Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 3: controlled by one man.
Speaker 4: Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate.
Speaker 5: He says.
Speaker 1: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 1: be different.
Speaker 3: He'll vote Republican. There is a reason the US government
Speaker 3: is so reliant on him.
Speaker 6: Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 1: Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Eylan Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 5: It's Tuesday, January twenty First, I'm your host, David Papadopolis.
Speaker 5: We have a new president officially, and Elon was right
Speaker 5: in the thick of all the pomp and circumstance. There
Speaker 5: were plenty of fireworks on day one of the Trump administration,
Speaker 5: including a commitment to send astronauts to Mars, but much
Speaker 5: of the conversation was about a certain hand gesture that
Speaker 5: Musk made at an inauguration rally. We're going to dive
Speaker 5: into all of that and then talk about the other
Speaker 5: scandal brewing out there. We have a major, major development
Speaker 5: in the Elon video game cheating saga. To discuss Musk
Speaker 5: and Trump, we have our regulars with us, Max Chafkin
Speaker 5: and Dana Hall. Max, Dana, Hello to you.
Speaker 4: Hey David, Hey David.
Speaker 5: Then Cecilia Donastasio, Bloomberg's video game reporter, will bring us
Speaker 5: her reporting on the Musk gaming situation. But first, let's
Speaker 5: listen to Trump himself at his inaugural address yesterday, and we.
Speaker 6: Will pursue our manifest Destiny into the Stars, launching American
Speaker 6: a US or nuts to plant the stars and stripes
Speaker 6: on the planet.
Speaker 5: Mars, Dana Hull. Pretty big moment there for Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: Oh. Yeah, going to Mars has been the animating force
Speaker 6: of Elon Musk's life forever. And what was really notable
Speaker 6: about what Trump said is that he didn't mention the
Speaker 6: Moon at all. And NASA has this whole program called
Speaker 6: Armis which is all about going to the moon, and
Speaker 6: so the fact that he focused on Mars, it was
Speaker 6: like this huge gift to Elon, and Elon was super
Speaker 6: thrilled about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, being the avid listener of the show
Speaker 5: I am when not hosting it. I listened to last
Speaker 5: week's show and Dana and repeatedly in that show, you
Speaker 5: had said again how just how damn serious he is
Speaker 5: about going to Mars and how everything else in his
Speaker 5: life revolves around that, and watching him react his reaction
Speaker 5: was pretty funny, I would say to when Trump said
Speaker 5: that this is to a certain degree, kind of feels
Speaker 5: like all that matters to him.
Speaker 6: Well, and that's been the case forever. And I think
Speaker 6: that the mistake that people have made is because Tesla
Speaker 6: is a public company and SpaceX is a private one,
Speaker 6: so many people view him through the lens of Tesla
Speaker 6: because that's where he's a public CEO. But SpaceX is
Speaker 6: the company that he founded. It is the driving force
Speaker 6: of his whole life and has been forever, and like
Speaker 6: everything has always been about going to space and going
Speaker 6: to Mars and making life multiplanetary. And we have tape
Speaker 6: of him speaking, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's listen to more inauguration day tape. Here's Musk
Speaker 5: in his own words, and we're going to take those
Speaker 5: to Mars.
Speaker 3: I mean, can you imagine how awesome it will be
Speaker 3: to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet
Speaker 3: for the first time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when Dana tells us that this is all he
Speaker 5: cares about in life. This is all he cares about
Speaker 5: in life. That's about as excited as someone can be.
Speaker 5: But my question for you is this amazing thing for
Speaker 5: him that Trump kind of makes it a commitment in
Speaker 5: his speech there in the Capitol. But how do these
Speaker 5: things work? Like, what are the practical effects of this?
Speaker 2: Well, so the thing Dana kind of hinted at it.
Speaker 2: But right now there is a Moon program and the assumption,
Speaker 2: i think before this happened really before, and there have
Speaker 2: been some hints of this long campaign trail, the assumption
Speaker 2: has been that, you know, this Moon program would go forward.
