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Speaker 1: Welcome to Elon Inc. Where we discuss Elon Musk's vast

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Speaker 1: corporate empire, his latest gambits and antics, and how to

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Speaker 1: make sense of it all. I'm your host, David Papadopolis.

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Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.

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Speaker 1: More than half the satellites in space are owned and

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Speaker 1: controlled by one man.

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Speaker 2: Starting his own artificial intelligence company.

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Speaker 3: Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate. He says.

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Speaker 1: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will

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Speaker 1: be different.

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Speaker 4: He'll vote Republican.

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Speaker 3: There is a reason the US government is so reliant

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Speaker 3: on him. Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's

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Speaker 3: done nothing, nothing enough.

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Speaker 1: Anything he does is fascinating the people. We're back with

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Speaker 1: the second episode this week. Because the News demanded it.

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk, who often posts controversial material on it, has

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Speaker 1: taken things a step further by openly praising racist and

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Speaker 1: anti Semitic posts. It's a move that has gotten blowback

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Speaker 1: from many corners of the Internet and business world. To

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Speaker 1: catch up quickly, over the past few days, Musk has

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Speaker 1: promoted white nationalist content. On Wednesday night, he endorsed an

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Speaker 1: anti Semitic conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement. It's

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Speaker 1: the same theory that motivated the twenty eighteen deadly shooting

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Speaker 1: at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue, in which eleven

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Speaker 1: people died. He's also recently posted approvingly about claims that

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Speaker 1: South Africa is a quote anti white apartheid state. He

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Speaker 1: amplified calls to quote send them all back referring to immigrants,

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Speaker 1: and he called attention to posts suggesting that white people

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Speaker 1: are under attack by immigrants and black people. Day to day,

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Speaker 1: over one hundred and sixty three million people follow Elon

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Speaker 1: Musk on x Read regularly shares the stage with world leaders.

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Speaker 1: Just this week, Musk was in San Francisco for the

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Speaker 1: APEX Summit, attending a dinner that included Apple CEO Tim

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Speaker 1: Cook and China's leader Shijingping. His global power and his

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Speaker 1: influence are hard to overstate, which makes the comments all

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Speaker 1: the more disturbing. To discuss all this and the fallout,

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Speaker 1: we've convened Max Chafkin, reporter and editor at Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and Sarah Fryar, who oversees our big tech

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Speaker 1: coverage here at Bloomberg. Hello, okay, and for transparency here

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Speaker 1: this was recorded on Thursday at four thirty pm New

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Speaker 1: York time. So Max, we'll start with you. What's going on.

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Speaker 2: So Elon Musk, as we've talked about and as many

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Speaker 2: others have documented, has been going in some pretty edgy

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Speaker 2: places in terms of what he's been sort of consuming

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Speaker 2: and amplify and tweeting about on x formerly known as Twitter.

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Speaker 2: And last night I think we reached a new level,

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Speaker 2: a new low. A user on the platform posted basically

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Speaker 2: a TV commercial encouraging people to be less anti Semitic.

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Speaker 2: So it's a relatively like innocuous posts which prompted a

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Speaker 2: response by another person, a second user, essentially repeating a

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Speaker 2: version of the Great Replacement theory. The Great Replacement theory

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Speaker 2: says that Jews are working secretly to undermine America, the

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Speaker 2: American national identity, to destroy white people by importing immigrants.

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Speaker 2: This was the ideology that motivated, as you said, the

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Speaker 2: shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in twenty eighteen

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Speaker 2: who killed eleven people. And Elon Musk responded to this

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Speaker 2: by saying, this is the actual truth, and this kind

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Speaker 2: of led to so a storm. Musk responded sort of

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Speaker 2: defensively initially sort of saying, well, maybe I was only

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Speaker 2: talking about the ADL, but then he kind of doubled.

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Speaker 3: Down a little bit later in the interaction.

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Speaker 1: Sarah to folks who are familiar with online extremism, what

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Speaker 1: is he what will we say exactly is he promoting here?

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Speaker 4: Well, the great replacement theory, as as Max mentioned, it's

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Speaker 4: something that's really taken hold in the dark corners of

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Speaker 4: the internet in the response to math migration, sort of

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Speaker 4: connecting it all usually to a shadowy cabal like usually

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Speaker 4: people don't say the Jews. And what is interesting about

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Speaker 4: how far Musk went here is he just seems to

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Speaker 4: take it all the way to the full extreme of

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Speaker 4: this conspiracy theory. And that is an escalation in behavior.

