Elon Musk Making an Impact

to have been kicked off by Elon Musk. Now, Republicans got to be kind of clear eyed about Elon Musk, and it might just be like this is we're dancing with the one who brought us. Political parties are a function of a lot of things. They are a pro of the voters and what the voters want, but they

are also largely a product of what donors want. And there is no one person who has the potential to be a bigger force of Republican donor money than Elon Musk, literally the richest man in the world, whose net worth is estimated to be about four hundred and eighty six billion dollars. All Right, the guy has more money than we can fathom. He's got more money than George Soros. He's got more money than every This guy might have

more money than every big time Republican donor combined. And we've seen that he if he believes in something, he's willing to plunk down the cash. The guy bought Twitter for forty billion dollars because he was like, Hey, I think it's lame that this social media site censors people. We should have a more free exchange of ideas. So I'm going to plunk down forty billion greenbacks. I'm going to buy it. And he did. He actually did it.

It started as a joke and now it's real. So if he says something and now that he's sort of really thrown his support behind Donald Trump and has said stuff like I want to continue to be a major player in American electoral politics for Republicans, I want to be I mean, I want to be the George Soros

of the right. I mean that's what he said. He a comment like that was made at a rally at mar A Lago where someone the speaker at the question who is the George Soros of the right, and Elon Musk was there in the crowd and raised his hand like that that's what he wants to be. So a lot of this centers around H one B visas. Now, what is an H one B visa. Here's the US Department of Labor overview of the H one B program.

The H one B program applies to employers seeking to hire non immigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and nobility. Okay, so it's for fashion models and then workers in specialty occupations. A specialty occupation is one that requires the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of

at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. The intent of the H one B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the US workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States. And what we're seeing is Elon expressing the viewpoint that is common throughout Silicon Valley that they want

to bring in H one B immigrants as engineers. And Elon keeps saying on Twitter, you know, the rate limiting factor for Silicon Valley is the lack of skilled engineers. We should expand the H one B program. We should bring in more people from India wherever to help fill these engineering jobs. Now I'm a little skeptical of this.

It's weird how the Trump coalition which included sort of these elon enthusiasts on the one hand versus the elon enthusiasts over here, but also the Trump hardcore folks on immigration over there who have hated the H one B visa program for a long time, have thought it was over crowded with too many people that were bringing in, which which actually reduces slots and opportunities for American jobs.

The way Musk is framing the issue is basically as if there is an infinite pool of jobs out there and that we just don't have enough engineers and so we have to bring in more engineers from India. The reality, I think is not how he describes it, though clearly there are lots and lots of people in Silicon Valley in the last two years who got laid off from their jobs at these various big tech companies. I mean, maybe Musk is talking about in a boom time, you

need a lot more. But I think the characterization of the tech job market as basically we have this infinite supply or this infinite need, rather this infinite demand for qualified engineers that we must fill, And really I don't know that that's true. I think this is the thing if we're taking on as a major Republican influencer and donor someone like Elon Musk. Now, are there many things

good about Elon Musk? Sure, I'm encouraged that maybe he's going to be progressively more pro life and be willing to fund pro life things, and his stance on abortion seems to be sort of shifting in positive ways. But he is, at the end of the day, a CEO, and the interests of the CEO class versus the interest of the American worker are always going to be somewhat

in conflict. He seems to agree with Trump with sort of the Trump hardcore immigration base about Latin American immigration and the ways in which it is taking certain kinds of jobs away, But then he turns around for the industry that he's a part of, for the tech industry, he wants to import tons and tons of immigrants for

the sake of something he cares about. Now, are there differences between a legal expansion of a legal program of temporary workers versus the kinds of waves of people just literally walking across the border, presenting themselves with phony asylum claims, allowing those people to get into the country, you know, setting them up for a court date that they're never going to show up for. Okay, Yeah, obviously I think

the one is more harmful than the other. But at the same time, what's the motivation from corporate America to be in favor of immigrant of sort of unchecked immigration on both those fronts, both from you know, Mexican Latin American immigration coming across the border and or overstaying their visas, but also endless numbers of H one B visas. The motivator is a cheaper labor force. All right, nothing's new

