Citizen Elon, Episode 2: Doomscaping

I distinctly remember it being a Saturday night in November of twenty twenty two, and I was around some friends and we were having some wine and stuff, and I look at Twitter. Elon tweets something like that out and I knew right away what was actually happening.

This is Katie Harbeth. For a decade, she worked at Facebook. Her job there was public Policy director for Global Elections, which means she understands the dilemma that Twitter, YouTube, every other social media site faced on January sixth. It also means she was at Facebook when they banned Donald Trump. Facebook had removed Trump's post before, like when he claimed that COVID was quote less lethal than the flu, but

The Trump account was back by the next Sunday afternoon.

Facebook, on the other hand, was so anxious about what to do with Trump they took their decision to an oversight board. Elon, he just tweeted it.

For me.

It was just like it was another indication of just, frankly, how reckless he is around this and the naivete that I felt like he had around trust and safety and content moderation and what it means to actually have a healthy town square.

Elon kept going. He didn't just bring back Trump's Twitter. He brought back a live streamer who goes by Baked Alaska, who'd been banned for anti semitism, Kanye West also anti semitism, Nick Fuentes, who, among a litany of other things, was being anti Semitic.

I think Elon has this ethos like I can just do better, Like this isn't that hard, Like you know, I can figure this out.

When he bought Twitter, when he announced he was going to take Twitter and make it a free speech platform. What did you think when you when you.

Heard that.

That he doesn't know what the heck he's getting into and what that actually means.

I'm Max Chafkin. This is Citizen Elon. On episode one, we looked at what radicalized Elon Musk and led him to buy Twitter today, why that matters, and how it's affecting the election. The early days of Twitter, which Elon later renamed x, were crazy. He tried to back out of the purchase, then a judge forced her to buy it. Then he took over. He immediately fired a huge chunk of the staff, which led to chaos and lawsuits. He

How and what he did to purchase Twitter is pretty astounding here.

Joan Donovan is a journalism professor at BU. We talked to her last episode.

He was able to bring about billions of dollars in loans that are now troubling major banks in order to overpay for something that he would never be able to recoup his losses on That's not smart for us. Twitter really represented the beating heart of centrist media. And the mainstream media in general.

In other words, this was not business as usual, and he kept making decisions that's the company's value plummeting. He started charging for the blue check which used to mean you were verified like you are who you say you are. The only people who had them were journalists, politicians and celebrities. Now you can just buy one, which whatever, right it seemed to lead us in the first place. But the difference between say, Joe Biden and someone who says he's Joe Biden, it really does matter.

And so you saw this massive exodus of high value users along with also the advertisers. Right at the beginning of his purchase, his attitude was, you know, goodbye. And then of course he brought back in all of the folks that had been removed previously.

Many of whom paid to be verified, paid for check marks. Suddenly, trending accounts had names like end Wokeness, hat Turn, and also accounts belong to far right influencers like Mike Cernovich

And go out by the way while I'm here and sign up now for truth Social It's hot is a pistol, and you stop left wing censorship and restore free speech in America.

This is from a rally in twenty twenty two, basically Trump saying he gets to wear the free speech crown. He's the guy bringing a public square back to the web.

I tell you what, Elon, Elon is not going to buy Twitter.

Nah.

He's a bullshit artist.

He's got himself a mess, but he's not gonna be buying it.

He'm not going to be buying it.

Sign up for truth. We love the Truth.

For almost a year after Elon lennonim back on Twitter, Trump's account was silent, but then August twenty fifth, twenty twenty three, Trump makes his comeback. It's a photo of his mugshot. Elon knows Trump tweeting again is very good for business. He retweets it. Quote next level.

You recently met with Donald Trump in Florida. What did you guys talk about?

I was at a I was not done.

I was at a breakfast at a friend's place and Donald Trump came by.

That's it.

Eight months later, Elon interviewed by Don Lemon.

So you didn't go there to meet him?

No, I went to a friend of mine's house and said, Donald Trump's coming by for breakfast?

Is that.

Just so you know?

Like?

Okay? Fine? By the way, at this point, Trump was way behind Biden in the money race. She Elon had plenty of Now Trump needed Elon too. Here's the thing. Elon may be rich, but he's also cheap. And nobody in Washington was expecting him to give money to anyone really.

And that's what really matters to Republicans in Washington.

Josh Green, my colleague at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, he covers politics.

If you're a big capitalist, are you willing to stroke a big check to Republicans? And Elon never was. Elon Musk talks a big game, but he's never going to stroke a check, and therefore nobody really cared about him.

Good afternoon.

Then everything changed.

Last night I spoke with Donald Trump. I'm so surely grateful that he's doing well and recovering an assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation. Everything.

