November 1, 2024 • 25 mins
Elon Musk announced his support for Donald Trump on July 13, minutes after the attempt on Trump’s life at a rally in Pennsylvania. Since then, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX has been engaged in what amounts to one of the all-time largest political spending sprees. That’s not even counting what many have called the biggest in-kind political gift in history: Musk’s social media platform, X. In this second episode of Citizen Elon, we explore what Musk stands to gain, how he's wielding his newfound political power and what is even possible when the world's richest man unites with Trump
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
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
(00:38):
that COVID was quote less lethal than the flu, but
January sixth was different. That's because after losing the election,
he kept saying it had been stolen, that he was
the rifle winner, and then he encouraged his followers in
vague terms, to get in the way of certifying the
election by showing up at the capitol. Katie remembers it
(01:00):
was a tough decision. Suddenly they were having these precedented
conversations about truth, democracy and text role in all of that.
Elon Musk had a different approach. He tweeted a poll
quote reinstate former President Trump and a Latin phrase Vox
Popular Vox day, the voice of the people is the
(01:20):
voice of the gods. Yes, fifteen million people voted yes
is one, and then.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
The Trump account was back by the next Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
For me.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Heard that.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
That he doesn't know what the heck he's getting into
and what that actually means.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
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
(03:01):
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
was leaking documents about his own company. He named his
own leak the Twitter Files.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
How and what he did to purchase Twitter is pretty
astounding here.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Joan Donovan is a journalism professor at BU. We talked
to her last episode.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
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
(03:53):
mainstream media in general.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
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
(04:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
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 Glenn Greenwald and Elon. He was right there with them, liking, retweeting,
commenting on those same accounts, and anyway, the most important
(05:13):
influencer on the right, Donald Trump he wanted nothing to
do with Elon Musk, maybe because he'd built his own
free speech platform and wanted his followers to use that
one instead.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
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.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
I tell you what, Elon, Elon is not going to
buy Twitter.
Speaker 6 (05:54):
Nah.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
He's a bullshit artist.
Speaker 7 (05:56):
He's got himself a mess, but he's not gonna be
buying it.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
He'm not going to be buying it.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
Sign up for truth. We love the Truth.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
You recently met with Donald Trump in Florida. What did
you guys talk about?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I was at a I was not done.
Speaker 8 (06:35):
I was at a breakfast at a friend's place and
Donald Trump came by.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Eight months later, Elon interviewed by Don Lemon.
Speaker 9 (06:42):
So you didn't go there to meet him?
Speaker 8 (06:45):
No, I went to a friend of mine's house and said,
Donald Trump's coming by for breakfast?
Speaker 6 (06:50):
Is that.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Just so you know?
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Like?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
And that's what really matters to Republicans in Washington.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Josh Green, my colleague at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, he covers politics.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
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.
Speaker 10 (07:40):
Good afternoon.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Then everything changed.
Speaker 10 (07:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
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
(08:19):
he's creating his own super pack for Trump, meaning a great,
big check just like that. Elon's a player in Washington, DC.
Speaker 9 (08:33):
And you know Elon.
Speaker 7 (08:34):
I love Elon MUNKK do we love him?
Speaker 5 (08:36):
I love Elon.
Speaker 7 (08:39):
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.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
A month, not forty five million. Gives me forty five
million a month.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
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
(09:30):
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.
Speaker 7 (09:39):
X you have definitely got a fertile mind.
Speaker 9 (09:42):
We can talk about.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
Tuddles and rockets, so many things.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Then the ads paid for by Elon's pack.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Trump is the American badass, will stop this nonsense.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
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.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Bute and blood coming down the place.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
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.
Speaker 8 (10:29):
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.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Every day.
Speaker 8 (10:47):
From now until the election.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
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.
Speaker 8 (10:59):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
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.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Josh Green again, it just didn't seem like it could happen,
and yet it has.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
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.
Speaker 9 (12:17):
You have donors that just want to give money, they
care about a cause. They will cut the check.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Matt Askowski is a political marketer. He worked on the
last two Trump campaigns.
Speaker 9 (12:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
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.
Speaker 9 (13:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
That's get out the vote.
Speaker 9 (13:17):
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.
Speaker 8 (13:27):
But this is.
Speaker 9 (13:27):
Almost like a quasi campaign.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
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.
(13:52):
Still it seems to be working. Matt says. Most canvassing
operations take years to assemble, built one in just a
few months. His specific target younger men in swing states.
