or donations that looked just like regular charity, 0:27:44.840 --> 0:27:47.920 and if you pulled on the string hard enough, you'd realize, 0:27:47.920 --> 0:27:50.080 actually there was a story underneath where it was Trump 0:27:50.160 --> 0:27:52.800 helping himself. Then the Musk the same way. I mean, 0:27:53.160 --> 0:27:55.840 just to give you another example, he gave five million 0:27:55.880 --> 0:27:59.439 dollars to UNICEF, who you know, the sort of like 0:27:59.520 --> 0:28:02.640 buy word for an unimpeachable charity, classic charity. Yeah, right, 0:28:03.080 --> 0:28:05.000 when you when you pull on that a little bit, 0:28:05.520 --> 0:28:07.960 you realize that he was giving money to a UNISF 0:28:08.040 --> 0:28:11.960 program that helped countries around the world identify schools that 0:28:12.040 --> 0:28:14.959 need connection to the internet. So let's find a schools 0:28:15.000 --> 0:28:18.119 in Rwanda or Kazakhstand or whatever that aren't connected to 0:28:18.119 --> 0:28:21.040 the internet, and then help those countries find ways to 0:28:21.040 --> 0:28:25.040 connect those schools. So effectively, he was investing in a 0:28:25.040 --> 0:28:28.359 program that created customers for Starlink, his satellite service. So 0:28:28.760 --> 0:28:31.639 at least two cases the countries that the UNSEF helped, 0:28:31.960 --> 0:28:35.080 then once they realized where their schools needed connections, they 0:28:35.080 --> 0:28:38.080 paid mister Musk's company to connect them. So you know, 0:28:38.120 --> 0:28:40.520 even there, even in the UNISF, there's there's a line 0:28:40.560 --> 0:28:42.000 that goes back to his own interests. 0:28:42.880 --> 0:28:47.920 That's it's genuinely despicable. But here's another Did you find 0:28:48.000 --> 0:28:50.920 anything or much about open ai, which is of course 0:28:50.960 --> 0:28:54.000 the nonprofit wing of the company that makes chat GPT. 0:28:55.240 --> 0:28:58.440 Yeah, Musk has had always said that he'd given one 0:28:58.480 --> 0:29:01.160 hundred million dollars to open up to get started. Obviously 0:29:01.240 --> 0:29:02.840 he was on the original board. He was one of 0:29:02.840 --> 0:29:04.440 the co founders of open ai when it was a 0:29:04.440 --> 0:29:07.800 nonprofit or when it started as a nonprofit. What we 0:29:07.880 --> 0:29:10.320 found was that he gave about ten million dollars from 0:29:10.360 --> 0:29:13.479 the Musk Foundation to open Ai at the start, and 0:29:13.520 --> 0:29:16.040 then he and open Ai agree that he gave about 0:29:16.080 --> 0:29:20.120 thirty four milk more million dollars out of his own pocket. 0:29:20.320 --> 0:29:23.760 So he gave forty four million dollars between September twenty 0:29:23.760 --> 0:29:26.640 sixteen or six twenty sixteen and twenty twenty apart from 0:29:26.640 --> 0:29:29.280 the foundation, apart from his own pocket. So that's a lot, 0:29:29.320 --> 0:29:30.960 but it's a lot less than he had gone around 0:29:30.960 --> 0:29:32.040 saying for years that he gave. 0:29:32.720 --> 0:29:34.400 And that kind of seems to be the theme with 0:29:34.440 --> 0:29:38.880 a lot of his maybe good donations. He says he'll 0:29:38.880 --> 0:29:41.880 do one thing and then he does another. Let's talk 0:29:41.920 --> 0:29:44.880 about Flint, Michigan, where what he promised there in what 0:29:44.920 --> 0:29:45.680 he actually did. 0:29:47.000 --> 0:29:50.000 So there was a period in the Musk Foundation when 0:29:50.000 --> 0:29:52.120 it had a lot of money, but not billions of 0:29:52.120 --> 