April 1, 2025 • 37 mins
On Friday night, news broke that Elon Musk was merging his company X with his company xAI—a move that this very podcast, Elon, Inc., had predicted last year. This week, a campaign for the Wisconsin Supreme Court looms very large, as Musk is again spending millions of dollars to (Democrats contend) try and tilt an election in the Republican Party’s favor. Today, we talk about what the Friday night news means for Musk’s financial world and what the Wisconsin race means for his political future. This episode features social media reporter Kurt Wager, Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull, Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Max Chafkin and host David Papadopoulos.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elon mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 5 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 6 (00:21):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 7 (00:22):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 6 (00:25):
But those two percent.
Speaker 8 (00:26):
That are nasty, they are I'll pay in full post.
Speaker 6 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 6 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon, a Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, April First, I'm your host, David Papadopolis.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Now.
Speaker 6 (00:54):
On Friday night, Elon snuck out an announcement that, as
longtime listeners of this show was a long time coming.
His AI company Xai had acquired his social media company
x And, a deal that values the new joint company
at over one hundred billion dollars. Shades of Tesla buying
Solar City, a sign of things to come in the
(01:16):
world of AI. Both and then in Wisconsin today is
election day for the Musk funded race between a conservative
and liberal judge. The stakes are high, although perhaps not
as high as Musk has been suggesting. All this comes
as Tesla's stock price has been ping ponged up and
down by Tariff News and has protests of the brand
(01:37):
show no sign of slowing down. To talk about X,
were joined by one of our regulars, Max chaffickin Hello
to you, Max, Hello, Papa. Okay, Now we're good. This
is the first introduction of popns and our social media
reporter and by far the best high school quarterback has
ever been on this show. Kurt Wagner Kurt.
Speaker 9 (01:58):
Hello, Hey, thank you for having me.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
And later on Dana Hall, our other regular will swing
by to talk Wisconsin politics. We actually have a surprise
to start us off here. Max, You've got something that's
coming later this week. Tell us about it.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah, David, So later in the show. Not to spoil things,
but we will be talking about a little bundle of
joy that Elon has. But but I have my own
bundle of joy that's coming in your podcast feed this week.
On Friday, we'll have a the first episode of a
new show called Everybody's Business.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
It's I like that name. It's about business, it's and everybody.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
It's a little bit like Elon Inc.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
It's gonna be me and Stacey Vannox Smith, who people
probably know from Marketplace, Planet Money, the Indicator. She's done
tons of reporting about markets and business.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
She's going to carry money. Yeah, she's going to carry
the show.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
And we're gonna have a rotating crew of other experts guests.
It's gonna be fun and we're really excited.
Speaker 9 (02:59):
For everyone to hear.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
So you're gonna hear it in your podcast feed on Friday,
and then for the next few weeks it'll be here
in the e lining feed. But we're hoping that when
the show launches for real in May, you will come
over with us to our own.
Speaker 6 (03:12):
No, we're not just hoping, we're insisting yet.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
We're commanded this.
Speaker 6 (03:15):
We're demanding. Right, you're dropping in in the feed on Friday, now,
well Friday going forward, will that be the day it'll
always come out on?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
That will be the day it'll it'll come out on
Friday kind of hopefully help people make sense of what
happened in the world of business for the past few days.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Get ready for the weekend.
Speaker 6 (03:32):
Yeah, that sounds great. Okay, very good. Okay, we're gonna
start off here and talk about that late night news
that broke on Friday, x AI purchasing x But to
get us started here on it, we're gonna go back
to December when one Kurt Wagner said this, I.
Speaker 10 (03:51):
Got two predictions for this year for Elon Musk. The
first is that he's gonna fold x social network formerly
known as Twitter into Xai. So it's going to be
a way for him to basically salvage that you know,
struggling business, get investors away out bang.
Speaker 6 (04:09):
That's what I'm talking about. Wagner. Huh.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I just feel like people spend huge sums of money
on intelligence and various things.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
They could just listen to our podcast and they would
know what is going to happen.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
Just listen to Kurt Wagner. Well done, sir. By the way,
what was your other prediction and has it flopped on you?
