WEBVTT - Reinstating Nick Fuentes and Tone-Policing J.K. Rowling 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:11.080 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.120 Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet. 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:20.319 More than half the satellites in space are owned and 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:24.640 controlled by one man. Well, he's a legitimate super genius. 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:25.759 I mean legitimate. 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:28.600 He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:29.400 it will be different. 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:30.400 He'll vote Republican. 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:33.159 There is a reason the US government is so reliant 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.720 on him. Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:40.240 done nothing. Anything he does is fascinating. 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:54.200 People. Welcome the elan Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:59.200 It's Tuesday, May seven. I'm your host, David Popadopolis. Today, 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:03.440 well into a mystery what happened to Tesla's one so 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:07.200 lofty supercharging plans and what does it mean for the 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.960 rest of America's auto industry. And then we're going to 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.839 get into the next stage of Elon's free speech plan 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:18.920 for x reinstating Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who's been 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:23.160 banned from basically every social media platform. To go over 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:25.720 all of this and then some we're joined by our 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:32.520 usual superstar panel, Elon reporter Danahull. Hello, Dana Good, Afternoon 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:39.000 and BusinessWeek Senior writer and editor Max Chafkin. Hey, David, Okay, 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:41.360 So to be clear here, I know I said it's Tuesday, 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:44.560 May seventh, but we're actually recording this a day earlier 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:47.600 than normal on Monday. Because this is a special week 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:50.600 for us. Elon Inc. Is hitting the road. We'll be 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.680 hosting a live taping on Thursday at the Bloomberg Tech 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.880 Summit in San Francisco. Join us there. Links will be 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:02.400 in the show, notesh. Well, let's get this started and 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:08.280 talk about how Elon has done away with most or 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:12.240 all of the Supercharger team. We touched briefly on this 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:14.760 last week, but the details keep coming out. 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.400 Yeah. So Elon Musk is reorganizing Tesla and kind of 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:23.760 really reshaping the company to focus more on AI and autonomy, 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.000 and as part of the layoffs that he has been 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:30.200 doing for several weeks now, he completely disbanded the Supercharging 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.200 team that reported up to Rebecca Tanucci, who is one 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.800 of the top female executives at the company. Tesla watchers 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:39.000 will remember that she was one of the speakers at 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:42.720 the investor day last year, and it was really surprising 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.480 because Supercharging it's like this awesome product. I mean, I 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:50.000 think I've even called it Tesla's shrewdest product. And it 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:51.639 kind of comes at a time when all these other 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.280 automakers like Ford and Rivian and GM had like signed 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.560 on to adopt the Tesla charging network as their own, 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:02.600 and all of this injured raation work was underway before 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:06.200 the summer driving season, so a lot of it is 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.359 very puzzling. If you believe in the idea that EV 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:13.600 adoption is slowing and that sales are slowing, it makes 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:16.440 sense to kind of throttle back your expansion plans. But 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:19.000 it does not make sense to fire all five hundred 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:22.560 people who worked on that team, because now who does 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.839 GM call who? Like, all the people that were facilitating 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:29.560 these partnerships with other automakers are now gone. 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:34.080 So then you know, the Tesla charging network is indeed 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.400 very different than the charging networks that these other EV 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:42.000 makers have they refer to as super charging stations. What 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:47.840 makes exactly their stations different and better than those controlled 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:49.040 by their rivals? 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:52.600 So I think the thing to really think about is 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:57.280 Tesla doesn't just make cars. They really own the fueling 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:01.400 infrastructure that is important for electric vehicle adoption, and they 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:04.280 very early On knew that the key to getting people 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:08.440 to drive electric vehicles was to make charging easy and seamless, 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.480 and over a decade ago they started building their own stations, 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:15.560 and Elon Musk called them superchargers. And at first there 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.400 were like six of them in California, and so you 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.640 could drive from San Francisco to La or San Francisco 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.360 to like Tahoe. Now they are all over the world. 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:28.800 They are in China, they are all over the United States, 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:31.599 they are all over Europe, and they are really easy 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:35.480 to use, and they are often located off of highways 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:38.560 near a place where you can stop and go get 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.200 a cup of coffee. I mean, the one in Kettleman City, 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.279 which is on the way to La is like this 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:46.880 amazing spot. It's open twenty four hours. There's coffee there, 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.560 you can get a latte, you can buy Tesla merchandise. 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.680 And the supercharging network has always been seen as Tesla's 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.040 value add because Tesla is not just selling you a car, 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:01.240 they also are basically owning and creating this fueling infrastructure. 