Speaker 2: SpaceX it was supposed to play a part of this program,
Speaker 2: but not the launch vehicle. Meanwhile, it has this, it
Speaker 2: has this really large rocket that is essentially built on
Speaker 2: specially what do they call it, Well, they have a
Speaker 2: new name now it's called Starship David, but that is
Speaker 2: what that is what Elon Musk originally called it. And again,
Speaker 2: this is a rocket that doesn't yet have a market
Speaker 2: really for it.
Speaker 5: It's so big, right like.
Speaker 2: That when we've talked about this the Moon, we've talked
Speaker 2: about this, well, no, not necessarily, I'm just saying that
Speaker 2: that's not the way that the Artomist program is designed
Speaker 2: at the moment. So so if they cancel the Artomist
Speaker 2: program and and throw all those funds into this into
Speaker 2: a quick Mars mission, which is is kind of what
Speaker 2: Trump has hinted at on the campaign trail and and
Speaker 2: and in bringing this up without mentioning the Moon, I mean,
Speaker 2: that would be a huge windfall for Elon Musk. It
Speaker 2: wouldn't just be a fulfillment of Elon Musk's personal manifest destiny,
Speaker 2: his personal and profound ideological desire to like get to Mars.
Speaker 2: It would also be incredibly meaningful for SpaceX.
Speaker 5: You you had that prediction, uh, for our mind our
Speaker 5: listeners man.
Speaker 2: That you know, SpaceX's valuation and Tesla's valuation are going
Speaker 2: to converge. We didn't dwell on that, but that was
Speaker 2: that was a very provocative prediction. And I think that
Speaker 2: that if this were to really happen, yes, SpaceX would
Speaker 2: be a lot more valuable than this today.
Speaker 5: Look at that brilliant I love it. Max, Danna tell
Speaker 5: me this on this whole going to Mars thing, Ken Trump,
Speaker 5: even with Elon Musk by his side, realistically pull this off.
Speaker 5: In one term, I mean, I.
Speaker 6: Would think that most people would say no, that getting
Speaker 6: to Mars, particularly getting humans to Mars, is going to
Speaker 6: take much much longer. But you know, Elon is a
Speaker 6: man in a hurry, and he always has very aggressive
Speaker 6: timelines and he would love nothing more than to at
Speaker 6: least try as soon as possible. And you're seeing Starship
Speaker 6: launch over and over again, and you know each time
Speaker 6: they get better at it. I mean, there are always
Speaker 6: like snaffoos, but that's how they iterate, that's how they learn.
Speaker 6: And SpaceX is just lightning years ahead of any competitor
Speaker 6: in terms of having a vehicle that could potentially make
Speaker 6: the journey.
Speaker 2: There's a launch window essentially every two years, so they
Speaker 2: would have to hit I mean, to make this actually
Speaker 2: happen within Trump's term, they would have to have a
Speaker 2: launch I believe it's in twenty twenty six. It would
Speaker 2: have to go well and then they and that would
Speaker 2: allow conceivably, you know, astronauts at the very end of
Speaker 2: Trump's term to blast off. Now again, I think Dan
Speaker 2: is right, this is like super hypothetical. The whole history
Speaker 2: of space explorations, particularly human beings in space. We don't
Speaker 2: like to put our astronauts, our brave, these brave people
Speaker 2: who are are sacrificing in jeopardy. So I think if
Speaker 2: you were betting on this, it makes sense to be skeptical.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, Dana's right, like and and Elon
Speaker 2: is definitely going for it. He's definitely trying to do this.
Speaker 2: It's it's not clear that will succeed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Trump and Musk very aligned in that way.
Speaker 5: They're both great hype men, and so they are, you know,
Speaker 5: simultaneously mutually hyper.
Speaker 2: They just just in terms to bring up one other
Speaker 2: sort of potential stump fuck.
Speaker 5: Mildly so Artemis.
Speaker 2: The Moon program has a bunch of big American defense
Speaker 2: contractors who are signed up making stuff for it, including
Speaker 2: Boeing and North or so each of these The idea
Speaker 2: to like of shutting, of turning this program off or
Speaker 2: winding it down or something will have serious political implications
Speaker 2: in congressional districts all across the country. They're definitely people
Speaker 2: who want to think we should be going to the
Speaker 2: moon first.
Speaker 5: It's been a while since we've been to the moon.
Speaker 3: Max.
