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Oh, let me tell you we have a new star. A star is born. Eylan Now he is Now, he's an amazing guy.
Well, Jlon Muski is 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. I mean 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.
Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Anything he does is fascinating people.
Yeah, welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Wednesday, November sixth.
You are hearing a little snippet from Donald Trump's victory speech very early this morning, in which he thanked his main backer, who also happens to be the subject of this podcast. I'm Max Chafkin, sitting in for David Popadopolis and joining me from San Francisco, where I think she's been up for most of the early morning is Dana Hall. Hey. Dana Hey, you sound so energized, you sound.
Ready to ready to go. How late did you stay up? I stayed up.
Until after midnight and then went to bed when it seemed pretty clear that the race was called and the brute blue wall was crumbling. And then I just didn't really sleep very well and just woke up this morning and I'm still just kind of like processing mentally what this all means. I mean, we've been doing this podcast for a year, and when we started it, I think it was because we knew that Musk's you know, influence in business, technology and all the different industries that he's
disrupted was only growing more strong. I did not think a year ago that we would be sitting here, you know, right after a blowout election with Musk being a main player.
The Department of Government Efficiency was spinning up to start cutting vast swats of the federal bureaucracy, or at least that's what Donald Trump and Elon Musk have suggested. I mean, do you think it's fair to say that Elon won this election for Trump?
Like?
How much credit should we give him?
He was Trump's biggest financial backer, I'd say his most important media backer. Obviously a huge ally but like, what's your just like quick reaction to what this means for Elon or for Trump or for the country.
I mean, yes, I think that. Well, it's tricky. If it had been narrower, like if Trump had won Pennsylvania but lost in a lot of other states, then we could say that absolutely this was all Musk's influence, because
Musk really focused on Pennsylvania, but Trump gained everywhere. So you know, it's so it's hard to quantify what Musk's influence was, but there's no doubt that Musk kind of created a permission structure for people who maybe would never have looked at Donald Trump to look at him among Tesla owners and SpaceX fans and tech people and other CEOs and people like Jeff Bezos, and he sort of like opened the window to be like listen, like you know,
I'm I'm like all in on being mega. And he did so many things, going to the Butler rally, speaking at Madison Square Garden using X which he bought during the midterms in twenty twenty two, to like really you know, kind of ally with the Trump talking points, and so, you know, it's hard to quantify what the impact was, but it was enormous.
Yeah, I mean, I just think at the top line, it was just a huge win for a guy who obviously has had a lot of success in other domains but not in politics. And and you know, you just have to sort of appreciate how sort of brazen this was, and how how bold you know in a way that like I guess Elon Musk has has made his kind of signature. I mean, he he went in bigger for Donald Trump than I think anybody probably outside of like this podcast.
Would have expected.
He went harder to the right then I think almost anyone who's backed him or has you know, journalists who've covered him expected, and it looked very dangerous. And and now I mean he's he's sitting pretty you know how much influence he had, you put that aside.
He backed the right horse.
Oh yeah, and you look at Tesla stock today is like skyrocketing. And Musk was at mar A Lago last night. I mean, I think what surprised me was that, you know, you and I had been kind of like wargaming, like the scenarios, and yesterday it was this really funny day where Musk was supposed to have a town hall at noon that like came and went and there was like no sign of the town hall, and I was like, oh,
what's going on? And then all of a sudden, he's like doing the town hall from his plane as he's flying from you know, Texas where he voted to tomorrow Algo, And I mean you and I were listening to that together, Like he was sounding kind of cautious. He's like, well, like, I'm optimistic that will prevail in Pennsylvania if like men get out and vote, and like we're giving rides to the Amish to make sure that they have transportation to
the polls because they're not allowed to drive themselves. And I was like, Okay, this doesn't sound this doesn't sound so great. Like I felt like he was sort of spinning it as like not a potential loss, but like he wasn't. I don't know he was being caught. He was sort of being cautious.
For protecting confidence in any sense, right, it sounded he was dower elon there on the flight tomorrow a Lago.
I thought, Yeah, I felt like he was being like cautiously optimistic. And I think that this is the thing about that that Tesla fans will say, like don't bet against Elon, Like he will put all of his chips on the table. When he has like conviction, he will make a decision and stick to it and nothing will
sway him. And it might seem crazy from the outside, but like he has veiled in business and technology and capitalism and now basically being like an oligarch because he does have this like conviction that is kind of fearless in the in the business world, and it's like just
this fearlessness that he is right. And I think that you know, what I would like people who listen to this podcast to take away is that he bought Twitter and then he basically had a massive influence on the election, and the two go hand in hand obviously, And like we live in a very increasingly fractured media environment and you can't overstate the impact of Musk owning Twitter.
