Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
More than half the satellites in space are owned and controlled by one man.
Starting his own artificial intelligence company.
Well, he's a legitimate, super genius.
Legitimate, he says.
He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will be different.
He'll vote Republican.
There is a reason the US government is so reliant on him.
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing. Anything he does is fascinating.
People. Welcome to Elon Ink, where we discuss Elon Musk's vast corporate empire, his latest gambits and antics, and how to make sense of it all. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. This week, we'll discuss some of the fallout from Musk's dramatic appearance at the New York Times deal Book Conference. One of many noteworthy moment, which is when Elon began talking politics.
I let's say I'll vote for Trump, but I mean, this is definitely a difficult choice here.
It's not news that Elon has been moving to the right in the past few years, but it's been a complicated turn. It doesn't fit neatly with his leadership on electrifying vehicles to address climate change. But on the other hand, he's taken an anti woke stance in his post on X among other moves like moving some of his manufacturing to Texas. Oh, and he also told advertisers to go fuck themselves. We'll come back to that to figure out what Elon's role could be in American politics as we
enter a presidential election year. We have Sarah Fryar, who leads our big tech team here at Bloomberg. Hello, Sarah, Hello, Dana Hull, who covers Tesla among other musk projects, Dana Hey Hey, and Max Chafkin, senior reporter at Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Hello.
Okay, So a moment ago, we played a bit of musk discussing that we would vote for next year with Aaron Ross Sorkin at the New York Times Deal Book Conference. Here's that full exchange.
Could you see yourself voting for President Biden if it's IF's a Biden Trump election, for example.
I think I would not vote for Biden.
You'd vote for Trump.
I'm not saying I'd vote for Trump, but I mean this is definitely a difficult choice. Yeah, you know, would you vote.
For Nicki Haley. Nicki Haley, by the way, wants all social media names to be exposed.
As you know, No, I think that's outrageous. Yeah, no, I'm not going to vote for some pros and censorship candidate.
Okay, Dan, So let's start with just a primer on Elon's political leanings.
Well, I mean, I think, as we've all said, they're complicated. He does not neatly fit into a box. And I think he's really a political chameleon who kind of waxes and waynes depending on how it impacts his businesses and
personal all fortune. So, when Tesla was a young company that was really struggling for survival and President Obama was elected and the Recovery Act poured millions of dollars into Silicon Valley companies that were investing into clean tech, Tesla was a big beneficiary of that, and you know, Musk was widely viewed as kind of like a left leaning
climate change champion. And then we you know, fast forward, Trump is elected in twenty sixteen, we have the pandemic, and Musk kind of more publicly moved towards the right. I think the clip that you just heard really speaks to this long standing beef that Musk has had with President Biden that goes way back to like August of twenty twenty one, when Biden invited Detroit automakers to the White House to kind of celebrate electric vehicles and Tesla
was notably not invited. And that is like this snub that still eats away at him.
Yeah, it still sticks in his cross And we're gonna we're gonna dive in depth into that. And second, but before we do, Max, chameleon is a term I've heard you also use a lot for Musk and his political and he's politics.
Absolutely yeah, And and I mean Dana didn't mention, but of course George W. Bush was president, you know, during the early days of SpaceX and during Musk's early engagement with Tesla, and and there was sort of an even earlier era of Musk talking about Tesla and his old his whole empire and kind of vaguely libertarian terms. I mean, people think of him as this environmentalist, but early on, the whole pitch from Tesla was that it was a
better sports car than a Porsche. Elon was a Porsche driver, and he was like, I'm gonna make I'm gonna make a car that's even better than this. And and I think that was kind of, you know, pitch to appeal to the kind of George W. Bush, you know, compassionate conservatism. So he's he's moved over the years. And and I think what's what's sort of notable about the Biden beef that that Dan is bringing up here is sort of just how wrong footed Elon Musk has been.
He he is.
This is like the first time since the Bush administration where he hasn't been able to find a way to get on good terms with the person who's in the White House.