Speaker 5: Now, Max, you heard him say, Musk that is that
Speaker 5: he's taking Doge to Mars. He's gonna take the entire
Speaker 5: committee perhaps, and the cryptocurrency didn't specify to Mars set
Speaker 5: up offices there. But Doge, you know, was in the
Speaker 5: news on inauguration day as well. I mean Trump had
Speaker 5: just been sworn in. They hadn't even stopped singing glory, glory, hallelujah.
Speaker 5: And the lawsuit against those dropped.
Speaker 7: The lawsuit that several lawsuits several there are several lawsuits,
Speaker 7: all challenging basically Doge's legality under aspects of the Constitution,
Speaker 7: how federal law is structured.
Speaker 2: I'm not an expert on an administrative law, but essentially
Speaker 2: saying that these these are like extra.
Speaker 4: Legal bodies and are not going to be allowed.
Speaker 2: I don't think we have a clear sense of how
Speaker 2: significant these lawsuits are.
Speaker 4: Trump also sign.
Speaker 2: An executive order establishing DOZE, and I'm sorry to report
Speaker 2: David that the executive order does not include any mention
Speaker 2: of the role that DOGE will play on any non
Speaker 2: earth bodies.
Speaker 5: Dana. So, DOZE has now been sued. It has scaled
Speaker 5: back its goals a bit. It's saying, no longer is
Speaker 5: it feasible to cut two trillion a year in government spending.
Speaker 5: It's now down talking about maybe one trillion, which is
Speaker 5: still a very very large number. But we do have
Speaker 5: another development, which is that Elon is now the sole
Speaker 5: leader of Doze. Vivek Ramis is out. Is that correct?
Speaker 6: That is correct. It's very disappointing because now we can't
Speaker 6: use the phrase Muskaswamy, which Don moynihan had sort of pioneered.
Speaker 6: But yet Ramaswami is going to focus on his own
Speaker 6: political career in Ohio and has sort of you know,
Speaker 6: stepped aside. The White House put out like a statement
Speaker 6: about it yesterday. So you know, this whole idea of
Speaker 6: Doge being co led, you know, has now fallen apart.
Speaker 6: It's really Musk.
Speaker 5: Did Musk bump him out? Is that what happened?
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't know personally too clear, Like you know,
Speaker 6: Doge was a Musk's idea Doge. Musk proposed the idea
Speaker 6: of Doge to Trump when he had Trump on an
Speaker 6: X spaces in August. I don't think he ever wanted
Speaker 6: a co leader, and at the rally at Madison Square
Speaker 6: Garden that Max and I were both that originally, like
Speaker 6: Howard Lutnik was sort of floated as the co leader
Speaker 6: of Doge and then he got pushed aside, and then
Speaker 6: it was Vivek and that didn't last for very long.
Speaker 6: So I don't think that Elon ever intended to do
Speaker 6: this with a partner.
Speaker 5: My spin is their efficiencies already taking place right cut
Speaker 5: one job.
Speaker 2: My sense from talking to people around Trump and is
Speaker 2: that really Ramaswami did this to himself. You remember back
Speaker 2: at the end of last year there Elon Musk kind
Speaker 2: of went on this tear around h one b Visas.
Speaker 2: Ramaswami actually chimed in kind of defending Elon Musk and
Speaker 2: made a bunch of comments that I think, in certain
Speaker 2: ways came off even worse than the than the Musk comments,
Speaker 2: talking about essentially that that perceived as attacking American workers
Speaker 2: and implying that American workers were sort of like not
Speaker 2: qualified for the best jobs. It's also true that there
Speaker 2: was this kind of inherent rivalry.
Speaker 4: Danis hinting at it.
Speaker 2: You know, Ramaswami was sort of shoehorn into this thing,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was never totally clear why, because
Speaker 2: this was obviously a Musk idea from the beginning, and
Speaker 2: I'd say ram Swami, I think was always kind of
Speaker 2: aiming in this kind.
Speaker 4: Of political trajectory.