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Speaker 4: By the way we have been try for months, how

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Speaker 4: Musk has been interacting with these extremist accounts.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and Sarah, to be clear, this is Sarah. This

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Speaker 1: goes back years and years correct.

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Speaker 4: Let me explain first what happens when he interacts with accounts,

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Speaker 4: even just by responding and saying hm. More interesting, when

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Speaker 4: he does that, the algorithm picks up on that person

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Speaker 4: and amplifies that person. So even if he's not explicitly

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Speaker 4: responding to what they say he is. He is helping

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Speaker 4: them reach an audience through his followers on x Now.

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Speaker 4: I think it's also important to figure out where this

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Speaker 4: is coming from. Why is Musk turning into somebody who

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Speaker 4: embraces conspiracy. I think it started years ago at the

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Speaker 4: onset of the pandemic with the required shutdown of his

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Speaker 4: Tesla factory in Alameda County, and that was the beginning

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Speaker 4: of him sort of saying this is unreason. COVID's unreasonable,

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Speaker 4: this is this is like a fake problem, and we're

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Speaker 4: going to work through it.

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Speaker 1: Right, because it clashed with his libertarian view of exactly world.

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Speaker 4: Studies have shown once you have an embrace of one

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Speaker 4: conspiracy theory, it becomes easier to find alliances in others.

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Speaker 4: And I think we have seen him engage more with folks,

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Speaker 4: not just anti Semitic posters, but those who talk about

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Speaker 4: anti white racism. That's been another theme in his interactions.

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Speaker 4: He's even said that very explicitly, that he feels that

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Speaker 4: it is wrong for white people to have to feel

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Speaker 4: bad about their race.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is part of the defense I was bringing

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Speaker 2: up earlier. This is how he's sort of attempted to

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Speaker 2: clean up his mess.

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Speaker 4: And just talk about how this has gotten worse.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so Max, again, given that libertarian streak that has

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Speaker 1: long marked who he is, and given from the moment

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Speaker 1: he took over Twitter turned it into x or even

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Speaker 1: well before that, he indeed was someone again aligned with

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Speaker 1: that principle and that thought process, you know, who was

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Speaker 1: a full embracer of free speech. This is an uber

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Speaker 1: case of free speech gone Elon's free speech gone amuck.

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Speaker 2: Well, okay, So I was chatting with our producer Rayhon

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Speaker 2: and we're sort of talking about what happened. We're trying

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Speaker 2: to like puzzle it out, and one of the BusinessWeek

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Speaker 2: art directors was sitting right next to us, and he's like,

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Speaker 2: this sounds like the Thanksgiving Dinner from Hell, And basically

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Speaker 2: like this story that we're talking about is very similar

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Speaker 2: to one that has happened in many, you know, families

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Speaker 2: around the world where somebody goes like deep down an

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Speaker 2: online rabbit hole and starts saying super racist stuff.

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Speaker 3: And that's what's happening with Elon Musk.

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Speaker 2: And I think the only reason it matters, of course,

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Speaker 2: is because Elon Musk is the richest person on Earth.

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Speaker 2: He owns a massive social media platform, massive media company,

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Speaker 2: owns a massive car company, and owns a major defense contractor,

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Speaker 2: and I haven't talked about all the weird brain stuff,

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Speaker 2: and has a huge Max and and has a huge megaphone.

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Speaker 4: And has a huge megaphone. And the thing we have

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Speaker 4: to understand, you know, Max is talking about all the

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Speaker 4: real world impact of Elon Musk's power. There is also

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Speaker 4: this really crazy behind the scenes impact that we, you know,

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Speaker 4: see a little bit more subtle. What you may see

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Speaker 4: is is Musks speaking with Benioff at APEX getting canceled,

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Speaker 4: which we by the way, we don't know if that's

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Speaker 4: directly related to this, but the timing aligns. And what

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Speaker 4: you don't see is all of the people on extremist

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Speaker 4: networks like four Chan saying, hey, he's our guy, Hail Elon.