Speaker 11 (04:27):
Well, first off, thank you for having me back for
this victory lap. This is all I've ever dreamt about
since December. Honestly, I think my other prediction was that
Elon Donald Trump will go on a boy's trip to
visit I may have said Kim Jong un. But I
think Vladimir Putin should fall into that camp as well,
and I still think that's a real possibility.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
He's on the verge of two for two. All right,
that's very good, way, way way better than me. I'm
oh for so far. But let's focus on this one.
Give us a little bit of a little bit more
of a cent. So what you were thinking at the time,
and in turn, what your understanding of the particulars of
this deal now is.
Speaker 11 (05:09):
Well, I think it kind of shaped up how I thought,
which is that it feels like this is a deal
specifically tailored to bail out X investors, Right, and think
about it this way. If you are an investor in X.
A week ago, you had shares in what has mostly
been a struggling social networking company with an ADS business
(05:29):
that is about half the size that it was when
Elon acquired it, with no real reason to think that
that was going to change anytime soon. Suddenly your investment
is now part of an AI startup that is worth
three times the amount of money, and you really didn't
lose any money. Right, he acquired the company Xai acquired
(05:53):
X at roughly the same price that he paid for
it two and a half years ago. So you just
take your money from a business that has low ups
to a business with very high upside. And I think
this was really a way to make X investors whole
and give them something more optimistic to look forward to.
Speaker 6 (06:10):
Yeah, and I will say on that point that being
made whole is a hell of a lot better than
the way it looked at multiple points over the past
couple years. I think Fidelity was marketing it down forty
to fifty percent. The only thing to be clear on
here is just being made whole and getting out even
over a two and a half year period ain't great.
The S and P five hundred over that time period,
(06:32):
Max chef gin up forty six percent, I will note,
so really you could have just pretty much been blindly
investing in the index and been up made a hell
of a lot more money. But I want to talk
for a second Max on kurtz first point, which is
a bailout of X investors. We've seen this movie before
(06:53):
from Elon, one Elon company buying another, or at least
one Elon company buying a company he's closely affiliated with.
You know, Tesla and Solar City is this Teslas Solar
City part du.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I mean, it's very similar, and I think, you know,
we have anticipated not just Kurt's prediction, but on this
podcast for like more than a year we've been talking
about and I think it was actually Kurt also who
first suggested this around the time when his book came out,
which everyone should read. But basically the idea that that
x doesn't has sort of a diminished business outlook and
(07:26):
that AI is one of the only ways that it
can kind of find a way to find opportunity, and
you had this sort of awkwardness where xai is training
on Twitter data Xai. Many of Xai's shareholders are the
same as Twitter shareholders. The main distribution platform for Xai's chapbot,
(07:47):
which is called groc is x So like it was
weird that they were two separate companies to kind of
begin with.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
Of course, well maybe it was to have so the
Ai company had a clean slate, didn't have any baggage
with it. I think certainly there was a lot of
baggage from x for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
And you know, Musk has operated his companies. There's a
reason we call the show Elon Inc. Because Elon Musk
runs his businesses like one conglomerate like Elon Inc. And
what happened with Solar City is you had basically a
troubled solar panel installer. It had looked really promising when
Elon Musk started. They managed to get all these subsidies
(08:24):
from state and national governments to install panels. All of
a sudden, you had all these other companies come in
a lot of competition, turns into basically a low margin business.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Lo and behold.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Tesla acquires it and then sold as part of the
Elon Musk master plan. And at the time the Elon
Musk master Plan was around, you know, green energy, We're
gonna sort of your and have electric cars, You're gonna
have solar panels on your roofs.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
There were, of course shareholder lawsuits because.
Speaker 6 (08:51):
I'm not on the Tesla side, people saying hey, you're
bailing out this company, you're diluting me. I'm getting screwed.
Those lawsuits failed in the end, correct, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I mean, and it's kind of for the same I think, well,
there are probably other reasons too. But you know, we've
seen this movie over and over where shareholders and Elon
Musk companies have basically agreed that like they're going to
just do whatever Elon Musk wants. That it's hard to
separate Elon Musk. They've basically gone along with the story.