under the sun. The interests of management versus the interests of labor are always going to be in conflict over how much you pay your labor. All right. Labor wants more pay, Management wants to pay labor less. The less management pays labor, the more profit, And the interests of management have always been what's the benefit to the shareholders, so that that is fundamentally just there that that that that interest on the part of management capital, if you will,

versus labor. That fight is kind of inherently sort of there within the structure of most American businesses, and what Musk is sort of now, is Musk wrong to point out that there are a lot of really talented engineers in India, be really cool if we could get some of them. Okay, no, he's not wrong. I'm sure there are a lot of really talented engineers in India. It would be really cool if we could get a lot

of them to work here in the United States. Is he wrong to point out, Hey, the American education systems not that good. We're not producing as many talented engineers, math science, whatever graduates as we should be. He's not wrong, He's not wrong to point that stuff out. But it's also you know, let's be real about the economics here. Probably don't have to pay an H one B visa holder as much as you pay a kid fresh out of Stanford or cal I mean, that's almost certainly true.

And you you know, or an H one B visa holder who's you know, thirty years old, who's you know, eight or nine years out of university. You certainly have to pay that person less than you have to pay a thirty year old who's eight or nine years out of you know, Stanford or cal or cal Tech. Definitely pay them less than that. And I guess that's the you know that that that's the problem with all this. You're bringing in more and more of these H one B visa holders. And it's also you know a couple

of things to understand about illegal immigration. Yes, a lot of it is the dramatic scenario of someone crossing the border unlawfully. I was talking with an immigration attorney who was telling me that, you know, all these anyone who's getting across the border unlawfully, they're paying the cartel, in some cases thousands and thousands of dollars to get them across. And there's a you know, the cartel is making money off of almost every single one of these people who's

making it across the border. So obviously that's a dramatic active illegal immigration. But about half of illegal immigrants are here or something around there, are here because they overstay their visas. And there is this fundamental problem. There is not an unlimited number of jobs bringing in immigrants is being supported by people in corporate America, not out of altruistic desires to lift up the benighted masses of the third world to give them the glorious opportunities of the

American dream. That's not the motivation for it. The motivation for it is we want to bring in cheap labor. Now, I'm not saying no immigration whatsoever, but I don't think unlimited expansion of legal immigration is necessarily the wisest and

most just thing to do. And we have to kind of take this historical perspective of how open the United States has been to immigration and how bizarrely generous we've been in letting people come here under illegal quasi illegal, initially legal but then overstaying their visas means we've been extraordinary, really generous in a way that I don't think the

dictates of justice require. And I think part of having an actual country that has an actual national character, that actually is trying to look out for the interests of its citizens, that the interests of our lawmakers should be different from the interests of our business tycoons, that no, actually we do need to look out for our own citizenry.

We have a certain obligation to our own citizenry first, for our America born and raised or naturalized American citizen workers, our American stand for grads, Harvard grads, Caltech grads, Berkeley grads, etc. Who are wanting to go into engineering, that we do need to have some kind of eye towards preserving them and their jobs and making sure that corporate America isn't going to just bypass them and leave them in the dust in favor of an unlimited you know, just numerically speaking,

relatively speaking, just a never ending supply of H one visa holders coming in from India or from China or from wherever. I don't know if China is quite qualified here. I know India is kind of the paradigmatic country for this program. And that's the thing with this Elon Musk alliance is it's going to be a double edged sword when we return. I want to talk about, Yes, it is a double edged sword with him, but like it or not, I think this is the dance partner the

GOP is going to have for quite some time. That's next on the John Jrwardy Show. One last note on immigration policy stuff as the Internet fueled by Elon Musk talking about This has been embroiled with debate over H one B visas, whether we should expand H one B visas, etc. I've heard some people do that that basically, any time a liberal sees a conservative say, hey, maybe we should constrain this aspect of American immigration policy, that aspect of

American immigration policy. Hey maybe we need better border security here. Hey maybe we don't need to further expand the H one B visa program, you immediately get hit with people saying.