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:05.120 But now what's happened is that Musk is trying to 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.479 cut twenty percent of his staff, and he cut this 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:12.039 entire team, and you know, the superchargers still exists, but 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:14.920 there are just a lot of questions as to who's 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:18.040 going to maintain them, and like what his whole strategy 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:20.760 here is. My understanding is that the business unit was 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:24.840 close to being profitable. But maybe if you're reconfiguring your 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:28.000 whole company to be about autonomy and the RBOTAXI, maybe 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.000 you don't need to build as many as you had 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:30.880 originally planned. 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:33.080 Yeah, so if the business was close to being profitable, 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:35.479 max I would have to have imagined that this is 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:37.960 the kind of thing you have a dominant position in 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:42.240 that space, in the charging space, and for years, as 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:46.320 more and more automakers go into evs, like this could 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.360 have been a thing that just threw off cash for 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:49.280 decades to come. 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.760 Now you would think, I mean building these superchargers and 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:55.320 on a big scale and expanding the number that they 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.480 have currently. That's also capitally intensive, and clearly like Elon 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:01.840 Musk has as other areas where he wants to spend 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.120 that money. He wants to spend that money buying you 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:07.120 know Nvidia, you know H one hundred's these like GPU 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.800 chips to train these AI models, AI models For what 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.479 I mean assumably for the Robotaxi, right, I should say 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:17.839 the aspirational Robotaxi, because there is no Robotaxi yet, you know, 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.359 is going to use enormous resources. And Elon Musk, as 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.400 Dana saying, has been trying to reorient the company towards 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:28.279 that Tesla before when they were trying to come up 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:30.960 with this twenty five thousand dollars car or moving more 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:33.720 aggressively to other models, Elon must really seemed to be 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.520 betting on a lot more scale, right, like more superchargers, 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:40.560 lots of cars, And it really does seem like over 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:44.040 the last few months he's changed his thinking there right 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:48.240 where the company is not trying to drastically increase the 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:50.800 number of evs out there in the short term, it's 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.280 it wants to essentially, you know, get rid of the 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:58.080 conventional car altogether. It's extremely you know, it's a bold bet, 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:00.880 and it also seems like, like you said, like maybe 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.159 it's a foolhardy decision to throw away or or put 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:06.880 the brakes on what has been a really good part 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:07.840 of the company. 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.240 But to get rid of the conventional car altogether. Do 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.640 you still not need more charging stations or is the idea, 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.200 Dana that I guess, if just a handful of robo 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.760 taxis are driving us all around, we need a limited 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:19.720 number of cars. 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:22.600 So I think you have to really look at sales 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.800 and ed adoption. And you know, Tesla had a terrible 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:29.040 first quarter. They had like forty six thousand more cars 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:33.200 in inventory than they could sell, and so you don't 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:37.360 need to keep building new superchargers if your sales are slowing. 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:40.360 And Tesla has a lot of superchargers. As of the 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:43.200 end of the first quarter, they had over six thousand 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:48.440 supercharging stations and more than fifty seven thousand connectors worldwide, 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.440 so you don't really need to build more. And what 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.200 Musk said was, you know, we're going to We're going 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.239 to focus instead on optimizing our existing stations. That's all fine, 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:00.480 that makes sense to me. What does it makes sense 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:03.080 is firing all the people who were overseeing relationships with 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:06.960 other automotive partners, like for GM and Rivian, Because the 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.480 whole idea was that, you know, Tesla's network is the 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.440 dominant network in the United States, and like Tesla got 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:17.200 all of this money from the Biden administration through this 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.800 program called the Nevy program, where under the Inflation Reduction Act. 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:23.720 If you opened up the network to other automakers, you 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.040 got federal funding. And so you know, Musk has never 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:29.640 been one to kind of turn down the spigot of funding. 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:33.640 So all of these nevy projects that were supposed to 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.840 be built using federal funds, I don't know where that stands, 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:39.120 And frankly, I don't think anyone else does either, because 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.920 all the people that oversaw the contracts are now gone. 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:43.480 Yeah, and Max, That's one of the things that jumps 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.080 out at me a little bit here is when you're 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:50.760 a small startup or a startup of any sort, like 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.320 Kessel was for a while, you know, you can blow 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:56.640 stuff up all the time and shut down departments and 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.240 start other things, and you know that the broader ripples 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:02.600 across the account of me and across the broader industry 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.959 are small. I wonder if right now it's almost a 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:09.160 little bit like Tesla and Elon aren't realizing their own 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:11.960 strength and might and power in this space. Is that 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.080 they don't realize their strength or might or power. Are 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:15.560 they just simply don't care? 