Speaker 2: You know, there's been there's been talk of him potentially
Speaker 2: running for governor, even before this of Ohio, even before
Speaker 2: this this like latest thing with with Musk. So so
Speaker 2: I think it feels like a bunch of factors, but
Speaker 2: you got to say like it it is, first of all,
Speaker 2: Elon consolidating his influence within Trump World. And and okay,
Speaker 2: somebody's maybe been bounced out of the orbit connected to Doge,
Speaker 2: but it certainly wasn't Elon Musk. Elon Musk, as we
Speaker 2: saw from yesterday, is enjoying the same extremely high level
Speaker 2: access that he has you know, been enjoying for for months.
Speaker 6: He has a White House email address now too. I
Speaker 6: mean that that's really wild this ye.
Speaker 5: And the end. I know that you guys talked about
Speaker 5: this last week with Josh, But does he have this
Speaker 5: blue pant.
Speaker 4: We're seeing Yeah, we're seeing reporting now.
Speaker 2: ABC News reported a few hours ago as we're recording this,
Speaker 2: that that they had that they were hearing that he
Speaker 2: was going to have the blue badge.
Speaker 4: This was the badge that we talked about with Josh.
Speaker 5: Greg get some as allow.
Speaker 4: Him to kind of walk into the Oval office.
Speaker 5: There's also been ordered diet cokes.
Speaker 2: There's also been suggestions in reporting, although it's not totally
Speaker 2: clear if this is definitely true or not to me anyway,
Speaker 2: that he would have some kind of office space in
Speaker 2: the in the actual White House and not in addition
Speaker 2: to offices in the Executive Office building. I mean, the
Speaker 2: bottom line is going to have a lot of access.
Speaker 4: I will say.
Speaker 2: Reading this executive order, and I read it closely because
Speaker 2: not very longin is pretty easy. It doesn't say anything
Speaker 2: about cutting costs. It actually just talks about sort of
Speaker 2: upgrading the IT systems, the government software system.
Speaker 5: Now that's code for cutting spending.
Speaker 4: I don't know that exact, David.
Speaker 2: All of my twenty years of reporting on software, I
Speaker 2: can tell you that software does.
Speaker 5: Not expense it.
Speaker 4: It's often a way to increase spending rather than cut it.
Speaker 5: Dana Hall, The day was not without controversy, though there
Speaker 5: were several controversial things that took place. But as it
Speaker 5: regards specifically to Elon Musk, there was a salute that
Speaker 5: caused quite a stir. He made this gesture while giving
Speaker 5: a speech yesterday. Tell us as best you can what
Speaker 5: it looked like.
Speaker 6: Okay, so mus did this gesture two and a half times.
Speaker 6: He put his right hand over his heart, and then
Speaker 6: he gave a salute to the front of the audience.
Speaker 6: Then he turned around and he did it a second time,
Speaker 6: and then he put his hand over his heart yet again.
Speaker 6: You know, if you are being generous to Elon, he
Speaker 6: was making an awkward gesture in a time of heightened
Speaker 6: excitement where he was basically trying to show the crowd
Speaker 6: that he really loved them. To historians who study fascism,
Speaker 6: this was like the Hitler salute or the Roman salute.
Speaker 6: And you know, immediately, like the Internet was just wild, like,
Speaker 6: oh my god, did Elon just do the Nazi salute.
Speaker 6: I can't speak with any fidelity as to whether he
Speaker 6: intended to do this or not. It made a huge sture.
Speaker 6: John Stewart talked about it last night. Historians were apoplectic.
Speaker 6: But it was also like a signal, like you saw
Speaker 6: a lot of people on the right sort of embrace this,
Speaker 6: like Andrew Tate and people from gab and elsewhere. So
Speaker 6: it was sort of like, whether it was intentional or not,
Speaker 6: it sort of sent a signal of sorts to the
Speaker 6: dark corners of the Internet and then, interestingly, the Anti
Speaker 6: Defamation League put out a tweet that was sort of
Speaker 6: giving Musk cover, where they basically said, quote, it seems
Speaker 6: that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment
Speaker 6: of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate
Speaker 6: that people are on edge. And then Musk of course
Speaker 6: quoted the post and wrote thanks guys. So it was
Speaker 6: all very It was all very weird. You know, I
Speaker 6: have never seen him do that before. And I've seen
Speaker 6: him and Max has as well. I've seen him speak
Speaker 6: in a lot of different settings. He certainly never did
Speaker 6: it on the campaign trail. So it was just it
Speaker 6: was very odd.