for the rest of eternity. It doesn't mean that because I had some immigrant that from here on out going forward, no one who had some immigrant in their family tree is allowed to favor any kind of verse, is allowed ever again in the future, to favor of any kind of restriction on immigration, as if the fact of being, the fact of being born of immigrant stock means that you must be for the rest of your life an

advocate on behalf of all immigrants. I stand before you as a representative of all what are my different ethnic backgrounds. My dad is was half Irish and half Italian, and my mom was a big mix of a million different things, that therefore I must be an advocate for all of these different immigrant groups. No, because I am not any one of those different immigrants, especially for someone like me who I've got, you know again, Irish Italian. I think my mom's mom has like kind of had a lot

of Swedish. My mom's dad was like quote scotch Irish, which you know, I'm thirty seven years old. I still have no idea what quote scotch Irish means to all these people who say they are quote scotch Irish, as if there was just a big pool of Scottish people and Irish people who perfectly intermixed with each other to produce quote scotch Irish, I don't even know what it means anyway, regardless, No, I'm an American. I was born here, my parents were born here, my grandparents were born here.

You have to go back to my great grandparents generation to find someone who wasn't born here. And furthermore, even if even if my parents were immigrants, even if I was a naturalized American citizen who was not born here, I am now of this place and the interests of myself and and more importantly, my fellow citizens. There is a reasonable ordering of concern that a country and its citizenry are supposed to have for their fellow citizens before

they get to the needs of other people. Caring about this country and its economic benefit and its success and it's proper flourishing in virtue, in material success, in whatever, is a proper sort of ordering of our loves, a

proper ordering of our cares and concerns. To say that I have to be an immigrant advocate for the rest of my life, which means I guess maximal liberal openness towards any immigrant who wants to walk across the border with no concern about how that might impact existing citizens, our existing economy, our ability to handle such immigrants. You know, all of that. I have to just disregard that for the rest of my life. That's silly. It also makes

a mockery of the idea of assimilating. Okay, Yes, the American story is one in which immigration plays a massive part in the success stories of immigrants are beautiful and inspiring and noble things, but assimilation is a big part of that. Becoming an American is part of the American success story. It's not just coming here and staying as

whatever you were. The beauty of the American success story is coming here and becoming a proud American who integrates within their community and society and flourishes and preserves maybe some of the beautiful things of their cultural heritage whatever from the old Country, but becomes part of this societ. Like the classic ugly example of that not happening are Italian gangsters and mobsters, okay, who came here and.

I took a little Italian in college. I enjoy Americanized Italian food. I'd like to visit Italy someday. That's about it. Though. That's about it. I'm not an Italian. I am fundamentally an American. That's it. So don't give me this nonsense that, oh, you need to have the words of the words of

the Statue of Liberty. You can bring me your poor huddled masses you have to forever and ever because your great grandfather came here on a boat, that therefore you have to support every maximal liberal accommodationist let them all

in immigration policy. I just absolutely no, fundamentally no, I am not an advocate on behalf of all immigrants, nor do I need to be, And That doesn't mean I'm a heartless, unfeeling person who doesn't care about the ability of other people to come to American make a better life for them. So of course I want people to have that opportunity. It doesn't mean, though, that you have to have unlimited, unrestricted immigration. When we return Elon Musk

versus Mackenzie Scott, which direction will we go? That's next? On the John Girardi Show. For a long time, Republicans complained about two things within electoral politics. The one thing was we could never get young people to vote for Republicans, and the other was that we could never get billionaires to support Republicans, like mega ultra George Soros esque level billionaires. Yeah, we had the Koch brothers, but they were kind of

the exception rather than the rule. And Democrats have Democrats out fundraised Donald Trump all three of his elections. Well enter the twenty twenty four election, and what happened. Young men shifted massively in favor of Donald Trump. So it seems like gen Z voters are, if anything, far more conservative than you would expect. And there is a kind of conservatizing trend that seems to happen to every electorate every generation. I think marriage makes people inherently more conservative.

Marriage and having a job makes people inherently more conservative. So we have this generational shift, but also we get all of a sudden falling from the sky seemingly into Republican's lap is Elon Musk. Now, I think there are positives, as I've been talking about throughout the show, I think there's pluses and minuses to this alliance. And this is seemingly the alliance that's going to be for Republicans. Elon Musk has demonstrated he's going to be a massive player.