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Speaker 4: Like we're actually seeing that happen. Even on X, the

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Speaker 4: platform that Musk owns, we are seeing people reply to

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Speaker 4: him and say hail Elon. So even when he winks

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Speaker 4: in the general direction of extremists, a white supremacists, of

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Speaker 4: people with you know who are tweeting with racist undertones,

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Speaker 4: it emboldens those groups and makes them more comfortable bringing

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Speaker 4: this kind of speech out into the open and even

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Speaker 4: onto the platform that he owns.

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Speaker 1: Just to step back a little bit further here, these comments,

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Speaker 1: of course come in the wake of the Israel Gaza conflict.

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Speaker 1: They come in the context of a historic rise in

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Speaker 1: anti Semitism, much of which, as we've discussed, is expressed

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Speaker 1: in platforms including X. So this incident is of a

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Speaker 1: piece with that moment we are having.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I just want to note, you know, we've been

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Speaker 4: talking about anti Semitism in this conversation. I want to

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Speaker 4: separate that from the you know, the opinions on Israel

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Speaker 4: or opinions on Hamas during the current conflict in Gaza.

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Speaker 4: I don't want to conflate the two. I think it's

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Speaker 4: we're talking about different issues.

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Speaker 2: And it's it's kind of interesting because we saw, you know,

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Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, a lot of famous investors,

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Speaker 2: including Bill Ackman, and we saw some of Elon Musk's

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Speaker 2: best friends, you know, really get bent out of shape

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Speaker 2: about some things that like some Harvard undergraduates had said

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Speaker 2: in response to basically criticizing Israel. And meanwhile, we haven't

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Speaker 2: seen a whole lot of response from Elon's inner circle

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Speaker 2: or any of these sort of powerful hedge fund guys. Yet,

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Speaker 2: I will say though there has been some response to this.

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Speaker 2: Sarah alluded to it, but you know, Elon Musk was

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Speaker 2: supposed to appear on stage with Mark Benioff, a CEO

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Speaker 2: of Sales First Big Time, you know, kind of democratic donor.

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Speaker 2: He's the owner of Time magazine. He's a he's a

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Speaker 2: major figure.

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Speaker 1: And to be clear, we don't actually know that the

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Speaker 1: two that there's a causality there.

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Speaker 3: We don't know. We absolutely don't.

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Speaker 4: Well, one thing we do know there is a causality

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Speaker 4: with another aspect of this, which is that IBN has

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Speaker 4: pulled its advertising from X not just related to this

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Speaker 4: this tweet, but also because organization called Media Matters found

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Speaker 4: IBM ads alongside antisemitic posts.

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Speaker 3: There was also a couple of other things.

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Speaker 2: You know that the stock Tesla stock went was fell

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Speaker 2: almost four percent today, you know, a day that the

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Speaker 2: market was relatively flat. We also saw some Tesla investors,

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Speaker 2: not not necessarily like the big hedge fund guys, but

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Speaker 2: Ross Gerber, who you know has showed up on Bloomberg TV.

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Speaker 2: He's like a mega bull, a colleague of ours, Tom Randall,

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Speaker 2: jokes that his investment thesis is basically by Tesla, and

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Speaker 2: he tweeted that he's trading his you know, his his

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Speaker 2: Tesla in for a Rivian, which you know, competing electric

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Speaker 2: electric vehicles. So we're seeing some response and we and

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Speaker 2: I should also say there's been some response from conservative media.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 2: One of the big kind of counterpoints to criticism about

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Speaker 2: Elon Musk has been, look, he's trying to reach a

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Speaker 2: new kind of car buyer. But if you look at

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Speaker 2: conservative media, look at the Drudge Report, it's like walled wall.

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Speaker 2: Elon Musk makes anti Semitic comment. Fox News his home

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Speaker 2: page had this story. This is going to have real

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Speaker 2: impact for the CEO of the biggest car company in

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Speaker 2: the world. I mean, Tesla is now starting to advertise

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Speaker 2: because you know, they're doing their best to deal with

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Speaker 2: demand that has not been great.