I just told that all these companies are basically one conglomerate.
So my guess is that the shareholders of Xai, as
(09:24):
much as they are, like Kurt says, bailing out a
struggling social media company, they're probably going along.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
With this as just as just the price of doing business.
I do want to.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
See also, by the way, in the case of Xai,
it's a much smaller investor universe than you'd have in
the case of Tesla, where you have I don't know,
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of investors.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Perhaps Yeah, I do want to say, I think there's
something here for these Xai shareholders. You know, as much
as we're bailing out x the fundraising environment for AI
companies is getting worse right now. If I were a
prospective investor in a company like xa yeah, I would
ask myself what exactly is the relationship between XAI and
(10:05):
x That would be like a risk factor. And in
a way, I think this clarifies it makes it easier
for Elon musk to potentially package this to investors, as
much as it's kind of week funky that he's combined
this like troll farm slash social network slash political influence
project that is x with this like world leading chatbot
(10:25):
or what.
Speaker 6 (10:26):
Yeah, I mean, Kurt. That is a good point, right
where you have had up till now a pretty funky
intercompany relationship where you know, x and XAI do business together.
It seems like at some point, right XAI pays x by,
like I will buy you five cups of coffee, you know,
(10:46):
at a star by an in turn, you know you will, uh,
we'll let you babysit for our Like it was all
sort of weird, funky account Like why not They're just
like this just simplifies the whole thing. Hey, it's all
just one big company.
Speaker 9 (10:58):
I think that's right on paper.
Speaker 11 (11:00):
This makes sense when you think, okay, an AI company
is buying a giant social network that has this proprietary
data set. It's going to help GROCK reach millions of consumers.
Like all of those things make sense. Where they don't
make sense for a thirty three billion dollar acquisition is
that the owner of both those companies is the same
person who already has control over them. So it's not
(11:22):
as if x was going to go suddenly do some
data licensing deal with open Ai, because Elon would never
do that. It's not as if Xai was going to go,
you know, kick X to the curb and say, never mind,
we're going to do our distribution over on Facebook, because
Elon would never do that. So my point is that,
while yes, this makes sense on paper, the lynchpin here
is the Elon of it all, and because he owned
(11:43):
and controls both companies, buying one of them for this
amount of money to the other, to me feels like
a weird financial transaction that didn't need to happen to
get the benefits.
Speaker 6 (11:55):
Yeah, no, I get it, but there is a face
saving value here to be able to start. You got out,
everyone got out whole hold.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
But do you think Kurt anyone would use xai without
GROC like without Twitter?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Does xai have a business?
Speaker 11 (12:07):
I mean it has a business as much as open
ai has a business.
Speaker 9 (12:12):
Right like they would they would, They would.
Speaker 11 (12:14):
Just have to find a different distribution model for their chatbots.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
So right in a different set of raw material to
train off of. And I guess this is My other
question for you, Kurt, is this truly the future of
social media companies? That they are largely just human social
posting farms or fast sorties, some iteration of soilent in
essence to feed the romance.
Speaker 9 (12:39):
Well, let's think about it.
Speaker 11 (12:40):
So x is doing this with xai, Facebook, Instagram are
doing this with meta ai. Reddit has licensed its data
to Google. What does that leave right? I think Snap
has a relationship with Google as well. I believe so
pretty much every social network out there is doing a
(13:01):
version of this.
Speaker 12 (13:02):
Now.
Speaker 11 (13:02):
Is that the only reason for them to exist? I
would certainly say no. But has this become a you know,
maybe unexpected business opportunity for all of these places? Certainly
that seems to be the case.
Speaker 6 (13:15):
Okay, so there, I should keep posting. If I do post,
if I were to post, which I don't, I should
keep posting, appreciating that there's some other value out there
beyond just informing the robots.
Speaker 11 (13:27):
I presume someone follows you, David, I don't know, so
can I.
Speaker 9 (13:32):
Say that follower? Yeah, your follower might appreciate you still posting.
Speaker 6 (13:36):
But all right, who invited Kirk to this show? Can I?
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Was it you?
Speaker 6 (13:40):
Max? Why do we have Kerk first of all gloating
about his grand prediction and second of all talking the host.