This little fight that we had about the Continuing Resolution to avoid a government shut down, now we had the week before Christmas. Who was the chief player in it? It was Elon Musk. It was Elon Musk going on Twitter saying, I think the Republicans supporting this continuing Resolution, this is terrible and this is a huge, massive bill. It's way too much money and we should stop it. And Mike Johnson had already gotten it all ready to go.

It was all laid out, fifteen hundred pages of left wing giveaways, and Musk more or less stopped it, replaced it with a much through his influence, A much smaller bill got passed. It just kind of keeps the government open. It doesn't give Trump everything you wanted. I think Trump wanted to completely kick the whole debt ceiling debate away from his presidency, which that's not happening. But you know, it was a much, much, much smaller bill. Musk is

here to stay. Clearly, he's clearly going to be this massive player in Republicans politics going forward. And you're going to see the left. Let me just prepare you for this. You're going to see the left crying about this like crazy and talking about dark money as Musk starts funding

more conservative leaning nonprofit groups. They've already been crying like this about Leonard Leel, the former head of the Federalist Society, who's sort of overseeing billions of dollars for different conservative causes. They're going to start crying like this about Musk, and they're going to start calling it dark money, his dark money network of organizations designed to support conservative causes. And when Republicans do it, it's dark money. When liberals do the

same thing, I'll describe what this thing is. When liberals do it, it's a strategically giving to an interconnected series of nonprofits packs and five oh one C four's designed to help advance left wing causes in ways that are philanthropically sound. That's what George Soros has done. Let me describe,

let me describe this landscape. What George Soros did was he created this interlinked network of nonprofit organizations, so can advocate four against different kinds of legislation to a limited extent, but more so as advocating for against certain kinds of policies and ideas without restriction. It's a nonprofit, so donations to it are tax deductible and not publicly disclosed. You can deduct the money. So it's a nonprofit, it's not a tax organization, and donations to it are tax deductible.

Then he's got his five O one C fours five to one C fours that's right next to five on one C three in the tax code. Five to one C fours can do unlimited legislative advocacy. They can even do some direct candidate advocacy. So with legislative advocacy, that means you can use your five one C four to be the chief vehicle for advocating for, say a ballot initiative, because that's just legislation. Even though people vote on it, it's really fun. At the end of the day, it's

just legislation. So for ballot initiatives or for legislation that's being debated in state legislatures or in Congress, you have your five O one C four. Now five one C fours are not subject to tax donations. Two of five one C four, though, are not tax deductible. Then you've got packs. A pack a political action committee directly gives money to candidates and can directly support and oppose candidates with no restrictions. Okay, none of the restrictions of five

to one C four has on direct candidate advocacy. So that's sort of what George Soros set up. He would set up a lot of different issue focused five one C three He's five to one C four's and packs all kind of funded with his money, and they were all sort of interconnected, helping each other and advocating for liberal

policies in all these different ways. This guy on Twitter, John Lefevre, who's New York Times author, he wrote on Twitter about Mackenzie Scott that Mackenzie Scott is getting into this kind of space now slightly different strategies from George Soros, but this is how he describes it now. Mackenzie Scott, for those who don't know, is the ex wife of

Jeff Bezos. In the divorce, she got nineteen point seven million shares of Amazon stock worth thirty eight billion dollars, So immediately upon her divorce she becomes on her own one of the richest women in America and specifically California. And since the divorce, she's given away sixteen billion dollars to different nonprofits, but a lot of it are very politically oriented, political issue oriented nonprofits of five all one C three can do a lot of stuff that isn't

direct legislative advocacy. It can advocate, it can talk about issues, It can talk about legislation without advocating doing direct like lobbying to legislators. So she's giving to a lot of nonprofits that are having big public policy impact, but giving an attax deductible fashion. So she has given away she got. She had a fortune of thirty eight point three billion dollars.

After the divorce, she's given away sixteen billion. But because Amazon's stock has increased so much, she herself is still worth thirty six billion dollars. So just because of how much her leftover money from her Amazon shares, her Amazon shares have increased in value so much that she's still this multi billion, multi billionaire. So this guy, John Lefev writes on Twitter about her. He says her primary causes

are equity swing, racial division, and supporting illegal immigration. Now this is from his probably a bit biased opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, But I don't think he's that far off. Her method is trust based philanthropy, giving sixteen billion dollars in no strings attached grants to over twenty five hundred NGOs, non governmental organizations and nonprofits.