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Speaker 1: Now, we've known in the past that his inner circle,

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Speaker 1: including his brother Kimball, including some membros of the Tesla board,

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Speaker 1: have been on his case in the past to watch

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Speaker 1: his tweeting or his exing feeling like they are. Indeed

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Speaker 1: those comments comments along these lines, and some certainly even

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Speaker 1: more docile than this are killing demand for Tesla, So Max,

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Speaker 1: when you say the stock is down the better part

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Speaker 1: of four percent today, that is essentially a reflection of

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Speaker 1: this concern that he is only further undermining demand for

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Speaker 1: his top product.

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Speaker 2: Look, if you just looked at Elon Musk's replies, you know,

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Speaker 2: on his ex profile, you know what you see is,

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Speaker 2: you know a lot of responses to super inflammatory things

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Speaker 2: about white people. You know, you have you have people

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Speaker 2: talking about, you know, invasions of immigrants. You have you

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Speaker 2: have these these like very gruesome videos of of white

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Speaker 2: people getting attacked and and and and the implication being

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Speaker 2: that white people are under attack from minorities, and and like,

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Speaker 2: if you just looked at this at the abstract and

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Speaker 2: you just you blocked out the space tweets or whatever,

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Speaker 2: because every now and then he'll say something totally normal

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Speaker 2: and reasonable and which is very weird. You would think

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Speaker 2: you were looking at somebody who was a white supremacist.

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Speaker 2: And and again, I don't know that that's what's going

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Speaker 2: on here. He's he's clearly gone down a rabbit hole.

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Speaker 2: He reacts to a lot of people a lot of times.

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Speaker 2: But but if he was my child or or if

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Speaker 2: he was somebody I knew, I would be concerned.

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Speaker 4: Who who, by the way, is said, you know, over

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Speaker 4: and over today and in the past, I am not anti Semitic.

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Speaker 4: Twitter has put out commentary to this effect. Famous Linda

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Speaker 4: Yakarina put out a blog post on a Friday evening

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Speaker 4: when a lot of the target audience was observing the

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Speaker 4: Sabbath about how not anti semitic X is. But the

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Speaker 4: backdrop here is a company that is losing a lot

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Speaker 4: of advertising revenue, sixty percent of advertising revenue, and Musk

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Speaker 4: has blamed a lot of that on the ADL. So

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Speaker 4: when Max talked earlier about how he followed up on

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Speaker 4: his posts saying that he's mostly talking about the ADL,

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Speaker 4: that's what he's referring. He thinks that they are the

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Speaker 4: ones that are breaking Twitter's business by telling advertisers to

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Speaker 4: stay away. And the ADL had had a strange sort

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Speaker 4: of truce with Musk but appears to have have faded

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Speaker 4: that truce. They appear to be at odds again.

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Speaker 1: It's been their reaction to this righte an anti semitism

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Speaker 1: on the platform.

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Speaker 4: Right well, Musk has a very permissive attitude in terms

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Speaker 4: of Twitter's community standards, what kinds of tweets he allowed.

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Speaker 4: He did at one point ban one person for anti Semitism,

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Speaker 4: that was Kanye West or now Yay. He threatened to

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Speaker 4: go death calm three on Jewish people, and Musk said

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Speaker 4: that that was an incitement to violence and banned Kanye.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so let me ask you to this then, if

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Speaker 1: that is the position he took then and then he's

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Speaker 1: he's tweeting and retweeting these things. Now, how much daylight

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Speaker 1: is there actually between Yay's post and what he did,

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Speaker 1: what Musk himself did yesterday. Is there any daylight at all?

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Speaker 2: I've thought a lot about this, David today in my

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Speaker 2: free time. And if I think if Yay's post three

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Speaker 2: on the Jews, between Yay as a ten and like

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Speaker 2: normal discourse as a zero, it's like a eight or

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Speaker 2: an eight point five, right, it's not quite it's not

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Speaker 2: quite clear that he fully understood all the implications of.

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Speaker 3: What he's saying.

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Speaker 2: He he you know, there are worse things you could say,

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Speaker 2: but it's a pretty bad thing to say, and it's

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Speaker 2: especially a bad thing to say in light of what

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Speaker 2: Sarah's talking about, which is that for months this this

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Speaker 2: company has been trying to clean up Elon's earlier kind

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Speaker 2: of vaguely anti Semitic jokes. He's made comments about George Soros,

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Speaker 2: He's interacted with some you know, very edgy figures, including

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Speaker 2: some racists, and they've basically gone around sort of apologizing.

