Kiota.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast.
Presented by the New Zealand Herald.
Billionaire Elon Musk is not content with just having the ear of US President elect Donald Trump. Over the past few weeks, the world's richest man has weighed in on European politics, first writing an op ed backing Germany's far Ride AfD party, But the UK has become a particular obsession, with Mask frequently commenting on his social media platform x about child grooming and rape gangs, laying the blame squarely at the feet of the six month old labor government.
So why is the tech mogul so interested in politics overseas?
And how are the US's.
European allies meant to respond when Mask is firmly in Trump's inner circle. Today on the Front Page, CNN's senior political correspondent, Stephen Collinson joins us from Washington, DC to discuss the thinking behind Mask's political commentary. First off, Stephen, can you remind us of what Elon Musk's role is going to be with the incoming Trump administration?
Well, officially, Musk is going to be the co head of a new agency within the government a de facto agency called the Department of Government Efficiency. This is a body which Trump says will come up with recommendations to slash wasteful government spending and regulations. In fact, many of the regulations potentially that Elon Musk's companies benefit from or
are constrained by. So that's one of the issues here, one of the reasons why a lot of people fear that his presence in the center of the government will create huge conflicts of interest. But Musk has a finger and a lot of pies around the world, not just as the head of Tesla and SpaceX, which has billions of dollars of contracts from.
The US government.
He has businesses in many countries, business interests, for example, in countries like China that could see clashes with American foreign policy. So we've never in the modern era had someone like this, the world's richest man, so intimately entwined with an administration. So this is a really unprecedented moment, I.
Think, And can you give us a bit of an overview of some of the ways Mask has intervened in European politics in recent weeks.
Certainly the most recent one that has caused A great deal of controversy is his intervening in the issue of a grooming scandal in the United Kingdom. The current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, used to be the Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK and he was in charge at one point about a decade ago, of investigating some of these
abuses young women in the North of England. Musk has resuscitated all the controversy around that, and he's accusing Keir Starmer falsely in fact, of doing nothing to prosecute these abuses. So that has caused a huge issue in British politics. He was also using his social media network x in the eyes of the British government, incites racial hatred. That's another issue that has really rocked British politics. But Musk has also intervened in the German election which will take
place next month. He is backing the AfD, the Alternative for Germany party, which is a far right wing anti immigrant party. I think you could argue that there's been a resurgence of populism in Europe in recent months, and there are parties in France and Germany and the United Kingdom that Trump would far rather deal with than the incumbent governments. So I think we're going to see a lot of nervousness and a lot of resentment in Europe if must continue this behavior when Trump is present.
Those that are spreading lies and in misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they're not interested in victims, They're interested in themselves. But I enjoy the cut and thrust of politics, the robust debate that we must have, but that's got to be based on facts and truth, not on lies, not on those who are so desperate for attention that they're prepared to debase themselves and their country.
How have Europeans it has responded to Musk's commentary well.
The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who I mentioned, was compelled to make a statement. He said that Musk had crossed the line after he said that the British prime minister responsible for safeguarding children should be jailed. French President Emmanuel Macron is accusing Musk of backing a knew what he called international reactionary movement, talking about those parties on
the right. The German government has already criticized Musk for what they say is interference in their affairs with his backing for the AfD and in Norway the prime minister there.
So it was worrying that Musk had so much.
Power and then he had the capacity to intervene in the affairs of other countries. So I think there is resentment and it's not just Musk saying things on x He has a great deal of money. He for example, put down more than one hundred million dollars of his own money to back Trump in the election in November. Trump used some of that money to create turnout efforts
in the key state of Pennsylvania. There's a lot of speculation about whether Musk will use his money to back parties in Europe, for example, the Reform Party of Nigel Farage in the UK, the.
Father of Brexit.