Everyone wants to talk about the snubs, so let's go into it. Elon at deal Book spoke at length about it and sort of spoke about it in kind of somewhat raw terms. It's clearly still very personal to him.
I mean, without any doing nothing to provoke the wide administration. They held an electric vehicle summit at the White House and specifically refused to let Tesla attend. This is in the first six months of the administration, and we inquired, like, we literally make more electric cars than everyone else combined. Why are we not allowed? Why are you only letting you for GM, Chrysler and UAW and you're specifically just allowing us from the EV summit at the White House.
We've done nothing to provoke them. Then Biden went on to add insult injury and publicly said that GM was leading the electric car revolution. This was in the same quarter that Tesla made three hundred thousand electric cars and GM made twenty six. Does that seem fair to you?
So, Dana, can you indeed can hear in his voice how it still really bothers him. I mean, the truth of the matter is he's got something of a point here. It would be a little bit like talking about the Professional Football League in commaning a conference with it and not inviting the NFL.
Right, Well, I think it's beyond that. I mean, it's not just the emission of Tesla. It's that Biden went sort of above and beyond to heap praise onto General Motors and Mary Bara and you know, I mean, Biden visited this GM factory in Detroit, and he took a spin in an electric comer and he said, Detroit's leading the leading the world in electric vehicles, and he sort of, you know, praised Mary barras like leading the revolution. I mean,
that is really not fair. Any history of the ev industry knows that GM really fought tooth and nail against Tesla's ability to sell to consumers directly. They had the EV one pro that they shuddered. So it's not just that Tesla is like omitted from all these like pomp and circumstance shows at the White House lawn. It's that like Biden is like keeping praise on GM and and like barely mentioned Tesla at all until we called him out on it. And that's what feels very personal form Musk.
And that's why going into the selection cycle, like he is not inclined to vote for a man who he has publicly called a damp sock puppet.
He's extrapolating beyond Biden to in the last midterm he said, don't vote for Democrats.
Right, Yeah, he has indeed gone from Biden to the whole Democratic Party.
It might not be fair, but it's it's politics.
It's not surprising that Joe Biden, a kind of Democrat who ran on on pro union, you know, bring the jobs back to Detroit type credentials, would go around celebrating union auto shops, especially given you know, Elon Musk's history with unions, which we've talked about on.
The show all the time.
And and of course Elon Musk is not used to this, He's not used to to dealing with this kind of politician in Joe Biden, and and it again, it's it's surprising to me that he hasn't tried to find a way to embrace Bidenomics or whatever you want to call Joe Biden's politics.
Because of course he could. He has a very.
Compelling pitch to offer Democrats if he wanted to.
Right, So you're you're basically saying that the chameleonic Musk of years past would have gotten over the hurt feelings or whatever, and we just rolled with this.
That's what I would have expected.
What may be going on here is just that Elon Musk is a lot bigger than he was earlier. So in the old days, you know, any president is going to sing single out a uh, you know, American job creator,
startup from Silicon Valley that's doing pretty well. Suddenly we have this guy who is the world's richest man, who is you know, has a political has spoken out against unions in the past, and that makes him harder perhaps for somebody like Biden, or really any presidential candidate to just fully embrace.
Especially with the backdrop of income inequality, inflation, people not being able to you know, afford basic things in their minds, even if it's improved. I think he really wants to speak to the working class in America and being really close with the world's richest man is not a good look.
And let's be honest, Michigan is critically important to Biden's re election campaign. The Detroit Automakers are based in Michigan. There is no real value add to coosing up to a billionaire who has moved to Texas.
Yeah so he' right, he's got plants in California, foregone conclusion in elections and Texas foregone conclusions in election. Michigan. Yeah, always you know, up for grabs, which again comes back to Max's point about chameleonic Musk in the past would have just sort of seen it for what it is.
But let me throw this at you, Dan, I mean, is it also possible that his ability to roll with Biden and find a way to become sympathical with him also just perhaps reflects how the pandemic actually really affected him and sort of by him meaning Elon and just kind of drove him ideologically further to the right.