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Speaker 2: Elon must have done a bunch of interviews where he's

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Speaker 2: talked about his Jewish friends, the Jewish Day carry went to.

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Speaker 1: Even in his sit down with bb Net and Yahoo,

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Speaker 1: the Prime Minister of Vision.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's been he's basically been saying he's Jewish,

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Speaker 2: you know, in the in the uh George Santos sense.

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Speaker 2: He's got so many Jewish frenzy, he wouldn't even know

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Speaker 2: how to be anti Semitic. And so he's done all

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Speaker 2: this work, all these you know, poor Linda Yakarino, the

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Speaker 2: entire I don't think.

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Speaker 3: He really has a media team.

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Speaker 2: But like the podcasters he gets advice from or whoever

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Speaker 2: it is, they've all been trying to help him out

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Speaker 2: and get him to a place where X can behave

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Speaker 2: more like a normal company. And you know, and here

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Speaker 2: we are again and again. I like this is just it.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like there's a strategy or anything particularly

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Speaker 2: profound going on, except that this is somebody who spends

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Speaker 2: a lot of time talking to some people who are,

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Speaker 2: you know, not super well informed and like his entire

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Speaker 2: information consumption is this kind of weird right wing media bubble.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so you mentioned just now Linda Yakarino, the CEO

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Speaker 1: of X, has she posted today on the topic Sarah

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Speaker 1: and has Musk come back and said much himself today

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Speaker 1: on the topic.

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Speaker 4: Musk has been replying to people who who say he's

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Speaker 4: not anti semitic. Then he also applied to that person

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Speaker 4: who talked about anti white racism and said, yes, this

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Speaker 4: is this is awful.

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Speaker 3: Okay.

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Speaker 4: Just an hour ago, Linda Yakarina, she appears to have said,

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Speaker 4: X's point of view has always been very clear that

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Speaker 4: discrimination by everyone should stop across the board. I think

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Speaker 4: this is something we can and should all agree on,

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Speaker 4: and X has also been extremely clear about our efforts

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Speaker 4: to combat anti Semitism and discrimination. There's no place for

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Speaker 4: it anywhere in the world. It is ugly and wrong,

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Speaker 4: full stop. That is her comment.

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Speaker 1: Do we understand her call for stop to apply to

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Speaker 1: elon himself.

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Speaker 4: Well, I think she's saying discrimination by everyone against everyone,

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Speaker 4: which would would maybe also you know, be an umbrella

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Speaker 4: category that includes Musk's onions on discrimination against white people.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 4: So it's hard to say if she is calling out

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Speaker 4: her boss or not.

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Speaker 2: I think the intent here is to at least show

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Speaker 2: that she is not on board with what she is

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Speaker 2: not personally on board. The employees of X are are

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Speaker 2: not personally on board with what Elon said, without as

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Speaker 2: Sarah said, actually criticizing Elon because doing so could get

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Speaker 2: her fired. So I think she's walking like a very

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Speaker 2: you know, fine line that were we'd all we'd are

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Speaker 2: all familiar with having like you know, followed, for instance,

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Speaker 2: like the four years of the Trump presidency, right where

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Speaker 2: you have a leader kind of going out there and

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Speaker 2: then some subordinates making an effort to pull it back

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Speaker 2: without explicitly criticizing the boss. And we've seen this in

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Speaker 2: other times in Elon's world where he's he said something

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Speaker 2: kind of edgy and and some and SpaceX's chief operating

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Speaker 2: officer or someone else has to go in and attempt

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Speaker 2: to you know, kind of clean up the damage.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where I wanted ago as we as

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Speaker 1: we look to wrap up here which is this And

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Speaker 1: you mentioned Trump, and of course Trump over over the

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Speaker 1: previous decade has said and done any number of things

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Speaker 1: that in a previous time would have done in a

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Speaker 1: public leader and seemed to barely dent his popularity, certainly

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Speaker 1: among his base. We we've called this, uh, we we've

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Speaker 1: gathered you guys here for this podcast, you know, spur

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Speaker 1: of the moment, because feeling like it was something of

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Speaker 1: a moment here that needed to be marked and needed

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Speaker 1: to be looked at. But you know, just how existential

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Speaker 1: is this sort of thing ultimately proved? I mean, two

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Speaker 1: three weeks from now, does has the world moved on

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Speaker 1: and forgotten about it? Or is this something that this

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Speaker 1: specific incident in particular and this broad issue max uh,

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Speaker 1: just not something that's going to go away for him

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Speaker 1: or his companies anytime soon.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it's always hard to like declare a turning

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Speaker 2: point when you're in the middle of it, but it

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Speaker 2: does to me. It feels like Musk has crossed some

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Speaker 2: sort of threshold.