Now he's got an office set up in Pennsylvania, the
swing state he said he's specifically focusing his attention on.
He's even sort of stumping, traveling from town to town
(14:15):
giving talks to voters. By the way, whatever his politics
were before, Elon's politics right now largely mirror Trumps across
the board, immigration, gender, voter rights, the environment. In those
ways and so many others, he's fallen in line. Let's
(14:36):
step back for a second and answer the question at
the heart of this Why Why is Elon, who has
six companies and at least twelve kids, spending all of
this time and money on Trump? What does he stand? Again?
Elon's a defense contractor SpaceX his rocket company. They already
(14:57):
have huge contracts with the US government. Elon wants more. Specifically,
he's gunning for NASA to spend tens of billions of
dollars on his Mars colony.
Speaker 7 (15:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
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
(15:41):
to provide internet to rural areas, to get subsidies that
the government already has, but to direct them to him.
Starlink has struck out so far, but under another Trump presidency,
maybe we'ld have more of a chance. Second, Tesla's trying
to develop these autonomous cars driverless robotaxis. Trump could help
get those approved and potentially block Tesla's Chinese competitors from
(16:05):
offering their robotaxis in the US.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
I will stop Chinese and other countries produced audible, bial
and autonomous vehicles. Do you like autonomous? Does anybody like
an autonomous vehicle.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Third, Trump could give Elon a job, and not just
any job.
Speaker 8 (16:24):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
I'd love it.
Speaker 9 (16:39):
Well, you you're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look
at what you do.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
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
(17:04):
right now, and the simplest way to resist some of
these investigations would probably just be to defund those agencies.
In short, it'd be the most powerful guy in the
world in the pocket of the richest guy in the world.
I can't express enough what a big deal that would be.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Fuck, dude, if you lose.
Speaker 5 (17:26):
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.
Speaker 8 (17:35):
I don't know, because it's not like you can say, well, yeah,
I maxed out to him.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
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,
(18:02):
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.
But no matter what, if Trump loses the election, so
does Elon. We've been talking a lot about traditional politics, money, speeches,
(18:28):
canvassing ads, But there's another way Elon's helped Trump that
I'd argue is a lot more important. I keep thinking
about something Joan said about the aftermath of Elon buying Twitter,
a bunch of users leaving the platform, advertisers cutting ties.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
His attitude was, you know, goodbye, and then of course
he brought back in all of the folks that had
been removed previously.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
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
(19:27):
world may have ever known. You can really change how
an entire society sees itself.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
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
(20:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
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.
Speaker 11 (21:45):
People don't realize how safe, how secure our elections actually are, but.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
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
(22:14):
where Neil works today.
Speaker 11 (22:17):
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.
(22:42):
I think.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Neil seemed nervous throughout our call. That popping sound in
the background it was him clicking his pen over and over,
faster and faster.
Speaker 11 (22:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
As you try to do your job, what are you
most worried about?
Speaker 11 (23:16):
You're so yeah, you're asking these great question. So I'm
just kidding.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Tell me why I made you Why you laughed there.
Speaker 11 (23:25):
Because I'm like, you're just like, if I thought about
what I'm worried about all day, I would not be able.
Speaker 9 (23:29):
To do this job.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
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
(23:51):
the forest for the trees. But of course, none of
this ends on November fifth. If anything, November fifth is
when it begins. Elon and Trump are ready to either
overhaul the US government or to say the election was stolen,
that America as we know it is dead, and Elon
pulling back further and further on content moderation. It's his
(24:15):
call to arms. He's gathering the troops for what we
won't know until November fifth. That's next time. Citizen Elon
is produced by Lina Mesitzi's Rayhan Harmanci is our senior editor,
Blake Maples handles engineering and William Elstrom fact checking. Brendan
(24:36):
Francis Newnham is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is the
head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Big thanks to the Elon and Crewe,
David Papadopolis, Naomi Shaven, Mangus Hendrickson, Stacy Wong listen every
Tuesday for breaking Elon news, and thanks to our Bloomberg
colleagues David Fox, Julia Press, Dana Hull, Sarah Fryar, Kurt Wagner,
(24:58):
Mark Millian, Becca Greenfe, Margaret Sutherland, Alison Mobley, Jackie Kessler,
Ariel Brown, Chris Nescenzo, and Albert Hicks. An extra big
thanks to Bradstone, editor of BusinessWeek, and Katie Boyce, executive
editor of Bloomberg Digital, for their unflagging support. We'll see
you after the election for Part three of Citizen Elon.