Elon experienced the attempt on Donald Trump's life pretty much like the rest of us. Online, he saw the photos on social media Trump at the rally, Trump bleeding, or Trump's fist in the air shouting fight, fight fight. Thirty minutes later, Elon tweets quote, I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery. Soon after, Elon announces he's creating his own super pack for Trump, meaning a great, big check just like that. Elon's a player in Washington, DC.

And you know Elon.

I love Elon MUNKK do we love him?

I love Elon.

Endorsed me at the end of the day, and I read I didn't even know this, he didn't even tell me about it. But he gives me forty five million dollars a month.

A month, not forty five million. Gives me forty five million a month.

And I talked to him just a little while ago to say I was coming here, how you doing? And he didn't even mention it. He didn't mention. I mean, other guys, they give you two dollars and you got to take them to lunch. You gotta wind up Diamond.

That's from a Trump rally in July. And if you think this feels like a departure from Nah, he's artist will buckle up to start Elon's tweets. They've gone from I fully endorse Trump to saying that there won't be in America if Trump loses, to saying that humanity will never reach the stars without having a president Donald Trump a second time. Then there was Elon's two hour live interview of Trump on.

X you have definitely got a fertile mind.

We can talk about.

Tuddles and rockets, so many things.

Then the ads paid for by Elon's pack.

Trump is the American badass, will stop this nonsense.

When Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, where the summer's assassination attempt happened, Elon went there too. He jumped up and down like a kid in a bouncy castle and then delivered this kind of halting speech with sentences like bye bye.

Bute and blood coming down the place.

Two days later, he offered actual payouts to anyone willing to refer potential voters in swing states. At first, he said he'd pay forty seven dollars because Trump would be the forty seven president. Then he up to two one hundred dollars. There was no good reason for that. It's just a bigger number. And then.

I have a surprise for you, which is that we are going to be awarding a million dollars to randomly to people who have signed signed the petition.

Every day.

From now until the election.

What Elon's doing here, it's probably illegal. The government bans vote buying, including by way of lottery, But for Elon, that's sort of the point.

You know. One of the challenges we're having is like, well, how do we get people to know about this petition? Because the legacy media is one to report on it, you know, not everyone's on X So So I figure, how do we get people to know about it? Well, this news, I think is going to really fly.

It's easy to see this as a gimmick or a marketing stunt, but by now the money that Elon is throwing around is starting to add up. Actually in every way, these two guys kind of hated each other before are now on the same team.

I mean, to me, the reason that I always thought that Elon and Trump would never get together, and to be clear, I was very wrong about this was that they're both these kind of alpha male narcissists who always want all the attention to be about them.

Josh Green again, it just didn't seem like it could happen, and yet it has.

I think the two of them kind of vibe off each other in the sense that they both feel persecuted by mainstream media and the popular culture. They're mad, They're not going to take it anymore. They're going to gleefully attack their enemies.

Suddenly, Elon, who just to remind you, world's riches man two hundred million Twitter followers, becomes one of the most important political actors, a guy who actually might swing an election.

You have donors that just want to give money, they care about a cause. They will cut the check.

Matt Askowski is a political marketer. He worked on the last two Trump campaigns.

They will give it to a group or a cause they support, and what happens to the money kind of becomes irrelevant to them because they supported the cause. I would say Elon looks to be on the opposite side of the spectrum where he's giving means, but he's also activist where he's actually involved with how the money is spent and it's being deployed.

What Matt's good at is using data, especially to reach people on the Internet. Elon is, of course on Matt's radar. His world runs on campaign contributions, specifically the big checks. As of the middle of October, Elon's given one hundred and thirty two million dollar, most of it to his America Pack. He's undeniably one of the biggest donors.

It seems like America Pack is largely focused on the political operation canvassing, door knocking, phone calls, phone baking, those types of things, GOOTV and turnout GOOTV.

That's get out the vote.

Usually the pack model is use soft dollars to raise a bunch of big checks to be able to buy media. It's we're gonna buy TV, We're gonna buy digitalized and buy mail and things like that.

But this is.

Almost like a quasi campaign.

Outside of the campaign, Elon micromanages. He's proud of it. So that's how he's running his pack. At the start, he hired a few hundred canvassers, folks who go door to door trying to convince regular people to vote for their candidate. Then something happened that annoyed Elon, so he fired a bunch of them. Then he brought on an entirely new team and fired a bunch of them too. Still it seems to be working. Matt says. Most canvassing operations take years to assemble, built one in just a

Elon get those rocket ships going because we want to reach Mars before the end of my term. We want to do it, and we want to have also great military protection in space because that's where it's going to be at.

Right now, the government's likely to spread the workout across a bunch of different defense contractors Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman. But Trump could decide to throw a bunch of business to SpaceX instead. Also, SpaceX has this side business it's called Starlink. Elon's long wanted the government to pay Starlink to provide internet to rural areas, to get subsidies that the government already has, but to direct them to him.