That's part of it.
I think what's weird about this is that Biden's Inflation Reduction Act keeps billions of dollars onto climate change efforts through everything from like a manufacturing text credit, which Tesla really benefits from, to funding for electric vehicle chargers all over the United States, to like, you know, a ten percent credit for refining raw minerals in the US, which
is why Tesla now has this lithium refinery in Corpus Christy. So, you know, Musk, as much as he likes to sort of portray himself as being a self made man, really does benefit from government programs, government programs designed to combat climate change. Would think that there would be some kind of detente where they could put the personal grudge aside and just sort of, you know, move forward and talk about the benefits of the IRA. But that's that's not happening.
And I think what's so so wild about this these clips that we just heard from Deal Book is Musk is saying he's not inclined to vote for Biden, but he's not. He hasn't yet endorsed a Republican candidate either, and that Republican field is really narrowing, and it's like, what is his game here? Like he sort of, you know, did the speak show of coming out with DeSantis, then he sort of was flirting with Vivek, and but now he's saying he won't he's not inclined to vote for
Nicki Haley. So like, who's left? Like, is Musk gonna get behind Chris Christie?
Right?
Well, well, Max, you describe it like he's basically getting behind a handful of Rump candidates.
Yeah.
I mean that's the thing in that clip that to me is most surprising his refusal or hesitancy to say that he would vote for Donald Trump, who is, you know, way way ahead in the in the Republican primaries, is the presumptive nominee.
And and to me.
It just shows how politically marooned Musk is. So in certain ways, right, Okay, he's got he's got some beef with the Democrats. Fine, that kind of makes sense, but he also has beef with Donald Trump.
Trump has responded, how has he responded?
Trump has responded by insulting him back, you know, on the campaign trail, and it's it's not that surprising because Trump, like Biden, also wants to win over these autoworkers, right, they're they're they're.
But I don't think that Musk really works in alliances. I think he works in enemies, and I think that the you know, deciding that Biden the Democrats are enemies is more important to him than deciding which Republican he wants to align with and support, because he needs all of them right now, like he needs the state based politicians for launching, launching his rockets, selling his cars. You know, all of those regulations around car sales are very state oriented.
So what's what's the benefit to him of making any any like choices.
He's got a lot of to Sarah's point, business interest in Florida, Right, I mean, let's start back at the beginning, right. Didn't this whole this election cycle start for him with the with the Ron DeSantis X launch that went oddly? Max?
Yeah, yeah, he Uh, Ron DeSantis launched his presidential candidacy on X. Elon had actually praised DeSantis before. I think I believe he in fact said he was, you know, inclined to support DeSantis in twenty twenty four. Then Elon sort of shifted to the vek Ramaswami as as Dana is saying, and he's at times expressed, uh, you know, a little maybe a little curiosity about RFK, who's you know,
was running as a Democrat. He hosted him on a yeah yeah, now running as he yes, he hosted him on x uh and and RFK of course now running as an independent.
And I think in all these.
Candidates you can see why there's appeal to for somebody like Elon Musk.
Now, Dana tell us how historically involved has he been as a donor and activist. Does he punk down a lot of money in these elections?
Traditional?
Not at all.
I mean that's the big thing. Musk is a loud voice, but he is not a big donor. He doesn't have a pack that we know of. He's always like donated very small to both sides of the aisle, but never been a big player in presidential campaigns. He's not like a budler. I mean, there are a lot of big money donors on both sides, you know, who typically give a lot to presidential campaigns, and Musk has never been that way. So That's what's sort of curious to me
as we head into twenty twenty four. What does an endorsement from Musk even mean? Does he give you money or does he just sort of like platform you on his platt Well.
Right, but Sarah, so he that is a pretty big platform, right.