Speaker 5: On that last point. This is what occurs to me. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you're saying you've never seen Musk do it before. I
Speaker 5: don't know that in my life, and you guys tell
Speaker 5: me about yours that I've ever seen anyone do it
Speaker 5: by mistake before. Is that something that like, whoops, you know,
Speaker 5: I just I meant to do something else and that
Speaker 5: came out.
Speaker 4: Matt, That is what I was thinking. I mean, this
Speaker 4: is not a thing that anyone does by mistake. Ever.
Speaker 2: That said, and I think this is important. We are
Speaker 2: not as steeped in the world of far right and
Speaker 2: white nationalism and anti semitism that Elon Musk is and like,
Speaker 2: as we've talked about on this podcast over and over again.
Speaker 2: Leave the Gester aside. This is somebody who has brought,
Speaker 2: you know, Nazis and white supremacists onto his platform, who
Speaker 2: has interacted with Nazis and white supremacists on his platform,
Speaker 2: who has repeated anti Semitic conspiracy theories. And if you
Speaker 2: have that kind of media diet's it seems to me
Speaker 2: possible that that gestures that would be unthinkable for somebody
Speaker 2: who did not have that media diet might come out accidentally.
Speaker 2: And so I do think it's possible that this was
Speaker 2: an accident, but it definitely you can understand why people
Speaker 2: are troubled by it, especially in light of Musk's long,
Speaker 2: long track record.
Speaker 5: In this area.
Speaker 6: And I just want to read another comment that was
Speaker 6: in our story today. A historian of fascism here, wrote
Speaker 6: Ruth ben Giah, she's a professor of history at NYU.
Speaker 6: It was a Nazi salute and a very belluderent one too.
Speaker 6: And I think the fact that he did it not
Speaker 6: once but twice and then almost like a halftime is
Speaker 6: what also really struck people.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a deep fake when I saw it, honestly,
Speaker 2: because I saw it and I thought this has to
Speaker 2: be fake because from the outside that sort of looked
Speaker 2: like now, I did not see it that the original
Speaker 2: clip I saw was not the full clip in context
Speaker 2: where he holds his hand to his heart. So maybe,
Speaker 2: and I think it's like all of these things, it's
Speaker 2: important that we look at them with the total picture,
Speaker 2: and the total picture is one where we've seen Musk
Speaker 2: embracing some of these extreme and arker and more offensive forces,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 5: For years now. Danna, you said that Musk had thanked
Speaker 5: the ADL for the statement he put out. Has he
Speaker 5: said anything else about the controversy beyond that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he basically said they're gonna have to come up
Speaker 6: with better dirty tricks. I mean, he sees this as
Speaker 6: a smear campaign, similar to when he kind of was
Speaker 6: tweeting out the great replacement theory stuff that we wrote
Speaker 6: about like a year ago. He sees this as a
Speaker 6: as a smear campaign, that he's a victim, that this
Speaker 6: is the legacy media, you know, grasping at straws, and so, yeah,
Speaker 6: he tweeted out something about that last night.
Speaker 5: All Right, Dana, we are going to say goodbye to
Speaker 5: you for now. We will see you next week. Thanks.
Speaker 5: All right now, Max, you and I after that chat,
Speaker 5: we need to lighten the mood a little. We're gonna
Speaker 5: we're gonna do something a little more fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we got to get into this video
Speaker 2: game cheating scandal.
Speaker 4: David. It's it's it's the only thing.
Speaker 2: That anyone was talking about while while they were watching
Speaker 2: the inauguration.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Clearly he's trying to do the map that's not
Speaker 3: in the chain.
Speaker 5: He's just clicking a map repeatedly trying to access it.
Speaker 4: He was not eligible to endo that map.
Speaker 3: I just want you as to understand this is one
Speaker 3: of the highest level hardcore characters in the game. He
Speaker 3: would have played thousands of maps at this point.
Speaker 5: He literally didn't know how to open a map just
Speaker 5: ring bus Kazobs.
Speaker 4: He just ran us.
Speaker 3: The gazob cast arms are one of the most important currencies.
Speaker 3: So he's playing no filter, and he didn't pick up
Speaker 3: the kiss or he's.
Speaker 4: Not presing his Monoplaus.