Her primary impact is feeding the NGO nonprofit complex, a jobs program for entitled liberals who think their overpriced degrees are worth framing, and they embrace fanatical ideaogies to assuage their guilt, make themselves fear superior and charitable, and mask their hypocrisy. Mackenzie Scott gives millions of dollars to groups with that state with stated missions like quote empowering lten X immigrants, quote deportation defense, and quote justice and equality

for LGBTQ immigrants. So liberals have crazy people like Mackenzie Scott on their side, giving and give and giving. She made a nuh I believe it was a nine figure donation to Planned Parenthood just by herself in one shot. That is how that's the level we're talking with her.

So when you start to read articles about Elon Musk giving to packs, giving to five to one C four's to five O one C three s, which inevitably I think you're going to start hearing, you're going to also be reading alongside how the troubling influence of tech billionaires to you know, influence American polity. Is this a good thing for America? That Elon Musk is the richest man

in the world, is having such an outsized impact? Please, Like, this isn't stuff that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and Mackenzie Scott and George Stores that they haven't already been doing this stuff. When those guys do it again, when those guys do it, it's all strategic philanthropic giving. Oh, there's a real inspiration too different for philanthropists to see the targeted ways in which they're trying to make a

difference for positive changes in the world. In the fields of immigration, equity, equality, LGBT rights, blah blah blah blah, and the media reports on it as if these are all, of course, completely on controversial things that of course every human being supports. But when Elon Musk puts his support behind a presidential candid, oh it's concerning. So we're gonna inevitably wind up dancing with the one who brought us.

My personal hope is if we can position Elon Musk to be something of a pro lifer, it could be the most significant thing to happen to the pro life

cause in a really long time. That is next on the John Girardi Show on Right to Life Radio, airs every Saturday morning at nine am, Jonathan Keller and our producer Colton and I we have this running joke called Elon Baby, Elon Baby, where basically we want Elon Musk somehow to notice us and give us money donate to Hey, God, why don't you donate to write the life of Central California. But I will say this about Elon Musk and this

outsized role he's clearly taken within Republican politics. Now he's driving debate right now about H one B visas He was the key player in this budget fight that we had the week before Christmas about you know, where are we going to pass a continuing resolution or an omnibus spending bill? What are we doing here? And here he is this outsized player. He's going to be head of

this Department of Government Efficiency organization. Musk is going to be a major player, seemingly in Republican politics going forward. He's going to donate to a lot of causes and previous big time Republican political financiers have always prioritized what have they always prioritized? Tax cuts, deregulation, anti labor union stuff. It was always And you look at all these different major conservative nonprofit conservative advocacy organizations, nonprofits, think tanks, political

donors for so many of them. Maybe they're pro life, but that's not like the big thing they really care about. At the end of the day, what they're really hoping to achieve is something that advances their business interests. They're not necessarily altruistic givers. They're looking out for their bottom line. I will say this about Musk, I think he's a bit of an altruistic giver, a bit of an altruistic spender.

Of his money. Now he has certain things that clearly he's advocating for that are going to be useful for him,

like this AH one b vis a thing. But let's not forget the guy bought Twitter a terrible business decision because he seemed to just believe that we should have some forum that's more like us, free from highly politicized, highly left wing, politicized censorship, where we should be able to freely express viewpoints that many people disagree with, whether it's about gender stuff, whether it's about Hunter Biden's laptop, and that the ideological censorship that we were seeing on

Twitter and we're seeing on Facebook and now we're seemingly seeing less of on Facebook was bad. Musk is becoming more and more inclined towards a pro life position. There had been a number of tweets, number of stories sort of covering this. We've talked about them on Rights Life Radio. That is my hope would be if we could have a major Republican donor who genuinely actually kind of cared about the abortion issue as a genuine concern and not just you know, he cares about tax cuts and maybe

he gives a little to pro life stuff. I think that could be a huge development in American politics if he was willing to give it away. That was genuinely as altruistic as some of his other financial decisions have been. That'll do it for John's Lardy Show. See you next time on Power Talk.