Well, this will be this will be the first election where he owns X. There was obviously the midterms where he put his finger on the scale saying, don't vote for Democrats, vote for Republicans. And this presidential election is going to have obviously much bigger consequences, and he can really shape the narrative however he wants. He's shown us
that that he will promote his own tweets. He will, you know, decide what content stays and goes, decide when to ban people and how to ban them if at all, and keep them keep them posting. So, even though X has declined in advertiser revenue in some of its cloud, it still has this this outsized impact on the political
conversation because it is the real time network. And so if he if he is open about who he's supporting, you can imagine that we'd want to know a little bit more about how X is treating that decision, if at all, in its algorithm, in its moderation choices, in its advertising choices, it could have a big impact.
I just to push back a little bit on what Sarah was saying, Like, I think there's always been real questions about how influential Twitter is actually has actually been on the political pop process it had. It definitely gets things in front of journalists. So insofar as there are journalists still on X, which they are to some extent but not as much as they used to be, there's
potential for influence there. But just you know, counterpoint is the vik Ramaswami did really well on X. He was embraced by Musk, platform by Musks, and he has gone absolutely nowhere in the Republican president Like he's you know, he's at like something like five percent in you know, polls in Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire. So I don't know how big the impact really is going to be.
You don't just have to think about what he does, but what he chooses to not do. I think about like what Twitter did after the January sixth insurrection. They banned Trump, they started fact checking people, They sort of tamped down the radicalization that was happening, not entirely, but enough alongside Meta there was like this united front by the platforms that they that they needed to do. You know, frankly, too little, too late, but I think as a lot
of people thought of it that way. But I think that that shows, you know, if you have a platform with fewer rules around political speech. As Musk says, he cares deeply about how quickly are people going to radicalize in a situation where they disagree with the outcome?
All right, we do indeed need to talk sports, so we'll we'll segue to there. Okay, welcome back. So, as we've talked about in the past, advertisers have been fleeing X in drobes. This topic came up in the deal Book interview and it was the most explosive moment by far.
If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmailing with money, go for yourself, but go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is? Hey, Bob sharing the audience.
Okay, Sarah. So that's the landscape out there right now. That's the tone right now between Elon Musk and X versus or Visa VI its corporate clients, but one, curiously one remains and remains pretty close to X and that is the National Football League the NFL.
Why there's a lot of history there. Twitter had a CFO who was the former CFO of the NFL, Anthony Noto, and back around the twenty sixteen twenty seventeen era, he created a lot of deals, including a deal Forday Night football to be streamed on X Sorry Twitter, which is what it was called back then.
And it trained you too well, Sarah, you know it's actually I know, I.
Just spent too much time covering this company, But that was that was a big deal because Twitter has a much smaller audience, but at the time it was considered the only place where those kind of real time conversations occur. If somebody has an amazing touchdown or if somebody gets injured, you are going to see people just posting about it, even you know, out of context, assuming that everyone else on Twitter that they follow or that there is in
their community is also watching the game. And that made sports more fun, and it made it something that was like, you know, the shared experience. Even if you weren't watching the game with friends, you could feel like that that you know, excitement.
And that community remains that community.
It doesn't have anywhere to go. I mean, I think it's kind of a default. You're on Twitter because like that's where your people are. I will say I've seen the NFL start to embrace other platforms more they are they're you know, not really finding It doesn't seem like they're finding an alternative either. They have to be on X and there's not many brands that that can say that they have to be there.
Still.
Now, the NFL is the most dominant sports league in this country, and frankly, in terms of all entertainment, it pretty much dominates the US landscape. You look at the top eight most watch shows all of last year, one through eight are all NFL football games. You look at the top twenty most valuable sports franchises in the US fifteen of the twenty. Does this relationship with the NFL at a time when so much is going wrong for X Sarah? Is it actually a road to financial viability?
Is it something is it a model that can work off of or is it ultimately still just too small and in scale to add up?