Speaker 5: He's not freaking Amuntoflus, He's not freasing amount Max. I'm
Speaker 5: struggling to dig this segment super seriously after what we heard,
Speaker 5: but Cecilia Denistasio, our video game reporter, takes it very seriously.
Speaker 5: It's what she does for a living for us here
Speaker 5: at Bloomberg. Cecilia, welcome to the show. What did we
Speaker 5: just hear exactly? Uh, we on this show touched upon
Speaker 5: this whole saga a little bit last week. But bring
Speaker 5: us up to speed because there's been some deve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there have been some developments. So for a couple
Speaker 1: of months now, Elon Musk has been bragging that he
Speaker 1: is one of the top players of two very popular
Speaker 1: video games, Diablo for and Path of Exile two. And
Speaker 1: you know a lot of gamers have been pointing out
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk is the CEO of six companies and
Speaker 1: a lot of recent college graduates aren't able to reach
Speaker 1: the high rungs of gamerdom that Elon Musk seems to
Speaker 1: have himself. So what we heard in that clip was
Speaker 1: a couple of gamers commenting over Elon Musk himself playing
Speaker 1: the video game Path of Exile too.
Speaker 5: They seem to be mocking him, Cecilia.
Speaker 1: They are mocking him because look, I play these games,
Speaker 1: and I was one of these people when I was
Speaker 1: watching him play this game, like, h, he's out of mana,
Speaker 1: please use the manifest, use the Manoflast, use the manoflask and.
Speaker 5: He does it, and you the same thing that they
Speaker 5: were saying as you were watching it.
Speaker 1: Yes, because look, he's bragging about having these very high
Speaker 1: level characters that take a lot of time to level up,
Speaker 1: and he's playing in a way that maybe you know,
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to indicate that he had leveled up his
Speaker 1: character himself.
Speaker 5: I see.
Speaker 4: So wait, just to translate here, yes, translation.
Speaker 2: The point of this story is that Musk had basically
Speaker 2: presented in his own telling, and I'd say, in the
Speaker 2: telling of maybe some people close to him, that he was,
Speaker 2: you know, a world class player in these video games.
Speaker 2: And these Cecilia experienced gamer as well as these other
Speaker 2: gamers that we're hearing, are basically seeing holes in that story.
Speaker 5: Correct, correct, Okay, now that's where we were as of
Speaker 5: a few hours ago. But Cecilia looks like there's evidence
Speaker 5: that Musk himself perhaps has admitted that indeed he was
Speaker 5: cheating all along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny you use the word cheating because it's cheating. Well,
Speaker 1: the video game developers say it's not kosher either, according
Speaker 1: to their terms of service. But what Musk allegedly did
Speaker 1: was have somebody else level up his accounts for him, which,
Speaker 1: if you are listening to this podcast.
Speaker 4: So sorry, I account what's that meaning?
Speaker 5: Exactly? Help us out here, Max and I are idiots.
Speaker 5: What what is leveling up?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you create a character playing one of these games
Speaker 1: and say you want to get to the highest level
Speaker 1: where the swaggiest gear fight the most hardcore monsters. Right,
Speaker 1: but that takes a lot of time, hundreds or thousands
Speaker 1: of hours. I interviewed a lot of people who offer
Speaker 1: services to wealthy gamers who don't want to spend the
Speaker 1: hundreds or thousands of hours killing little goblins and leveling
Speaker 1: up the characters. Like, you know, if you're the CEO,
Speaker 1: for example, six companies, maybe you don't want to be
Speaker 1: hitting goblins.
Speaker 2: Even just one for that matter, you know, or you know,
Speaker 2: even if you just have normal adult responsibility.
Speaker 1: Well that's a little condescending.
Speaker 5: Well correct, and Cecilia, no, you know. One of the
Speaker 5: things I learned in your story, which is very good,
Speaker 5: is that it is now cool, totally cool to me.
Speaker 5: An adult gamer all along. The joke was on me then,
Speaker 5: I guess, and I feel like I own an apology
Speaker 5: to my son Miguel and my nephew Michael for mocking
Speaker 5: him all these years. I'm sorry. It's cool to be
Speaker 5: an adult gamer now, yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you are the king of the nerds
Speaker 1: like Elon Musk, you know, wants to be and he
Speaker 1: wants to use his like meme speak and you know,
Speaker 1: be with it on Reddit like you know, being good
Speaker 1: at gaming offers you a certain level of cultural cloud.