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:21.000 I mean, it's very hard to disentangle like Elon Musk's 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:23.959 strategy in terms of like the business strategy of the 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.600 business case for slowing down superchargers or firing the team, 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.360 and then the management style, which is to these like 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:35.040 grand gestures in which you know, you fire entire teams 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.000 to prove a point. And my guess is it's it's 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:40.760 probably a little bit of both, right, Like, there's been 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:45.160 some reporting suggesting that the person who's running that team 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:49.480 was hesitant to like cuts as deeply as Elon Musk wants. 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:51.720 Elon Musk is trying to make this point that the 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:55.320 company has to be extremely hardcore. I suppose what. 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.160 Better way to show that then to just set that 0:09:58.200 --> 0:09:59.679 person in the entire team. 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.520 Seems it seems crazy from the outside, and I'm sure 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.120 if you're sitting, you know, in Detroit and you've been 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.600 counting on these superchargers, it seems crazy as well. It 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:14.080 does conceivably, I think, hurt other EV makers to have 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.400 Tesla slow this down, because of course, this Tesla supercharger 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:20.480 network was going to be an asset to the entire industry, 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.240 and people who are buying a Hondai or a Kia 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:25.760 or a Ford or whatever, we're also going to benefit 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:27.640 from these networks. You could see a situation where Elon 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.600 Musk feels like, do I really want to be paying 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:34.840 to build this massive infrastructure that is going to also 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.040 be used by my competitors. Maybe I have this sort 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.120 of modestly profitable thing, but like it doesn't serve the 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:42.240 big goal, which is to be worth you know, to 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.400 trillions of dollars and do all the crazy ambitious stuff 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:46.960 that he wants to do. 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:49.160 Did they not hire anyone back? I thought they were 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:50.559 hiring people back or no. 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.040 There's rumors that they could hire people back. I mean, 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.520 Elon Musk has changed his mind before. I'm reminded of 0:10:57.559 --> 0:10:59.720 like in twenty nineteen, he like announced that they were 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.840 closed all the stores, and then once he realized like, oh, 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:05.440 actually we have like long term leases with all of 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.040 these shopping malls, he like kind of did in about face, 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.320 and they like they like recance it. So I mean, 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:13.680 I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to hire some 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:15.640 people back. And I mean, to be clear, you know, 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:17.840 there are still people that are going to like service 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:19.560 the existing superchargers. 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:20.160 You know. 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:25.160 I recently Max was trying to drive from Miami South 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:27.480 to Key West. My wife and I we were trying 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:31.000 to rent to Tesla Avis had no Teslas for us. 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:35.600 They gave us another EV, some fancy pants Mercedes EV. 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:39.439 We said, okay, fine, it was not fully charged. When 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:42.160 they gave it to us, Dan, we said, fine, I 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:45.560 had forty seven miles. Like whatever, we'll find a charging station. 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:49.040 We went by a zillion Tesla charging stations we had 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:52.200 no access to, and then very quickly found ourselves down 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.400 to just a handful of miles left. And at that 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.800 point we got to this charging station, there was nowhere 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:01.520 else to go. We wound up waiting in a Walmart 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:04.839 parking lot across by the way the road from a 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:08.000 Murphy USA gas station where cars were just zipping in, 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:12.160 filling up, zipping out. It took us four hours to charge. Wow, 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.400 that sounds like a great It was awesome. It was awesome. 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:17.600 And the thing that jumped out at me, though Dana, 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.840 was it wasn't just idiot tourists like us stuck in 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:24.640 this position. And I do emphasize idiot tourists. They were 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:29.080 also queuing up in the line behind us, waiting a 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:31.960 half an hour, an hour, getting frustrated and driving off. 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:40.479 There were also actual EV owners of Hyundai's and volkswagons. 