(25:18):
I'm Max Chafkin. If you have a minute, rate and
review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. Thanks again,
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.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
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
(00:38):
that COVID was quote less lethal than the flu, but
January sixth was different. That's because after losing the election,
he kept saying it had been stolen, that he was
the rifle winner, and then he encouraged his followers in
vague terms, to get in the way of certifying the
election by showing up at the capitol. Katie remembers it
(01:00):
was a tough decision. Suddenly they were having these precedented
conversations about truth, democracy and text role in all of that.
Elon Musk had a different approach. He tweeted a poll
quote reinstate former President Trump and a Latin phrase Vox
Popular Vox day, the voice of the people is the
(01:20):
voice of the gods. Yes, fifteen million people voted yes
is one, and then.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
The Trump account was back by the next Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
For me.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Heard that.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
That he doesn't know what the heck he's getting into
and what that actually means.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
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
(03:01):
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
was leaking documents about his own company. He named his
own leak the Twitter Files.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
How and what he did to purchase Twitter is pretty
astounding here.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Joan Donovan is a journalism professor at BU. We talked
to her last episode.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
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
(03:53):
mainstream media in general.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
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
(04:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
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 Glenn Greenwald and Elon. He was right there with them, liking, retweeting,
commenting on those same accounts, and anyway, the most important
(05:13):
influencer on the right, Donald Trump he wanted nothing to
do with Elon Musk, maybe because he'd built his own
free speech platform and wanted his followers to use that
one instead.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
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.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
I tell you what, Elon, Elon is not going to
buy Twitter.
Speaker 6 (05:54):
Nah.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
He's a bullshit artist.
Speaker 7 (05:56):
He's got himself a mess, but he's not gonna be
buying it.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
He'm not going to be buying it.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
Sign up for truth. We love the Truth.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
You recently met with Donald Trump in Florida. What did
you guys talk about?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I was at a I was not done.
Speaker 8 (06:35):
I was at a breakfast at a friend's place and
Donald Trump came by.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Eight months later, Elon interviewed by Don Lemon.
Speaker 9 (06:42):
So you didn't go there to meet him?
Speaker 8 (06:45):
No, I went to a friend of mine's house and said,
Donald Trump's coming by for breakfast?
Speaker 6 (06:50):
Is that.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Just so you know?
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Like?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
And that's what really matters to Republicans in Washington.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Josh Green, my colleague at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, he covers politics.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
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.
Speaker 10 (07:40):
Good afternoon.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Then everything changed.
Speaker 10 (07:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
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
(08:19):
he's creating his own super pack for Trump, meaning a great,
big check just like that. Elon's a player in Washington, DC.
Speaker 9 (08:33):
And you know Elon.
Speaker 7 (08:34):
I love Elon MUNKK do we love him?
Speaker 5 (08:36):
I love Elon.
Speaker 7 (08:39):
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.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
A month, not forty five million. Gives me forty five
million a month.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
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
(09:30):
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.
Speaker 7 (09:39):
X you have definitely got a fertile mind.
Speaker 9 (09:42):
We can talk about.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
Tuddles and rockets, so many things.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Then the ads paid for by Elon's pack.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Trump is the American badass, will stop this nonsense.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
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.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Bute and blood coming down the place.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
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.
Speaker 8 (10:29):
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.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Every day.
Speaker 8 (10:47):
From now until the election.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
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.
Speaker 8 (10:59):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
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.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Josh Green again, it just didn't seem like it could happen,
and yet it has.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
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.
Speaker 9 (12:17):
You have donors that just want to give money, they
care about a cause. They will cut the check.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Matt Askowski is a political marketer. He worked on the
last two Trump campaigns.
Speaker 9 (12:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
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.
Speaker 9 (13:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
That's get out the vote.
Speaker 9 (13:17):
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.
Speaker 8 (13:27):
But this is.
Speaker 9 (13:27):
Almost like a quasi campaign.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
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.
(13:52):
Still it seems to be working. Matt says. Most canvassing
operations take years to assemble, built one in just a
few months. His specific target younger men in swing states.
Now he's got an office set up in Pennsylvania, the
swing state he said he's specifically focusing his attention on.