0:29:55.840 dollars in which he this is like twenty sixteen, seventeen, 0:29:55.880 --> 0:29:58.959 eighteen nineteen. It seemed like the motivator behind a lot 0:29:58.960 --> 0:30:01.239 of his giving was Twitter, Like he was doing it 0:30:01.240 --> 0:30:03.320 in response to people who kind of called him out 0:30:03.320 --> 0:30:05.560 on Twitter. He was becoming more of a Twitter celebrity, 0:30:05.880 --> 0:30:08.680 and so like mister Beast would say, hey, I'm raising 0:30:08.800 --> 0:30:10.800 money to plant trees. You know, Elon, will you give 0:30:10.840 --> 0:30:12.240 you money? And Elan will say yes, I'll give you 0:30:12.280 --> 0:30:14.320 a million dollars to plant a million trees. That came 0:30:14.320 --> 0:30:17.760 from the Musk Foundation. Dave Portnoy, the guy from Barstool Sports, 0:30:17.840 --> 0:30:21.760 was raising money to help small businesses during COVID. You know, 0:30:21.800 --> 0:30:23.880 he pushes Musk and Musk responds with the million dollars 0:30:23.920 --> 0:30:27.080 from the Musk Foundation. One of the more unusual sort 0:30:27.120 --> 0:30:30.760 of instances of that was there was a girl in Flint, Michigan. 0:30:30.800 --> 0:30:33.040 I think she was ten at the time, little Miss Flint, 0:30:33.080 --> 0:30:36.760 Mariy Copeney, and she had tweeted at Musk like, hey, 0:30:36.840 --> 0:30:38.640 you know he was thinking of buying Twitter. This is 0:30:38.680 --> 0:30:41.120 an earlier iteration of him thinking of buying Twitter. You 0:30:41.160 --> 0:30:42.560 know you have that much money, why don't you use 0:30:42.560 --> 0:30:45.120 it to buy, you know, supplies for Flint, Michigan where 0:30:45.120 --> 0:30:48.760 we have this horrible water crisis. And he responds and says, 0:30:48.840 --> 0:30:51.560 I will pay to fix every home in Flint that 0:30:51.600 --> 0:30:53.400 has too much lead in the water. This is at 0:30:53.440 --> 0:30:56.160 a time, obviously, when they had been this huge epondemic 0:30:56.200 --> 0:30:58.440 of lead and water pipes and water supply and still 0:30:58.520 --> 0:31:01.120 kind of a problem today as well. Yes, and so 0:31:02.200 --> 0:31:04.160 the mayor reaches out to him. The mayor says, actually, 0:31:04.200 --> 0:31:06.360 you know what we need right now is helping the schools. 0:31:06.680 --> 0:31:09.400 You know, the schools they need help. You know, the water, 0:31:09.680 --> 0:31:11.760 you know, water and houses is being handled by the state. 0:31:12.000 --> 0:31:13.600 And so he gives about a million dollars in the 0:31:13.640 --> 0:31:16.040 Musk Foundation to schools in Flint, both to put water 0:31:16.080 --> 0:31:19.200 filters in the school and to buy laptops for middle schoolers. 0:31:19.440 --> 0:31:20.920 He also gives a little bit more to the to 0:31:21.040 --> 0:31:23.800 a back charity that was sort of associated with little 0:31:23.800 --> 0:31:27.080 Miss Flint now Flint. People that you know, the mayor 0:31:27.120 --> 0:31:29.120 and other people in the city of Flint see how 0:31:29.240 --> 0:31:31.120 rich he is and see that he cares about Flint, 0:31:31.400 --> 0:31:33.760 and they want more. They ask for more, they said, 0:31:33.880 --> 0:31:35.480 you know, they sent him this letter that said, you know, 0:31:35.520 --> 0:31:37.760 you've you know, you have the potential to make such 0:31:37.760 --> 0:31:39.600 a huge difference in Flint. Can you give us more 0:31:39.680 --> 0:31:42.840 to do things like replace large scale water infrastructure too. 0:31:42.920 --> 0:31:46.160 I mean, just just the one