Speaker 5: H Okay, who knew? Now? But back to the admission,
Speaker 5: What exactly did he say? And are we positive? Are
Speaker 5: we positive that that admission actually came from Elon Musk? Gosh?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really hard to say, but what
Speaker 1: news outlets are reporting is that a very small YouTube
Speaker 1: account had communication with Elon Musk in a direct message
Speaker 1: on x in which this YouTuber asked, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: did you level up these accounts yourself or did somebody
Speaker 1: else do it for you? And Elon says, look, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to be competing with these high level
Speaker 1: gamers in countries like Asia, you know everybody has somebody
Speaker 1: else level up their accounts, and he indicates that he
Speaker 1: did not do it himself, and that also he had
Speaker 1: never represented that he had done it himself.
Speaker 5: I see, I'm curious. Can I ask you to a question, Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 1: Hearing hearing this story, like, how does this square with
Speaker 1: the way that he's run his businesses over the last
Speaker 1: couple of decades.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so one thing I want to say is,
Speaker 2: you know, I've never covered the world of video game
Speaker 2: cheating before chating, but I have, but I have some
Speaker 2: experience in the in the world of sports cheating. And
Speaker 2: this is a classic sort of non denial from Elon.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like what Lance Armstrong has said. It's
Speaker 2: what many dopers after they have been found to be
Speaker 2: dopers say, which is basically like everyone was doing it,
Speaker 2: there was no way to could never have won the
Speaker 2: Tour de France without and which which is true, potentially true.
Speaker 5: But I just want to know it was just the
Speaker 5: best of the cheaters.
Speaker 4: Not a great defense.
Speaker 2: I think the thing that struck me about this scandal
Speaker 2: or non scandal or whatever was that you saw a
Speaker 2: bunch of people in Elon Musk's orbit kind of spring
Speaker 2: up on Twitter over the last couple of days to
Speaker 2: essentially say no, no, no, no, he really.
Speaker 4: Was spending a lot of time playing video games.
Speaker 5: You didn't know how to open the what was it?
Speaker 5: The mail?
Speaker 2: Javon Zillis, mother of some of his children, tweeted yesterday
Speaker 2: a year old video of Elon Musk gaming and then
Speaker 2: saying that he played seventeen hours. It was part of
Speaker 2: a seventeen hour push on Christmas Day.
Speaker 5: So God, this is getting depressing.
Speaker 2: So maybe that's how he fits it in. He's just
Speaker 2: doing this on the holidays.
Speaker 5: Okay, So there's a good question for you, Cecilia, to
Speaker 5: become that good, to become that guy does a periodic
Speaker 5: seventeen hour binge on Christmas? Does that get you there?
Speaker 5: Or are you just logging obscene amounts of hours day in,
Speaker 5: day out, week in, week out.
Speaker 1: In my experience, it takes more than seventeen hours on
Speaker 1: Christmas or an hour or two at the end of
Speaker 1: your day running a couple of companies. But I mean, look,
Speaker 1: he did play the video game himself when he was
Speaker 1: live streaming to the audience, and it's not as if
Speaker 1: he's never played a game before, like he's fine, he's
Speaker 1: fine at these games, you know, But what was interesting
Speaker 1: to people was the fact that he had represented that
Speaker 1: he was one of the top players ever in some
Speaker 1: of these games, which is really confusing when you go
Speaker 1: out and livestream yourself. Right, That's the thing I don't understand.
Speaker 5: He exposed himself in a way that he didn't he
Speaker 5: didn't really need to show.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, this is a guy who is very
Speaker 2: who has been very successful kind of creating an image
Speaker 2: of himself, an image of himself as a larger than
Speaker 2: life figure, as a guy who can simultaneously design a
Speaker 2: car and a rocket and be awesome at video games.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, he's obviously pretty stretched at this
Speaker 2: point between the companies and between his political activities and
Speaker 2: and also perhaps not spending as not not being quite
Speaker 2: as precise in his personal branding as he used to
Speaker 2: as we just as we just saw talking about this
Speaker 2: this gesture, and it just it just it feels I
Speaker 2: don't know, sloppy or something, and that and that in
Speaker 2: that sense, it does feel a little bit out of
Speaker 2: character for Elon Musk, like where where he has been
Speaker 2: very very successful for a very long time crafting this
Speaker 2: image and this, and this feels like a crack in
Speaker 2: that image.