He's even sort of stumping, traveling from town to town
(14:15):
giving talks to voters. By the way, whatever his politics
were before, Elon's politics right now largely mirror Trumps across
the board, immigration, gender, voter rights, the environment. In those
ways and so many others, he's fallen in line. Let's
(14:36):
step back for a second and answer the question at
the heart of this Why Why is Elon, who has
six companies and at least twelve kids, spending all of
this time and money on Trump? What does he stand? Again?
Elon's a defense contractor SpaceX his rocket company. They already
(14:57):
have huge contracts with the US government. Elon wants more. Specifically,
he's gunning for NASA to spend tens of billions of
dollars on his Mars colony.
Speaker 7 (15:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
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
(15:41):
to provide internet to rural areas, to get subsidies that
the government already has, but to direct them to him.
Starlink has struck out so far, but under another Trump presidency,
maybe we'ld have more of a chance. Second, Tesla's trying
to develop these autonomous cars driverless robotaxis. Trump could help
get those approved and potentially block Tesla's Chinese competitors from
(16:05):
offering their robotaxis in the US.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
I will stop Chinese and other countries produced audible, bial
and autonomous vehicles. Do you like autonomous? Does anybody like
an autonomous vehicle.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Third, Trump could give Elon a job, and not just
any job.
Speaker 8 (16:24):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
I'd love it.
Speaker 9 (16:39):
Well, you you're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look
at what you do.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
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
(17:04):
right now, and the simplest way to resist some of
these investigations would probably just be to defund those agencies.
In short, it'd be the most powerful guy in the
world in the pocket of the richest guy in the world.
I can't express enough what a big deal that would be.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Fuck, dude, if you lose.
Speaker 5 (17:26):
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.
Speaker 8 (17:35):
I don't know, because it's not like you can say, well, yeah,
I maxed out to him.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
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,
(18:02):
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.
But no matter what, if Trump loses the election, so
does Elon. We've been talking a lot about traditional politics, money, speeches,
(18:28):
canvassing ads, But there's another way Elon's helped Trump that
I'd argue is a lot more important. I keep thinking
about something Joan said about the aftermath of Elon buying Twitter,
a bunch of users leaving the platform, advertisers cutting ties.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
His attitude was, you know, goodbye, and then of course
he brought back in all of the folks that had
been removed previously.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
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
(19:27):
world may have ever known. You can really change how
an entire society sees itself.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
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
(20:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
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.
Speaker 11 (21:45):
People don't realize how safe, how secure our elections actually are, but.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
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
(22:14):
where Neil works today.
Speaker 11 (22:17):
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.
(22:42):
I think.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Neil seemed nervous throughout our call. That popping sound in
the background it was him clicking his pen over and over,
faster and faster.
Speaker 11 (22:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
As you try to do your job, what are you
most worried about?
Speaker 11 (23:16):
You're so yeah, you're asking these great question. So I'm
just kidding.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Tell me why I made you Why you laughed there.
Speaker 11 (23:25):
Because I'm like, you're just like, if I thought about
what I'm worried about all day, I would not be able.
Speaker 9 (23:29):
To do this job.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
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
(23:51):
the forest for the trees. But of course, none of
this ends on November fifth. If anything, November fifth is
when it begins. Elon and Trump are ready to either
overhaul the US government or to say the election was stolen,
that America as we know it is dead, and Elon
pulling back further and further on content moderation. It's his
(24:15):
call to arms. He's gathering the troops for what we
won't know until November fifth. That's next time. Citizen Elon
is produced by Lina Mesitzi's Rayhan Harmanci is our senior editor,
Blake Maples handles engineering and William Elstrom fact checking. Brendan
(24:36):
Francis Newnham is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is the
head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Big thanks to the Elon and Crewe,
David Papadopolis, Naomi Shaven, Mangus Hendrickson, Stacy Wong listen every
Tuesday for breaking Elon news, and thanks to our Bloomberg
colleagues David Fox, Julia Press, Dana Hull, Sarah Fryar, Kurt Wagner,
(24:58):
Mark Millian, Becca Greenfe, Margaret Sutherland, Alison Mobley, Jackie Kessler,
Ariel Brown, Chris Nescenzo, and Albert Hicks. An extra big
thanks to Bradstone, editor of BusinessWeek, and Katie Boyce, executive
editor of Bloomberg Digital, for their unflagging support. We'll see
you after the election for Part three of Citizen Elon.
(25:18):
I'm Max Chafkin. If you have a minute, rate and
review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. Thanks again,
Host
David Papadopoulos
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