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:42.199 Well, right, And that's why Tesla has had such an 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:46.040 incredible advantage because the superchargers work, and like, if you 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:48.720 have the Tesla app on your phone, you can see 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:52.559 where the nearest supercharger is and how many stalls are open, 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.040 and like you get like very real data on like 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.280 what your charging time is, and like whenever I've rented 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.240 a Tesla, I've used the superchargers, I've never had like 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.719 one problem with them. So that's why, like Tesla had 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:06.240 such an advantage, and they really built like the best 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:08.600 team in the industry, Like all of these people are 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:11.760 like top flight talent. So now the market is flooded 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:15.120 with like five hundred people and every other charging network 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:17.000 is going to try to stap them up and learn 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.040 from their expertise. But that's what's so amazing. No one 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:22.319 was able to replicate what Tesla did. And Tesla also 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:25.720 has all this data about like where you charge, which 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.040 ones are the most used, Like they have just a 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:32.400 ton of information about electricity pricing and real time pricing 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.959 and how much the average person charges. So I think 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:39.120 the fact that Tesla is really throttling back what was 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:43.640 this clear advantage at this pivotal time when EV adoption 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:47.560 has very much slowed. It's like cause ripple effects throughout 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:49.600 the entire industry. And if you go on LinkedIn, oh 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.040 my god, there's like this uproar. Like everyone in the 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:54.840 charging business is like trying to figure out what's. 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.400 Going on, right, and they don't exactly know. But as 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:00.920 far as we understand the deal that willow them and 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:04.720 their cars to charge at these Tesla supercharging stations, it 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:07.720 is not dead, correct, It is not dead. 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.440 I mean I have not heard of any automakers backing 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:13.200 out of the deal. I just think that how the 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:18.520 onboarding and the integration and the billing all works is 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:20.640 just up in the air because all of the people 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:23.720 who oversaw those details are now gone. 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.040 And it just feels like one of the ways in 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:29.320 which these companies have not quite figured out how people 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:32.040 are going to use evs and and how they're going 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:35.280 to convince the kind of person who's watching, like you said, 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.200 watching this giant line at a charging station on one 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:39.360 side of the street and a gas station where dozens 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:43.280 of cars amazing, it was amazing. It seems like it's 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:45.640 just not totally figured out yet. And that and that's 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:47.840 a good reason if you're Elon Musk and you're you're 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.640 worried about your spending, and you think that there's this 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:53.080 amazing target called you know, AI that you should be 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:55.120 aiming for. You could sort of understand why you would 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:56.520 want to try to cut back. 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:58.520 The other person I want to quote here, while I 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.760 waited in line forever at the charging station, was somebody, 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:06.000 after they had finally finished charging and was clearly exhausted 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.000 by the experience, has turned to me and said, is 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.960 America ready for this? I think the answer, at least 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:20.560 right now is looking like no. Okay, We're now going 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:25.000 to talk about X and Elon's reinstatement of Nick Fuentes. 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:27.720 And to help us do that, we've got Kurt Wagner, 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:30.280 who covers X for us here at Bloomberg and is 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:32.800 the author of the book The Battle for the Bird 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:34.960 about Elon's takeover of Twitter. 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:37.400 Welcome, Kurt, thank you for having me. 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:41.720 Okay, So, Kurt, I think it was on Friday Elon 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:47.160 has reinstated. He made the decision to reinstate Nick Fuentes. 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:52.200 Tell us to get this started, who exactly is Nickquente's. 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:56.240 Yeah, Nick Fuentes is I believe about twenty five years old. 0:15:56.320 --> 0:16:03.520 He's labeled a white supremacist, anti Semite. He's basically a 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:07.400 far right sort of media personality. He's got his own 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.640 talk show and he has a conference, and he shows 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.960 up sort of in the far right circles of you know, 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:19.080 folks who support basically Donald Trump, and then sort of 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:22.440 came to light during Donald Trump's presidency, and so a 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.200 few years ago he was banned from what was then 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:26.880 Twitter permanently. 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:30.280 This is by the previous the pre Musk team. 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:32.520 That's right, this is you know, Twitter one point zero, 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:35.640 if you want to call that, and had still been 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.600 banned on what is now x up until obviously just 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:41.720 a couple of days ago, even though Elon has brought 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:44.560 back several other people, but he is now back. He 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:48.160 went on a Twitter spaces over the weekend with it 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:50.720 was quite the crew. I believe Alex Jones was there, 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:55.200 Andrew Tait was there, Mario knopfol who's sort of like 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:59.640 a you know, Elon I don't know fan, I guess, and. 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:02.560 He's like the Larry King of this word. 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.280 Yeahs of journalist. 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:07.680 I just check him before he hopped on. I believe 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.679 that it's up to one point eight million viewers. Or 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:14.640 listens for that spaces. So this crew, many of whom 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:18.399 were suspended or banned on X until you know, Elon 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.000 took over, now has quite the quite the audience. 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:23.160 That's one of the things I was going to ask you, Kurt, So, 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:30.680 how many exactly controversial people has Elon reinstated since taking 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:32.000 the company over a couple of years ago. 