Speaker 5: So now that Elon is a politician, essentially, I ask
Speaker 5: you Max, years from now, are we going to reflect
Speaker 5: on this scandal and say bigger, bigger than Watergate? Well,
Speaker 5: you know, bigger than Iran Contra. If not Watergate, I
Speaker 5: Ran Contra.
Speaker 2: I don't know what this means for the Trump presidency.
Speaker 2: This could be, as Josh Green suggested last week, this
Speaker 2: could be the thing that brings the whole edifice down,
Speaker 2: although probably not. I mean, it's honestly at Cecilia is
Speaker 2: as she's saying, it's like it doesn't feel it doesn't
Speaker 2: feel as morally clear cut as some other things. Although
Speaker 2: it definitely does seem like he's not as cool of
Speaker 2: a gamer as we thought he was.
Speaker 5: Now Cecilia and the conversations out there that are happening
Speaker 5: on this is must cheating or is he not? These
Speaker 5: people that are that are jumping in and opening they
Speaker 5: have big followings in social media? Correct? How big is
Speaker 5: the community out there that's that's a buzz about this?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Millions?
Speaker 5: Gosh?
Speaker 1: I mean, Elon Musk got into a fight with a
Speaker 1: very famous video game influencer who has millions of followers.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, what remind us of the name.
Speaker 1: His name is asmen Gold. He's a very controversial, very
Speaker 1: famous gamer who's known for just sort of saying whatever
Speaker 1: he thinks and feels. And what he thought and felt
Speaker 1: was there's no way Elon Musk leveled up this account himself,
Speaker 1: and asmen Gold said, I think he bought it, and
Speaker 1: that led to a series of events that was really wild.
Speaker 1: You know, Elon unfollowed asmen Gold and then the gamer's
Speaker 1: account was unverified shortly after that, and then reverified not
Speaker 1: long after. People started noticing. But it was like, what
Speaker 1: is going on? How important is this to Elon to
Speaker 1: seem like a top gamer.
Speaker 2: I've said versions of this before, but I do think
Speaker 2: Elon Musk he has had public flaws and there have
Speaker 2: been scandals around him, and he has stepped in it
Speaker 2: before and said things that are offensive before. But one
Speaker 2: thing that feels different about this moment, in particular.
Speaker 5: What about about the video.
Speaker 4: About the video game thing? Yeah, yeah, no, I'm not
Speaker 4: getting that far.
Speaker 2: Afield, but that, like with if he loses the gamers,
Speaker 2: I do think that hurts his kind of popularity and
Speaker 2: his cool and this universe of sort of young men
Speaker 2: that has been you know up to this moment, you know, really.
Speaker 5: Saying, if he loses the Gamers, the Dems retake the
Speaker 5: house in twenty I'm.
Speaker 2: Saying, these commentators on the youtubes that we were listening
Speaker 2: to should probably be calling the DNC right now looking
Speaker 2: for jobs, because I think.
Speaker 4: They may be more than anyone in our politics. Have
Speaker 4: his number.
Speaker 5: All right, Well, Cecilia Donastasio, thank you very much for
Speaker 5: joining us, and when there are fresh developments, please come
Speaker 5: back and tell us all about them.
Speaker 1: Sure, thank you, Max.
Speaker 5: Great having you on as always. I'll see you next week.
Speaker 4: Great to be here, David.
Speaker 5: This episode was produced by Stacy Wang. Anna Masa Rakus
Speaker 5: is our editor and Rayhan Harmanci our senior editor. The
Speaker 5: idea for this very show also came from Rayhan Blake,
Speaker 5: Maples Handels Engineering and Dave Purcell Factchecks. Our supervising producer
Speaker 5: is Magnus Hendrickson. The elon Ing theme is written and
Speaker 5: performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Brendan Francis Newnham
Speaker 5: is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head
Speaker 5: of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always to our
Speaker 5: supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos. If
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