thing, the exact thing 0:31:46.160 --> 0:31:48.080 that Musk said, and quoting both the article in the 0:31:48.120 --> 0:31:51.000 Eland Musk himself, he will fund fixing the water in 0:31:51.080 --> 0:31:54.720 any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels. 0:31:55.160 --> 0:31:57.800 So just to be clear, he promised the world they 0:31:57.800 --> 0:31:59.800 were not asking him for too much. This is just 0:31:59.800 --> 0:32:00.560 what city do. 0:32:01.240 --> 0:32:03.040 I think He's followed up by saying like no kidding 0:32:03.120 --> 0:32:06.800 or something. So yeah, so they ask, okay, you know, 0:32:06.960 --> 0:32:09.000 we also want can you invest in this fund to 0:32:09.040 --> 0:32:10.960 help us build small businesses here? Will you move one 0:32:11.000 --> 0:32:14.280 of your own businesses here? And it seems like out 0:32:14.280 --> 0:32:17.560 of that came only one, you know, beyond the things 0:32:17.600 --> 0:32:20.160 I already mentioned. The only additional thing they did was 0:32:20.240 --> 0:32:22.680 send a guy from Tesla. He came sort of a 0:32:23.480 --> 0:32:25.600 guy from Tesla who was thinking about setting up like 0:32:25.640 --> 0:32:28.880 an operation there, some sort of Tesla building or operation. 0:32:29.280 --> 0:32:30.880 And so he came and sort of met people at 0:32:30.880 --> 0:32:32.720 the city hall, gave rides in the Tesla around the 0:32:32.720 --> 0:32:35.360 city hall parking lot, and that was it. Nothing more 0:32:35.400 --> 0:32:38.640 came of it, just. 0:32:37.520 --> 0:32:38.880 Just around the parking lot. 0:32:39.440 --> 0:32:40.840 I don't know why, just around the parking line, but 0:32:40.880 --> 0:32:41.680 just around the parking lot. 0:32:42.680 --> 0:32:43.480 Very bizarre. 0:32:43.960 --> 0:32:46.360 And so the mayor said, you know, look, we were 0:32:46.400 --> 0:32:47.800 happy he gave something. You know, I didn't have to 0:32:47.800 --> 0:32:50.520 give anything. She said that this was a time when 0:32:50.800 --> 0:32:53.160 you know, that twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen was a time 0:32:53.200 --> 0:32:55.600 when they were hearing from sort of a lot of celebrities, 0:32:55.880 --> 0:32:58.280 you know, well meeting celebrities, but they were sort of 0:32:58.280 --> 0:33:00.440 being innundated by offers from various celebrit But he said, 0:33:00.440 --> 0:33:03.120 become Flint had become that much of a cause celebrity people. 0:33:03.240 --> 0:33:06.160 All these people wanted to help, and so Elon was 0:33:06.160 --> 0:33:07.920 one of them, and he gave. You know, it sounds 0:33:07.960 --> 0:33:10.800 like he gave about a million dollars. They definitely wanted more, 0:33:10.840 --> 0:33:12.000 but they were happy with what they got. 0:33:13.160 --> 0:33:16.480 It's weird because a situation like that, it's good. He 0:33:16.520 --> 0:33:19.360 gave like money for water filters and laptops of kids, 0:33:19.400 --> 0:33:23.400 like unquestionably be good. But also he didn't actually fix 0:33:23.440 --> 0:33:27.280 the problem, didn't actually fix Flint's water problem, and it 0:33:27.280 --> 0:33:29.440 sounds like that was a problem with celebrities in general. 0:33:29.480 --> 0:33:32.160 Then yeah, I mean, I think his problem was his 0:33:32.280 --> 0:33:35.600 promise to fix the water in the houses was more specific, 0:33:35.600 --> 0:33:39.080 and he also probably had the capacity to do it 0:33:39.200 --> 0:33:41.360 more than a lot of the other celebrities that offered. 