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Speaker 3: Now, I don't think that.

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Speaker 2: Means that that his his popularity is going to instantly

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Speaker 2: evaporate or something like that. He obviously has a huge

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Speaker 2: fan base, including a fan base, some of whom are

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Speaker 2: very excited by this, right, So, so I don't think

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Speaker 2: it's necessarily it doesn't it doesn't mean that, like you know,

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Speaker 2: he's going to go from from hero to zero instantly.

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Speaker 2: I do think his position at some of these companies

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Speaker 2: has become more difficult, and and I guess in particular

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Speaker 2: around X and Tesla, where where consumer sentiment is is

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Speaker 2: really important.

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Speaker 1: You know, you know, Max, he is someone who has

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Speaker 1: often cursed his own brain in the way the way

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Speaker 1: it works, right. I think he called it recently in

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Speaker 1: an interview a storm there. There seems to be something

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Speaker 1: of a storm raging in it right.

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Speaker 2: Now, maybe, and I certainly think that that has been

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Speaker 2: offered certainly in the in the Isaacson book, like that

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Speaker 2: is the explanation, like when he says something awful that

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Speaker 2: it's it's a reflection of, you know, challenges that he

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Speaker 2: struggles with or.

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Speaker 1: So you're positing, you're positing. This is just actually just

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Speaker 1: right up a proper window into his thoughts.

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Speaker 2: As I said earlier, he's saying something that a thing

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Speaker 2: that a lot of people say that is you know,

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Speaker 2: that is deplorable, and that a lot of people who

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Speaker 2: do struggle with mental illness. Do not say that, And

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Speaker 2: so I just don't know. I'm not sure that those

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Speaker 2: two things are connected, or that they should be connected

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Speaker 2: or whatever.

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Speaker 4: Sarah, we're talking about different issues. We're talking about, you know,

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Speaker 4: this great replacement theory that as filtered through of an

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Speaker 4: entrepreneur who spends a lot of time in Texas thinking

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Speaker 4: about the border with Mexico. I think with Musk, we

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Speaker 4: have to think of this as as a big deal

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Speaker 4: because this man has power beyond his even his own

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Speaker 4: understanding of his power. He's very stream of conciousness, but

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Speaker 4: what he says matters to people. They make decisions based

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Speaker 4: off of it, not just about what car to buy,

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Speaker 4: but about you know, who to vote for. And he

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Speaker 4: manages this this megaphone of a platform. So I do

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Speaker 4: think that he has incredible influence over what gets talked about.

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Speaker 4: We have Musk headlines every day, and I think, I

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Speaker 4: think we just need to keep on this. You have

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Speaker 4: to keep keep looking at it, whether it's a turning point.

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Speaker 4: I mean, I think I think it's the most outward

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Speaker 4: expression of what we what we may be suspected or feared.

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Speaker 1: Okay, we'll end on that thought. Thanks, for listening to

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Speaker 1: Elan ng and thanks to our panel, Max and.

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Speaker 3: Sarah, thanks for having me, Thanks for having us.

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Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Stacy Wahan. Naomi Shaven and

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Speaker 1: Rayhan Harmanci are our senior editors. The idea for this

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Speaker 1: very show also came from Rayhan. Blake Maples handles engineering,

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Speaker 1: and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott, thanks

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Speaker 1: a bunch of BusinessWeek editor Joe Weber as well. Our

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Speaker 1: supervising producer is Magnus Henrikson. The Elon Inc. Theme is

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Speaker 1: written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiyira. Sage

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Speaker 1: Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast and our executive producer.

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Speaker 1: If you have a minute, rate and review our show,

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Speaker 1: it'll help other listeners find us. I am David Papadopoulos.

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Speaker 1: See you next week.