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:34.960 Yeah, I don't have the full number, but I did 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.639 jot down a few examples because it's an interesting list. 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.080 There's the obvious, you know, President Trump, right is the 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:42.000 most high profile. 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.680 Well, President Trump, ex President Trump. He has been reinstated, 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.600 but he has turned X down right, he has not 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:49.200 come back. 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.679 Actually, yeah, I believe he's only posted one time. He 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.240 posted his mug shot you may remember, and used it 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.600 to try and thunderraise. So president, you know, ex President 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:01.919 Trump is the most high profile. But Nick Fuentes is 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.119 one we were talking about. Alex Jones is obviously a 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:10.000 very you know, notorious far right personality that's been brought back. 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.480 Andrew Tait is another. There was a guy Ali Alexander 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:17.560 who you know, helped organize the Stop the Steal campaign. 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:19.880 He was brought back and I think he was actually 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:24.040 re suspended. I think Fuentes might have been as well. 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:25.960 I think he and Ali Alexander were brought back in 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:30.320 the very early days of Elon's takeover and then almost 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.919 immediately suspended again, and now Fuentes is now getting to 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:35.840 come back again for a second time under Elon. 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:37.920 So Max, what were you said, Where does FA's rank 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:43.240 in terms of extreme on the extremists scale among those rehabilitated, 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:44.480 He's pretty far. 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:47.280 On the far end of the extreme scale. You know, 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.200 after the election of President Trump, you had a lot 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:52.160 of the kind of quote unquote remember that the term 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.200 alt right. Those were the kind of online supporters of 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.159 Trump and Trump is a lot of them kind of 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:02.119 backed away from the movement or were banned or faded away, 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:04.359 or sort of embraced the fact that they were in power, 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:06.800 and you had this kind of new wave of even 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:10.720 further right personalities, of which Pointe is probably like the 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:13.440 most prominent example. The main target of his ire, besides 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:16.800 you know, blacks and Jews and minorities of any kind 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:20.439 and gay people, is the Republican Party and the right right. 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.959 It's like going after the mainstream for not being you know, 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:28.239 pro American, pro white whatever. Enough and you know, we 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.880 talked about this, and others have talked about this. One 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:34.560 of the difficulties of operating social network is like where 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:37.320 do you draw the line? And even if you're a 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:41.400 free speech absolutist, there are going to be part kinds 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.199 of speech that are going to kind of mess up 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:46.080 your network. And Musk two has kind of struggled with this. 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:48.320 He banned them, he unbanned him, and I guess Kurt 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:53.040 to a certain extent in his post rehabilitating him again, 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:56.359 you know, he kind of tries to sort of caveat 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:00.560 it a bit. The post said very well, he nick flant, 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:03.200 this will be reinstated provided he does not violate the 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:05.879 law and let him be crushed by the comments and 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:06.840 community notes. 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:10.040 Yeah, this sort of aligns with what Elon has said 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.119 in a few different situations. You know, sunlight is the 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:16.400 best disinfectant kind of thing, right, And his point here 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:20.159 is like, instead of letting these terrible viewpoints kind of 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:23.160 fester away hidden, let's let them out in the open 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:25.000 and everyone can see how terrible they are. 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:26.120 And is that working? 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:30.080 Kurt Wagner, I don't think that's sort of ever worked, right, 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.919 especially the way social media works. The people who have 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:39.040 the most extreme viewpoints often find their communities, and people 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.560 get empowered by that, they get radicalized by that, they 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.520 get excited about it. And the fact that this space 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.320 yesterday with that crew I mentioned, got one point eight 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:50.800 million viewers sort of tells the story, right. 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:53.879 It's a big group of people in terms of numbers, 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:57.639 but as a percentage of the population and so on, 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:00.399 it's small. And like that's kind of the problem, is 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:03.560 that like this this belief system, the will you know, 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.280 white supremacy, or in the case of Alex Jones, it's 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:09.600 you know, conspiracy theorizing like it is not and never 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.719 is going to be a mainstream anything. And so so 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:17.359 the more time Elon Musk spends it clearly seems like 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:19.560 this is taking up a huge part of his you know, 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:22.960 mind space. It almost looked looking at his X page, 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:25.160 it almost seemed like he was sort of badgered into 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:26.800 doing this, or you know, there were a lot of 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:30.439 replies from from Fuentes's you know, allies and so on, 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:31.679 suggesting that he do this. 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.120 It just it's like it's like he's he's off in a. 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.520