0:33:42.120 --> 0:33:45.000 But yes, that is the striking thing is Yes, the 0:33:45.000 --> 0:33:47.520 city steered him into schools and the mayor said we 0:33:47.760 --> 0:33:50.920 steered him into schools first, thinking that, you know, we 0:33:51.040 --> 0:33:52.920 let the state try to fix the houses and if 0:33:52.920 --> 0:33:55.479 that didn't work, then Elon could fix those two. So 0:33:55.520 --> 0:33:56.960 he didn't do the thing that he was going to 0:33:57.040 --> 0:33:58.560 he said he was going to do in this tweet. 0:33:59.280 --> 0:34:02.160 So on a large scale, it seems like a lot 0:34:02.160 --> 0:34:05.000 of tech people outside of maybe Bill Gates, seem very 0:34:05.040 --> 0:34:09.080 bad at the philanthropy thing, Like Mark Zuckerberg is the one. 0:34:09.080 --> 0:34:11.200 I'm thinking of his one hundred million dollars to what's 0:34:11.239 --> 0:34:14.880 New York schools systems? Why is it the this is 0:34:14.880 --> 0:34:16.600 a very dumb guy question of it is why is 0:34:16.600 --> 0:34:19.560 it just having a lot of money doesn't help? How 0:34:19.640 --> 0:34:21.840 is it that? Is it an organized Is it actually 0:34:21.920 --> 0:34:23.520 quite difficult to deploy this capital? 0:34:25.640 --> 0:34:28.360 I think it is. The answer is yes, that it. 0:34:28.360 --> 0:34:30.520 It is a very it's hard to give this much 0:34:30.560 --> 0:34:32.799 money away. You can do it in one of two ways. 0:34:32.840 --> 0:34:34.640 You can do it the Mackenzie Bezos way. I mean 0:34:34.640 --> 0:34:37.040 that she's an example of somebody who has a lot 0:34:37.040 --> 0:34:38.640 of money and has given away a lot of money. 0:34:38.680 --> 0:34:41.200 But she's not you know, it's she is like dropping 0:34:41.200 --> 0:34:43.080 it from heaven. You know, there's she's not trying to 0:34:43.160 --> 0:34:45.520 sort of come in and help you manage your organization. 0:34:45.640 --> 0:34:47.400 She doesn't want a grand proposal. She just shows up 0:34:47.440 --> 0:34:48.840 and gives you a lot of money and then leaves. 0:34:49.680 --> 0:34:51.600 Other folks who have tried to sort of invest in 0:34:51.640 --> 0:34:55.200 something over the longer term. You mentioned Mark Zuckerberg. You know, 0:34:55.480 --> 0:34:57.120 I think it also is just a matter of time, 0:34:57.280 --> 0:34:59.960 Like it's really really hard to give money away effect, 0:35:00.360 --> 0:35:04.239 especially for trying to like have a specific outcome in 0:35:04.280 --> 0:35:07.239 the world. And maybe these guys are too busy. I mean, 0:35:07.440 --> 0:35:09.880 the one of the other sort of people who have 0:35:09.920 --> 0:35:12.880 a foundation about as big as Elons is Larry Page, 0:35:12.920 --> 0:35:16.480 the guy from Google, and his foundation both fails to 0:35:16.640 --> 0:35:19.799 make its minimum payouts but also gives its money, all 0:35:19.840 --> 0:35:22.279 of its money into something called the donor Advised Fund, 0:35:22.320 --> 0:35:25.200 which is basically like a warehouse for money, and it 0:35:25.280 --> 0:35:27.040 disappears into there. We don't know where it when or 0:35:27.080 --> 0:35:28.799 if any of it actually went out into the world. 0:35:28.920 --> 0:35:31.239 So it does seem like maybe these folks don't have 0:35:31.280 --> 0:35:33.480 the time or the you know, the bandwidth to put 0:35:33.520 --> 0:35:36.640 money into the to like put the attention commensurate with 0:35:36.680 --> 0:35:37.560 the money they're putting in. 0:35:38.120 --> 0:35:40.600 So but just to be clear, Larry Page, co founder 0:35:40.640 --> 0:35:43.000 for Google. He has he is doing a similar thing. 