I will stop Chinese and other countries produced audible, bial and autonomous vehicles. Do you like autonomous? Does anybody like an autonomous vehicle.

Third, Trump could give Elon a job, and not just any job.

I mean, I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission that ensures that the taxpayer money, the taxpayers are harder money, is spent in a good way. And I'd be happy to help out on such a commission.

I'd love it.

Well, you you're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do.

You walk in during the Twitter spaces interview, and I'm the stump. Trump said Elon will be in charge of streamlining the government, which, among other things, means he'll be the one to decide which government programs get cut in which stay. I don't think Elon wants another job, but there are lots of federal agencies that are investigating him right now, and the simplest way to resist some of these investigations would probably just be to defund those agencies.

Fuck, dude, if you lose.

It does seem that way. You can't just be like like, yeah, I'm like, how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be well, I see my children.

I don't know, because it's not like you can say, well, yeah, I maxed out to him.

But you know, I get This is from an interview Elon did with Tucker Carlson in October. It made me think maybe Elon's got no choice now that he's back Trump. Maybe he's afraid that if Kamala Harris wins, she would have him punished. At the same time, skeptical for starters, nobody's talking about retribution or about Elon's rifle place in jail. I think maybe he's trying to distract folks from what Trump's actually saying and raise himself up as a Maga martyr.

His attitude was, you know, goodbye, and then of course he brought back in all of the folks that had been removed previously.

The thing is, just because Elon's era of Twitter is less successful in business to doesn't mean it's not still powerful or dangerous.

You know, we're not going to code it as a campaign contribution to Trump, but it certainly was. He understood, perhaps more than most, that communication tools are weapons of war, and he has now the largest psychological weapon that the world may have ever known. You can really change how an entire society sees itself.

Time and again, Twitter has proven to be a massively effective tool of communication and organization. Just because advertisers don't want any part of it, or because there are fewer people tweeting, doesn't mean it's not still happening. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

In my world. I have to do what I call doom scaping. I have to think about every possible outcome there is, including Musk pulling a Trump. This is the type of guy who if he starts to feel as if something has gone wrong. Imagine if he believes the twenty twenty four election is rigged, he could start a civil war. And you know, we're loading up the flame throwers. We're going mad Max style to the Capitol.

Since leaving Facebook, Katie Harbeth told me she's been a consultant basically advising tech companies on how to avoid accidentally promoting disinformation or political violence.

One of the scenarios that we've been thinking through is like, you know what if somebody has this video part AI generated of something nefarious is happening at a polling place, whether it's around the counting of votes or something like that.

One example, at the last presidential debate, Trump made a debunked claim about Haitians eating people's pets, and just before the debate, Elon had tweeted out the same thing to his two hundred million followers.

We saw the Haitian immigrants eating dogs in Ohio. It doesn't take very long for that to get amplified by others. The thing I am most worried about, and I think is most important, is us protecting trust in the actual process of conducting elections and people trusting that their vote counted and that those votes were counted fairly, even if they disagree with the outcome.

This isn't some theoretical issue. It's a thing that's already happened, that is happening now in some of the most closely contested precincts in America. Neil mckijah chairs the Board of Elections in Montgomery County in Pennsylvania. It's not far from Philadelphia, Neil says, the most important message he wants out there the thing he wishes more people understood and believed.

People don't realize how safe, how secure our elections actually are, but.

The amount of miss and disinformation it's hard to keep up with. Back in twenty twenty one, right after the attacks on the capital, the local Democratic Party committee received a letter from somebody complaining the election had been stolen. The letter made it clear something bad was going to happen. Then two weeks later, three shots were fired through a window at the party's office just across the street from where Neil works today.

Thankfully no one was in the office when the shots were fired into it, but it showed us that disinformation can lead to violence. You may have clear moments like that, you know, essentially a redocs of January sixth, where people tried to disrupt the process, and that could be at the polling places, it could be at the transition of power. I think.

Neil seemed nervous throughout our call. That popping sound in the background it was him clicking his pen over and over, faster and faster.

I think people who perpetuated the lies certainly bear responsibility if they should have known better, and I think certainly Elon Musk should know better.

As you try to do your job, what are you most worried about?

You're so yeah, you're asking these great question. So I'm just kidding.

Tell me why I made you Why you laughed there.

Because I'm like, you're just like, if I thought about what I'm worried about all day, I would not be able.

To do this job.

Neil's one of the most polished people I spoke with for this show, which makes sense. His job is to instill calm, to remind folks that voting is safe. What that also means is he's got the most to lose. It's easy in the heat of a campaign to miss the forest for the trees. But of course, none of this ends on November fifth. If anything, November fifth is