There was a lot of speculation that Musk could send millions of dollars to the Reform Party and Opposition Party in the UK, although that seems to have still because Farage seems to have fallen out with Musk because he didn't share the Tesla Pioneer's views about a British guy called Tommy Robinson who's actually in jail and is accused
by the government of inciting violence. So Musk's money, I think is going to be a real player in some of these elections if he decides to do more than just speak out on X and giving.
Musk is going to be working with the incoming government the US. Does it make it difficult to kind of differentiate his reckons online versus actual US foreign policy.
I think that's going to be a question.
And the thing that foreign leaders have to ask is is this Musk just muck raking trying to stir up trouble just so you liked doing it, or is it being done on behalf of the president of the United States. And that brings them to another question. They have to work out how to respond to Musk and push back if they want to without alienating future President Donald Trump.
A lot of European Asian governments has spent a lot of time in the last six months or so trying to get close to Trump, trying to penetrate his inner circle in the belief that he could well. As happened when the election, some of those efforts are now in doubt. Starma, for example, had dinner with Trump before the election and believe that he had made strides in getting a good relationship with the present elect that could be in jeopardy
if Trump sees Starma criticizing Elon Musk. So I think it's going to be a very complex issue for some of these governments to work out whether Musk is really pushing official American policy or whether he's just pushing policies that favor his mirial of business interests.
Well, there was a battle amongst Magas circles over the holidays, with Musk and fellow DOGE boss Vivek Ramaswami clashing with other Republicans over.
Visas for skilled workers. Trump seemed to side with the tech bros on this one.
But what do you think this saga suggests about the next four years.
I think this is a this is.
A fascinating argument, and I think it's one that tells us that some things in Trump's second term could be different from his first term. The issue was over H one B visas, which allow tech companies to bring highly qualified engineers and software experts and programmers into the United States to work, and they're used a great deal in Silicon Valley companies. The traditional Trump based people like Steve Bannon, Trump's former populist political guru, are against these visas. Much
of the Trump bases anti immigration. People like Bannons say that the visas allow US firms to undercut wages that they should be paying to American workers. Musk and a lot of the leading Silicon Valley executives argue that in order for America's software and tech industry sustay competitive with countries like China, you have to be able to import the best talent wherever they're from. Must says that he himself as an example of this. Of course, he was
born in South Africa. So this is a fault line between the two wings of the new Trump coalition, the existing magabase and the new, as you call it, the tech bro Maga constituency. I think we're going to see classes again and again on this fault line in the next administration. And it's particularly interesting because during his first term,
Donald Trump rarely got crossways with his political base. He's not a politician that builds up political capital and spends it in a lot of different situations, especially on the issue of immigration, but also on gun control and other issues. Trump backed down in things he was going to do
because they were unpopular with his base. So we get to a point now when we're asking will he side with his traditional supporters, his nationalist, populist heartland supporters, or will he go with these people in the new coalition, people like Elon Musk, And I think that's going to be a source of constant tension in the months ahead.
The new one is president Trump proceeded the presidency Musk. No, No, that's that happening.
But Elon has done an amazing job.
Isn't it nice to have smart.
People that we could rely on.
No, he's not going to be president. That I can't tell you, and I'm safe. You know why he can't be.
He wasn't born in this country.
Ah, do you think Musk will eventually become a thorn in Trump's side?
So a lot of people spend a lot of time since Musk became this ubiquitous companion of the present elect, predicting that sooner or later they would fall out. Generally, people that come into Trump's in the circle always end up falling out with the present elect.
He often looks for culprits when they go wrong.
He believes that he should get all the headlines and the adulation, and Musk is a competing star in the Trump orbit. Right now, he's getting far more headlines than the present elect himself. So a lot of people think it's a matter of time before they clash. I believe that there are many reasons why, even if the relationship cools somewhat, it is in both the interests of Trump and Musk to make sure that it stays in good standing at least for the next couple of years. Musk
is going to be in a very advantageous position. He's going to be able to reshape the US regulatory regime that in a way that could help his companies. It wouldn't be at all surprising if he gets billions more in contracts. He's basically at this point running much of the US space program, the push to return to the Moon and Mars, so he doesn't want to take any steps that I think alienate him from the next President Trump.