0:35:44.000 --> 0:35:46.680 He is doing a similar well, it's not similar in 0:35:46.719 --> 0:35:48.560 that I don't have any proof that he's doing things 0:35:48.560 --> 0:35:51.839 that benefit himself. But he is a huge amount of money. 0:35:51.880 --> 0:35:55.560 He's failed to meet that goal or that minimum of 0:35:55.640 --> 0:35:58.520 five percent payout, And what he's doing with his money 0:35:59.000 --> 0:36:01.960 in some ways is you know, he basically is giving 0:36:02.000 --> 0:36:04.279 it to a middleman, and then there's no sense of 0:36:04.480 --> 0:36:07.360 a charitable middleman, the special sort of class of charitable middleman, 0:36:07.560 --> 0:36:09.160 and we don't know what happens to it after that. 0:36:09.440 --> 0:36:11.880 So he is what he's doing is less transparent than 0:36:11.880 --> 0:36:12.719 what Musk is doing. 0:36:13.320 --> 0:36:16.840 Are the other tech people doing similar maybe not saying size, 0:36:16.880 --> 0:36:20.440 but there are other other philanthropic efforts failing to invest. 0:36:20.440 --> 0:36:22.640 And no if you look at the people who were 0:36:22.680 --> 0:36:25.520 above Musk. So the shortfall that Musk had at the 0:36:25.560 --> 0:36:27.880 end of twenty twenty two where he was his foundation 0:36:27.920 --> 0:36:30.400 was two hundred and thirty four million dollars under what 0:36:30.440 --> 0:36:32.840 it should have given away. There are only three foundations 0:36:32.840 --> 0:36:35.120 that were worse than that had a bigger shortfall that year, 0:36:35.760 --> 0:36:38.920 Larry Page's one, the Hewlett Foundation was another, and then 0:36:38.960 --> 0:36:42.200 the Lily Foundation, tied to the drugmaker ELI. Lilly was 0:36:42.200 --> 0:36:44.440 the first. So there are not that many. Out of 0:36:44.440 --> 0:36:46.799 the hundreds and hundreds of foundations in the US, those 0:36:46.840 --> 0:36:48.799 four had the biggest shortfalls. 0:36:48.680 --> 0:36:51.440 But they still managed to get billions of dollars in 0:36:51.480 --> 0:36:52.440 tax breaks out of this. 0:36:53.120 --> 0:36:55.760 Yeah, this is a field that is not that well policed, 0:36:55.920 --> 0:36:57.600 as I said, by the IRS or anybody else. 0:36:58.760 --> 0:37:00.960 And is it just that expensive and time consumed? Would 0:37:00.960 --> 0:37:02.960 there be a massive legal fight to try and actually 0:37:03.040 --> 0:37:04.840 get this thing done? 0:37:05.040 --> 0:37:06.719 I mean, Congress could change the laws, or they could 0:37:06.719 --> 0:37:08.600 give the IRS more money to go after it. I 0:37:08.680 --> 0:37:12.160 think the Yeah, this has suffered from a sense of 0:37:12.280 --> 0:37:14.759 neglect and also the IRS is general weakness that they're 0:37:14.760 --> 0:37:16.480 going to use political capital. They're going to use it 0:37:16.520 --> 0:37:18.759 on collecting taxes, not fighting nonprofits. 0:37:19.320 --> 0:37:21.120 So where do you think this goes from here? Do 0:37:21.160 --> 0:37:24.520 you think it just continues doing nothing or doing less 0:37:24.520 --> 0:37:25.560 than the bare minimum? 0:37:25.920 --> 0:37:29.520 Well, we will not know the reporting, you know, the 0:37:30.520 --> 0:37:32.720 filing deadlines are so slow that we won't know until 0:37:32.760 --> 0:37:36.160 this November whether the Musk Foundation made its goals for 0:37:36.200 --> 0:37:38.439 twenty twenty three, unless they choose to tell us first. 