Yeah, I mean, the thing I was thinking of, there's so much to talk about, and I'm sure we will get to all of it, you know, on the coming episodes and in the next episode of Citizen Elon and probably for the next four years.
But like for me, you know, people have.
Been talking about the sort of money and politics. Basically my entire life, and I feel like this is the most It's like, this is like the most extreme version.
We have never seen anything like this.
You know, a lot of people during Trump's first presidency became much more powerful. You know, Jared Kushner became more powerful, Peter Tiel became more powerful.
Elon Musk before.
This was more powerful than any of those guys. And now you know, he's vaulted to a level of influence that I think you're right. I think we have to sort of think about it in the in the oligarch terms. He's both a state actor and a very very wealthy capitalist and that's something that you know, Trump is going to have to contend with, Democrats are going to have to contend with, and you know, citizens of the United States and the world will contend with over the next four years. Well.
And he's really like a trans national or trans state actor, Like he has incredible you know ties to China with Starlink operates in one hundred and over one hundred countries. He is, you know, getting lithium from from countries all over the world, and he has an enormous amount of power and leverage. And if you believe that Trump is transaction. I mean, it's very clear that the two of them
are going to work together. I mean this and I know we you know, people have joked about this whole Department of Government efficiency and the cost cutting, but I think it's very real. I mean, I think that Elon is gonna really reshape the federal government and he's going to have carte blanche to do so. The Republicans also won the Senate. It looks like they might hang onto the house like this is a guy who you know
is not shy about you know, walk. Yeah, I mean the way that he has fired or let go of people at his companies is could very be very similar to the to the kind of way that he approaches the federal government.
Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. And I think we need to.
It's really going to be more today a day, you know, less than twelve hours after the election was called. We're more just like starting to think about what questions are going to be asked. We don't know that much. I think the people who are on Trump's transition team don't know that much. Right this the this is this stuff is.
Beginning right now.
Dan during the that that Twitter spaces that X space is on the flight tomorrow.
Lago. So Elon Musk started the day in Texas.
He voted in South Texas where he has his little house, you know, where SpaceX's launch facility is. He got on the plane, he had this spaces They talked a lot about the election and how it was going. There was this moment I wanted to just put focus on for a minute when Elon Musk talked about the America Pack going forward.
Let's just listen to that tape.
So America Pack is is going to keep going to out the selection and pre preparing for the mid terms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the district attorney level and you know, basically a judicial sort of level, because I think something needs to be done to kind of counter the damage that Stars is done to the American system.
Dana we called this, I mean right, this is the America Pack is going to be a big political force going forward.
That's what I take away from this, Uh this clip.
Oh yeah, this this was not a one off. And when he's talking about Soros, he's he's obviously referring to George Soros, the financier who has funded several campaigns, including many progressive district attorneys and cities across the country, including the one in Philadelphia that tried to kind of stop the pack from giving the million dollar giveaways. So so I think that what Musk is basically saying is, look, money has always existed in politics. George Soros has funded
a lot of campaigns on the left. Musk sees himself as like a countervailing uh point to that, Like, and now he's it, He's in it. He's going to be he's going to be eyeing the midterms. He's going to be involved in local races. You know, I'm curious to see if any people who work at as current companies are now going to be dispatched to work at his pack.
I mean, he's he going to pick the best of the brightest and be like you do the data analysis on this on this precinct, Like, I mean, you know, working for Elon means that you have to be willing to kind of go wherever he wants you to go. And it's almost like he started a seventh company.
Absolutely, And you know it's on one hand, you might say, is he really going to spend you know, one hundred plus million dollars every two years on politics, which is kind of what you know, he's indicated he wants to be the anti Soros. This this, this comment here suggests to be a major donor. You might say, oh, like Elon Musk is not gonna want to throw away that much money. But you know, you look at the price of Tesla's stock this morning, and as we're recording, it's
up thirteen and a half percent. Roughly he has he has made his net worth has gone up by I don't know, somewhere between ten and fifteen billion dollars just in terms of his Tesla stock ownership as well. If you just look at this as like a pure return on investment, one hundred and eighty five million for fifteen billion, like, it looks pretty good.
Trump's win was a decisive victory. I mean, there's no split Like he won the popular vote, he won the electoral college. There's no race that's still being contested. It was a decisive win for Trump. He won across all demographic groups except for black women. And you know that's like, that's that's pretty striking, and that's that's that's something that I don't think, you know, any of the pundit class saw and and I think that this is also just a win for X, like because Musk is really going
to position X as the leading platform for news. Now. Granted, you know, we've written a lot here at Bloomberg about the disinformation on that platform, but it is a hugely influential platform, and it's like a win. It's just a huge win for Elon that the platform exists, that he was able to buy it, even though advertisers have left
and a lot of high value users have left. It is now going to be driving the conversation in Trump World, and it's almost kind of become what Truth's social never quite fully realized.