Well, I think it's a legacy thing. I don't think it's something that they're building. That's just the default behavior from the years of work that Twitter did before. And in fact, what we are seeing is the algorithm is changing on Twitter to be more about entertainment less about real time, and we've seen Musk embrace memes and posts that are maybe a little older, posts from people you
may not be following. And so it doesn't seem to me like Twitter being the place where you go to see what's happening in the moment is really the thing anymore. You know, see what he has done with news links, He's down ranked them. I think that is that used to be the soul and heartbeat of Twitter. If it's still got that, it's because nobody else has figured it out.
So that point that tweak to the to the algo seems very important. Right if in the past, you know, indeed, you wanted to know which wide receiver to start in your fantasy league, and so tweets on who was injured and who was going to play were enormously important. You
needed that information immediately. If that's being downplayed to as as the app becomes more of an entertainment, so that does indeed seem like a problem, especially Max at a time when gambling is exploding the US And I was at a game earlier this year and the guys behind me had made we're making all these in game bets, right, and so like you need that real time information, right.
Yeah, absolutely, I'm like what Sarah is saying is is right. I mean, it's the platform. It's not as useful for sports as it used to be. Like I use it all the time to like look, no, not to gamble, but to look at, you know, who's starting in the NFL, to look at soccer transfer news to figure out if the Mets, which scrub you know, Pitcher, the Mets.
Are going to sign bring next that's up here. And you have to kind of work at it, you know, because because.
Like because of the tweaks to the algo.
Yeah, because of the tweaks the algo. But you can do it.
And and the sports influencers, as Sarah's saying, they haven't left, They're still there. And the thing about sports that is really good for Twitter.
Sports is just.
Like an avalanche of developments of ups and downs and funny stuff you want to react to.
So it's sort of perfect for that. And and I.
Think the gambling thing actually is a huge gift to Elon Musk because of course they're having huge problems with all these brand advertisers. We've seen some announcements about efforts to you know, go after small businesses. I mean sports, gambling websites. There's a lot of money there. Those are companies like he wants X to be the everything app. Right, He's gonna ask for your credit card information and he wants you to do payments. So if you can gamble on X, that would be perfect for you.
Yeah, totally.
And so it definitely seems like this is something they can work, they can build on. I also don't think it's something that's gonna go away anytime soon for all the reasons Sarah is saying, like there isn't another REDS isn't better for this.
I have a question about advertising on X. What's the NBA doing Because the NBA is so player driven versus owner driven. You have really big names like Lebron James who used to have huge followings, like is he still on X? And is the NBA doing anything around their advertising or are they still on it as well? Because if we're talking about sort of cultural war politics, the NFL and the NBA are just very different, and I'm just sort of curious about that.
I haven't seen any recent statements from them, but I will say that I thought it was really funny when Musk started this kind of premium verification product that you wanted people to buy that actually didn't have anything to do with whether you were who you say you are.
He doled it out to some celebrities who were kind of surprised by it and confused about why they got blue checks without paying, sort of to create the impression that theseelebrities, we're paying, and that it was a cool hit product that you needed to buy.
Sarah last thing before we move on here, Ex's CEO Linda Yakarino. She keeps xing about tweeting, xing posting. I guess musk stead post is the word he wants us to use. Keeps posting about the NFL football, But she she's doing so in a sort of odd way. She'll just post right like football heart right, Like what what do we make of the Linda Yakarino football tweets posts? I should say, oh, to.
Get inside her head. I mean, I think that that she is in a tough position, right now because she needs to create the impression that Twitter is a place where advertisers want to put their money and the are
excited about hanging out and building their communities. And at the same time, she is dealing with an owner and CTO who is doing everything in his power to alienate some advertisers, including telling some of them at the deal Book conference to go f themselves, and you know, specifically calling out Bob Eiger, who is the CEO of Disney, which was a very major advertiser for Twitter for a long time. So yeah, she's got to take what she can get.
We've got to talk cyber Truck again. The launch was last week. We spent the fair amount of time talking about it last weekend and they launched two days later. I'm gonna go around the room here and i want everyone to hit me with one thought they had. We'll start with our Tesla expert Dana Hall.