0:37:38.480 --> 0:37:41.520 The actual required deadline for them to release something publicly 0:37:41.600 --> 0:37:44.200 is not till November, and we may know then if 0:37:44.200 --> 0:37:46.040 the IRS has taken some action against them, but we 0:37:46.120 --> 0:37:47.759 may never know if they take an action against them. 0:37:47.800 --> 0:37:49.680 So we're going to keep watching it and see what 0:37:49.719 --> 0:37:52.719 else it's done. But there's no expectation that I have 0:37:52.800 --> 0:37:55.040 that we're going to see any changes anytime soon. 0:37:56.440 --> 0:37:58.759 I am with a personal question, does any of this 0:37:58.840 --> 0:38:01.880 work kind of depress you make you a little cynical 0:38:02.040 --> 0:38:05.120 because you see these people just getting these massive benefits. 0:38:05.440 --> 0:38:11.520 That's a good question. I mean, the reason I so 0:38:11.560 --> 0:38:13.920 I cover nonprofits, That's that's what I do all the time. 0:38:14.200 --> 0:38:16.319 And the reason I got into this is because there 0:38:16.400 --> 0:38:18.960 is such a like obviously, the find nonrofit sector does 0:38:18.960 --> 0:38:21.640 such amazing work. There's so many incredible things that nonprofits too, 0:38:21.920 --> 0:38:23.919 but it also is a shield. You know, we give 0:38:24.000 --> 0:38:27.520 nonprofits legal rights, we give them text breaks, and we 0:38:27.560 --> 0:38:29.879 also give them this sort of you know, veneer of 0:38:30.160 --> 0:38:32.960 do gooderism that makes people both in government and outside 0:38:32.960 --> 0:38:35.000 government and not want to look any closer. And so 0:38:35.560 --> 0:38:39.399 some people use that, you know, they use that good will, 0:38:39.440 --> 0:38:41.600 they use that those privileges as kind of a shield 0:38:41.600 --> 0:38:44.799 to hide self dealing, to hide, you know, you know, 0:38:44.880 --> 0:38:48.000 foreign influence, to hide enrichment, embezzlmoun all kinds of things. 0:38:48.880 --> 0:38:50.840 And so that's the sort of stuff that I do 0:38:50.880 --> 0:38:52.640 every day, is to try to find out what people 0:38:52.680 --> 0:38:57.480 are doing beyond behind that kind of screen of of 0:38:57.640 --> 0:39:00.440 philanthropy or screen of sort of good will. So it 0:39:00.440 --> 0:39:02.520 doesn't depress me. It's just that's what I do every day, 0:39:02.640 --> 0:39:04.360 and I think it makes it for it makes a 0:39:04.400 --> 0:39:07.480 fascinating beat, this contrast of like the great potential and 0:39:07.520 --> 0:39:11.200 the great trust and the reality of these of these groups. 0:39:11.200 --> 0:39:13.279 Sometimes, David, thank you for joining me. 0:39:13.719 --> 0:39:14.040 Thank you. 0:39:23.320 --> 0:39:25.400 So what's remarkable about this story to me is that 0:39:25.480 --> 0:39:28.520 Musk has, for all intents and purposes, received a multi 0:39:28.520 --> 0:39:30.959 billion dollar tax break in exchange for about a quarter 0:39:30.960 --> 0:39:34.160 of a billion dollars. That which he has spent has 0:39:34.239 --> 0:39:36.759 mostly gone to things that directly benefit him, and the 0:39:36.800 --> 0:39:39.560 few times he's actually spent it well on people that 0:39:39.640 --> 0:39:43.680 need it, he's gone the Musk row of over promising 0:39:43.680 --> 0:39:48.640 and under delivering. It's genuinely despicable to watch him send 0:39:48.960 --> 0:39:53.520 one hundred million dollars to an barely incorporated school in Texas. 