So, Dana, what do we think is actually going to happen, you know now? Like like, I mean, obviously Elon Musk, Donald Trump does not become present till early next year, you know, I assume Elon Musk doesn't start his job or it's not even clear if he has a job within the Trump White House yet. I mean, what are you going to be looking for over the next month or so to try to figure out what he's planning on doing and how his sort of promises are actually going to translate into I guess policy.
Yeah.
So at the when we were at Madison Square Garden together, I was kind of struck by the fact that Howard Lutnik, who is the chair of the Transition Team, introduced Musk as his DOGE co chair. So I think that Lutnik and Musk together are going to kind of chair this commission. It's not going to be a cabinet level thing, because Musk doesn't want to have to unwind his investments in all of his companies. But it's so it's not like
a center, it's not like a cabinet level. But I think they're going to co chair this thing, and they're going to take a look at the more than four hundred federal agencies and the overlap between them, and they're gonna cut I mean, they're talking about cutting two trillion from the budget. That is an enormous that is it. That is an enormous cut. So you know how that will work a practice, I don't really know. I'm sort of starting to think about which agencies might come under musks,
you know, might come under fire. I think that the Department of Education is one that Musk is going to look at pretty carefully. I think that he probably has some thoughts about Nitze and the securities in Exchange Commission and the FTC and the FCC and the Fish and Wildlife Service and the FAA. I mean, he's he's openly said that he thinks.
You're naming agencies that he has tangled with in the past, which is it's a long list to be fair, I mean, if you cut all those agencies that have had a beef with Musk, you you wouldn't have much of an executive branch.
I mean, I.
Think so so so I just two points and two things, like I am watching. One is like this stuff, especially the kinds of things you're talking about, like oh, cutting the Department of Education or cutting two trillion dollars from the federal budget, that's like going to be incredibly unpopular and also like difficult to ex if you even could do it. That's not to say like some of this
stuff couldn't happen. I mean, I think one thing we learned over this election is that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are really good at taking unpopular positions and finding a constituency and like if you have a passionate but small constituency for some position, they managed to transform that, you know, into a successful presidential campaign.
You know, we did an.
Episode of this podcast, I don't know eight months ago talking about how unpopular Elon Musk was with with with the electorate. And you can look at Donald Trump's polling numbers and they weren't super great going into this election. So so I think, you know, it's possible that the sort of marketing genius of these two men will turn things around.
But I think the thing that I am more focused on.
Is sort of the last part of what you said, Like, there are going to be questions about who should run the SEC, who should run the FTC, should those should those policies be more favorable to business to tech businesses, and in particular to one tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk, And I think we should expect Elon to exercise a real
influence there. He has already said, you know, he's already talked about trying to push Lena Khan, the chair of the FTC, out, I think there's an expectation he would definitely go after Gary Gensler, the head of the SEC. So so that I think that is kind of like the more immediate thing. And then you know, who knows I mean, this guy has tried crazy stuff in the past, stuff that that I think a lot of people didn't expect and and and that could certainly happen.
Yeah, I mean he's also called for the for the head of the FAA to resign. I mean, he's got you know, and I think what's I guess what concerns me as a citizen is that Muskin Trump hold grudges.
I mean, these are men who will never forget the snubs and the slights that they have endured throughout their careers when they were doubted and as you have have you know, spoken so eloquently on on citizen Elon, you know, the snub with Biden not inviting him to the EV summit like that, that kind of helped to kick off this whole thing. And so I just think that there's gonna be some retribution involved in terms of, you know, which agencies have been the biggest thorn in Elon's side
and back to the Department of Education. This is another kind of trove that we need to need to get into more. But if you look at food donated to Musk's pack, most of the money came from Musk himself and then other friends from Silicon Valley, like Sham Maguire, Doug Leone from Sequoia. Antonio Gracias also donated, but like Betsy Devas donated to the America Pack like she's the former Secretary of Education. So there's there's some very interesting
bedfellows happening. And I think it's going to take an enormous amount of journalism and investigative reporting to really figure out what's going on now.
And podcasting, and we will and will be there. We will be every Tuesday to catalog it and to interpret it.
You know, I think there are going to be tons of questions both for the businesses, for the stock market, and of course for the government in the in the weeks and months that follow.
Dana, thanks thanks for joining us. Hope you can get some sleep.
Always a pleasure.
I'll see you on Slack in five minutes. This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Maserakis is our editor and Rayhan Harmanci our senior editor. The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan Blake Maple's Handles Engineering and Emma Sanchez fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The Elani theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sigierra. Brendan Francis, Neonham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head.
Of pinwik Podcasts. A big thanks to our supporters Joel Webber and Bradstone. I'm Max Chafkin.
If you have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. We'll see you next week.