When you look at Trump, Musk doesn't seem like the kind of enemy that the president elect really would like to have to deal with. He's hugely powerful, not just because of his business interests, but he tweets or I don't know what you call it, X is now on X plentiful times a day.
He could turn.
Out to be a real theign in his side, as you suggest, if they fall out and Republicans they've got their eyes on Musk's money. They want to use Musk's wealth in the midterm elections in November twenty twenty six, elections that could, if history tells us anything, be quite tough for the incumbent Republican Party. So there are many reasons why Musk and Trump have incentives not to fall out with one another.
How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted six point five trillion.
Dollar horse five? Well, I think we can do at least two trillion.
Yeah.
I mean, at the end of the day, you're being taxed, your money is being wasted, and.
The Apartment of Government demasiency is going.
To fix that. America's not not It's just going to be great. America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before.
The future is gonna be amazing.
You've written, they, as in Trump and Mask, are demonstrating a belief that their strength allows them to bully smaller countries and may auger a new and brasher incarnation of America. First, now, this line struck me because, of course New Zealand is a smaller country.
Do you think it's only a matter of.
Time before the focus perhaps shifts from Europe to say, the Pacific.
That's a good question.
I think for now the major focus is the Western Hemisphere.
For Trump.
He is threatening twenty five percent taris on Canada, he is threatening to take back the Panama Canal by force, looking at Transatlantic securities, talking about trying to buy Greenland again. I think we're also very likely to see tariff threats against the European Union as soon as Trump gets back into office. I think New Zealand would have the bad luck to get to get Trump's I if somebody in
Trump's in a circle mentioned something about New Zealand. Often Trump's resentments and anger towards foreign countries is stirred by someone he meets. So perhaps it would be smart of the New Zealand government to take care not to do anything that catches Trump's eye and hope, as many other governments will, that the initial storm of the start of his new presidency will pass.
But Trump, generally when.
He sees people down at Mara Lago, he has a very wide circle of friends who bring him and there's a theory that one of his friends, for instance, might be a shipping magnet was complaining about the cost of shipping stuff through the Panama Canal, and that's what got Trump angry. But he does take a very transactional view of the world. I think he sees the world and he sees life really through a prism of who is
strong and who is weak. And he believes that he and the United States are strong and they have the right to push narrow national interests. And if he perceives at some point that United States interests are being compromised by New Zealand in some way, that would be I think when he turns is his attention to you guys. So hopefully for now at least, he's got other targets.
And what do you think Mask's end game is here?
Ultimately, what does he want to get out of being seen as this kind of power behind the throne.
It's a good question, and he's not really spoken about this. I think that he clearly seems to enjoy being part of the spotlight. He's been around trumpet Mara Lago for much of the time since Trump's election victory. I expect we'll see him play a prominent role in the inauguration. He has been in meetings with Trump with world leaders, taking part in phone calls, for example, with President Zelanski.
So he clearly has a lot of you know, he doesn't need any more money.
He's already the richest man in the world, but he seems to very much enjoy wielding the influence that he gets by proximity to the most powerful man in the world.
What he will do.
Afterwards, I mean, Trump can only be in office for four more years, for example, does it get to a point where Musk gets bored of politics, where he finds, for example, that the business of trying to cut trillions of dollars in the US budget is a very difficult business and one that's not that interesting. It's possible that he could get bored from politics and you know find you know, launching rockets and designing electric cars is a
much more interesting of his time. But I don't think we really know exactly what he wants, and that's one of the things we'll be watching and seeing how prominent a role he does take, not just in cutting the size of government, but in Trump's in a circle on whether he gets to wield even more power than he does already.
Thanks for joining us, Steven no Warris.
Thanks.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzedherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer.
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
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