0:39:54.120 --> 0:39:56.560 Now campus exists. They own some land, and it's very 0:39:56.600 --> 0:39:59.360 clearly lining up with the other companies. And that's about 0:39:59.360 --> 0:40:01.800 one hundred times more than they provided to Flint, Michigan, 0:40:02.080 --> 0:40:04.000 a place where he promised and he received a ton 0:40:04.040 --> 0:40:07.719 of positive press for fixing their contaminated water system. He 0:40:07.760 --> 0:40:10.000 didn't do it. He did some stuff, and it's good 0:40:10.000 --> 0:40:12.399 that he did something. But you can see how much 0:40:12.400 --> 0:40:15.919 money this man deploys, and you see how little he's 0:40:15.960 --> 0:40:19.680 actually done with it. And it's also sickening to watch 0:40:19.719 --> 0:40:24.520 this unfathomably rich man, this ultra rich ghoul, receive a 0:40:24.640 --> 0:40:29.080 massive massive return for doing very little and actively conning 0:40:29.080 --> 0:40:32.160 the nonprofit system. And as David kind of hinted at, 0:40:32.480 --> 0:40:36.880 there just isn't the regulatory framework or action or political 0:40:36.880 --> 0:40:40.120 capital to actually fight a man like Elon Musk. As 0:40:40.120 --> 0:40:43.680 I've said before, the US government just and Queezer society 0:40:43.719 --> 0:40:47.399 are just not capable of dealing with billionaires. But there 0:40:47.440 --> 0:40:51.160 is another side of this story. Musk doesn't want this 0:40:51.280 --> 0:40:54.480 money spent. Most of this they have a terribly small 0:40:54.480 --> 0:40:56.239 amount of money, less than a hundred thousand dollars. I 0:40:56.239 --> 0:40:59.719 believe he doesn't want this money spent anywhere because he 0:40:59.760 --> 0:41:02.680 wants to hoard that Tesla stock as much as he can. 0:41:03.040 --> 0:41:07.040 Putting any downward pressure on Tesla would be a bad idea, 0:41:07.400 --> 0:41:10.239 and almost all the money that this foundation has is 0:41:10.239 --> 0:41:14.000 Tesla stock. But this is still a very important story 0:41:14.080 --> 0:41:17.840 even if nothing changes, because it's another way of showing 0:41:17.920 --> 0:41:21.960 how empty the legend of Elon Musk really is. He 0:41:22.000 --> 0:41:26.440 got so much positive press around this foundation. He promised 0:41:26.480 --> 0:41:29.480 to fix Flint, Michigan's water system. He got tons of 0:41:29.520 --> 0:41:32.680 press in twenty eighteen, and he's given away what a 0:41:32.760 --> 0:41:36.480 million dollars for him, that is something he finds in 0:41:36.520 --> 0:41:39.799 his pockets or between the couch cushions, probably has more there. 0:41:40.040 --> 0:41:42.760 He got another bunch of press for giving away eleven 0:41:42.760 --> 0:41:46.560 point six million Tesla shares to charity, and that's kind 0:41:46.560 --> 0:41:49.520 of close to what the Wall Street Journal actually wrote. 0:41:49.719 --> 0:41:51.239 He didn't give away anything, by the way. He put 0:41:51.280 --> 0:41:52.880 it in a charity literally with his name on it, 0:41:53.000 --> 0:41:55.920 or a nonprofit in this case, and as we've heard, 0:41:56.120 --> 0:41:58.839 he hasn't really spent it. And he even at one 0:41:58.880 --> 0:42:01.920 point tweeted that he sent this to the UN saying 0:42:01.920 --> 0:42:05.160 he would spend six billion dollars to fight world hunger, 0:42:05.360 --> 0:42:08.200 but only only if they tell him how they'd spend it, 0:42:08.960 --> 0:42:13.040 which I don't know. There's always a condition with this man, 0:42:13.080 --> 0:42:15.759 there's always a trick, and I just think it's because 0:42:15.760 --> 0:42:18.520 he doesn't really care that much, and he'll continue to 0:42:18.560 --> 0:42:20.840 do stuff like this as long as the media is 0:42:20.960 --> 0:42:24.799 unable or unwilling to call him out, and indeed, as 0:42:24.800 --> 0:42:27.760 long as they're willing to buy his bullshit. This man 0:42:28.040 --> 0:42:31.240 is a liar, He's a billionaire con artist. He's mastered 0:42:31.280 --> 0:42:35.279 exploiting the law and society and the media to get 0:42:35.320 --> 0:42:39.280 even richer. Yet I'm not freaking out too much because 0:42:39.800 --> 0:42:42.760 every farrenh Old he's won a Pulitzer for work exactly 0:42:42.840 --> 0:42:45.319 like this with Donald Trump. There is more to this 0:42:45.360 --> 0:42:47.600 story that I'm sure David will bring out, and his 0:42:47.640 --> 0:42:49.520 colleague Grime Mack, who worked on the story with him, 0:42:49.600 --> 0:42:52.799 is one of the most industrious Elon Musk reporters out there. 0:42:54.360 --> 0:42:57.160 The media is turning on this man, and this work 0:42:57.200 --> 0:42:59.120 is deep, it's dangerous, and it's going up against the 0:42:59.160 --> 0:43:01.360 man who has proven to a hostile relationship to the 0:43:01.400 --> 0:43:05.520 press and to society. But these stories are so important 0:43:05.600 --> 0:43:09.880 and as they accumulate, most reality distortion field will fall apart. 0:43:09.960 --> 0:43:12.879 More it's already going. And I'm not saying this man 0:43:12.920 --> 0:43:15.040 can be brought down. I don't think there's anything that 0:43:15.080 --> 0:43:19.680 could truly, quote unquote stop Elon Musk, but we can 0:43:19.760 --> 0:43:22.560 close the wound that he's opened in society where he's 0:43:22.600 --> 0:43:26.160 just drinking money from the blood of others. And I 0:43:26.239 --> 0:43:28.239 really want you to read David's work, and I put 0:43:28.239 --> 0:43:30.560 a link to it in the show notes of this episode. 0:43:30.719 --> 0:43:34.120 It's important you read this. It's important you try and 0:43:34.200 --> 0:43:37.360 understand exactly how little Elon Musk is done for the world, 0:43:37.680 --> 0:43:40.520 because it's time to turn on this man. It's time 0:43:40.560 --> 0:43:42.960 to stop calling him an inventor. He didn't invent anything. 0:43:43.360 --> 0:43:47.359 It's time to even stop calling him a philanthropist. At 0:43:47.400 --> 0:43:50.440 the scale he's done things here, it's barely done anything. 0:43:51.640 --> 0:43:53.680 You should check out David's story. You can find him 0:43:53.719 --> 0:44:00.640 on Twitter at farenthal that's fahr e nt hold. He's 0:44:00.640 --> 0:44:13.200 a great guy. Thank you for listening, Thank you for 0:44:13.239 --> 0:44:15.960 listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the 0:44:15.960 --> 0:44:19.040 Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out 0:44:19.040 --> 0:44:22.560 more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com. 0:44:22.880 --> 0:44:26.400 M A T T O S O w s Ki 0:44:26.600 --> 0:44:29.240 dot com. You can email me at easy at better 0:44:29.320 --> 0:44:31.839 offline dot com or check out better offline dot com 0:44:31.880 --> 0:44:34.320 to find my newsletter and more links to this podcast. 0:44:34.520 --> 0:44:37.920 Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a 0:44:37.960 --> 0:44:41.000 production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, 0:44:41.160 --> 0:44:44.319 visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us 0:44:44.320 --> 0:44:47.279 out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:44:47.360 --> 0:45:03.480 get your podcasts.