Why was Elon standing in the dark on stage? It was a very very weird, underwhelming short presentation.
Okay, and do we have a theory Dan as to why he was standing in the dark on stage?
To be fair, I have not been invited to a Tesla event in a while. But I have been to them in the past and they were like showstoppers. They were like these very highly orchestrated LA high production value, incredible events like the Model three launch, the semi truck launch.
They were awesome.
And then watching this on the live stream, I'm like, Okay, this is very underwhelming. The big thing people want to know are price and range. Elon must did not talk about either during his twenty minute presentation. It was all it was like showing video clips of performance, but nothing about the key.
Maybe because the price is maybe because the price is higher than they had indicated would be and the.
Range is louder.
There were yeah, right, so those are probably too all right, Sarah Fryar.
I mean, this thing just doesn't seem that safe, Like maybe for the driver, but if you're on the road and the cyber truck's coming at you, I just wouldn't want to be.
I don't know.
So I'm like, as I look at that thing, the epiphany I had over the weekend. This thing is all stainless steel and it's built like a missile. Now, I mean, it's gonna be it's gonna be pretty dangerous.
I mean, our former colleague Sean Okaine had a great point, this is like ev for Doomers. I mean, they made this kind of feeling during the whole presentation that this is a vehicle that you can drive on Mars or other planets. This is the vehicle for escaping the apocalypse. It's like, you know, when when everything goes to hell in a hand basket, this is the vehicle that you want to be in.
But what in your car turns into the weapon that will smash the zombies out of your way?
Right?
Yeah, that was definitely the vibe.
That's but that's like not good for reality. That's there are you know, kids playing on the street and stuff.
So I'm Sarah, you and I are aligned here, so Max, that leaves you.
So I was just gonna say, like, I am very conflicted on this because like I'm a cyclist and a runner and on the other hand, like a truck that smashes zombies like it doesn't I see the appeal. And but anyway, the thing that the thing that I was surprised by, which is actually related to this, is that this truck is not going to be legal street legal in Europe because European regulators, for safety reasons require trucks to have rounded.
Edges like totally and so like they can't.
You can't even sell this thing in Europe, which I hate to say, it kind of increases the appeal for me.
Uh you know.
But the other thing that I find just head scratching is the steering.
Thing Like a rede a review top there's a top Gear review of the of the truck. It's largely positive, but it really doesn't like the steering. This drive by wire system where you can't turn the wheel. You know, you're you're turning the wheel sort of very small distances to get it to to to turn and which is a feature in high end sports cars, but which the top Gear testers said.
Was weird, especially at slow speeds.
So they're out there, people are driving them, are dan Is that correct? Yeah?
I mean Tesla turned over what like twelve of them to the first customers last Thursday night. You know, we'll see in January how many they actually deliver in December. But yeah, people have them. You know, some automotive journalists got early access to them, some influencers were able to
drive them. The other thing that's really interesting is there's this whole product called the Range Extender which you can buy for sixteen thousand dollars that will add vehicle range to the battery, But they didn't talk about that during
the presentation either. And that's like a big thing for a company that's kind of known for making the best range batteries in the business to come out with a product that, you know, if you really want the range that was promised four years ago, you've got to buy this sixteen thousand dollars like thing that gets it gets embedded into the back of your cab. People are bummed out about that.
It seems on Tesla like so all right, well, we'll see, we'll see how this cyber truck dot. Thanks for listening to Elon, Inc. And thanks to our panel Sarah Dana Max.
Great to be here, see you next week.
Thanks for having us.
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Naomi Shaven and Rayhan Harmanci are our senior editors. The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan Blake Maple's Handles Engineering, and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott. Our supervising producers Magnus Henrickson. Thanks a bunch of BusinessWeek editor Joel Weber. The Elon Inc. Theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugijira. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast and our executive producer. I am
David Papadopolis. If you have a minute, wait and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us.
See you next week.
The Stop staff