But I will just say x I do have a
few followers, which is kind of amazing because I've never
posted on it. Now, Max, he goes here from six
companies in the constellation of e in to five, Does
(14:02):
it make his life any easier, simpler? Same difference.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
No, I think it's the same. Like I said, he
was already running them like one company. I do wonder
what this means for live front of the pod who, Kurt,
I don't know. Do you have an understanding of what
her role is going forward.
Speaker 11 (14:23):
Currently CEO of x Yeah, thoughts Kurt, I don't know.
And that was one of the questions I posed after this, right,
is what does this mean for her? In the one hand,
she could continue to run X in the way she's
already doing that as sort of maybe a business unit
of XAI.
Speaker 9 (14:42):
Right, But as these.
Speaker 11 (14:43):
Companies become closer and closer together, usually when there's a
merger like this, you know, you merge HR and you
merge sales, and you merge engineering, and so it kind
of becomes a little bit unless they're going to keep
X completely independent of Xai, which feel like it would
defeat the purpose of this merger. It sort of also
feels like it would erode her power, right because she's
(15:07):
not going to have as many people reporting to her,
as many divisions or whatever. So I don't know, I
don't know what's going to happen. She was obviously, you know,
she was cheerleading this deal when it happened on Friday, and.
Speaker 6 (15:20):
Well it could just be a nice opportunity to actually
exit stage last year for her.
Speaker 11 (15:24):
Yeah, yeah, but I don't know what's going to happen,
is the short answer.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Got it?
Speaker 6 (15:27):
Kurt Wagner, as always, thank you for joining us, sir,
Congratulations on your brilliant December twenty twenty four prediction.
Speaker 9 (15:35):
Thank you for having me hope to be back.
Speaker 13 (15:41):
It's one of those things that may seem like it's
obviously important in the state of wisconstant, but I think
it could actually be important for the country as well,
and maybe for the world.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
So okay, we're joined now by our other regular Dana Hall. Dana,
welcome back, he Hey, and Dan.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
Of course.
Speaker 6 (16:05):
Elon here is referring to the Supreme Court election coming
up in Wisconsin. The vote ends today results. Maybe we'll
know as soon as tonight. You have a terrific story
out about the election this morning. Remind us of the
particulars here.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Yeah, So, Wisconsin is one of the states that has
an open, you know, open election for its Supreme Court justices.
And Elon, as Elon does, is kind of like doubling
down on this race in Wisconsin. He flew to Wisconsin
on Sunday, gave a town hall. He also did some
kind of like tell a call about the race last night.
And this is all a time when there is enormous
(16:44):
backlash two Musk being involved with politics and the Trump
administration and Doge, but he is basically repeating his playbook,
you know, dangling money before voters. He wore a cheesehead
on stage and like he sort of was like, you know,
this is We've got to do this. People on his
pack is texting everyone, and it'll be a real test
(17:04):
of whether the political operation that he's built will endure
beyond Trump and be able to impact these statewide races.
Speaker 6 (17:12):
Okay, and the vote for the Supreme Court justice will
whichever parties candidate gets it will effectively take control of
the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Correct correct.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Right now, it's a seven member court. Four to three
majority hangs in the balance, and you know state Supreme
Court does. It looks at everything from collective bargaining rights,
abortion rights, registricting. Registricting is always very important when it
comes to determining House seats, and so in Elon's mind,
this is like another fork in the road of destiny
for civilization, and he is, you know, encouraging everyone to
(17:50):
vote and really pushing it very hard in the final days.
Speaker 6 (17:54):
One of the big questions we had at the time
last week was would the value the money he's putting
up ultimately be greater than the downside that he creates,
But by attaching his name to the Republican candidate there,
we weren't exactly sure at the time. Seven days later,
(18:14):
any greater clarity on that point, well.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
I think, I mean, there's no question that Elon's involvement
is helping is shaping the contours of the race. I mean,
a lot of people went to see Elon speak on
Sunday night. His pack has door knockers, they are running
digital ads on Facebook. I mean, he is very much swinging,
helping to swing the race in the way that he
did when he barstormed across Pennsylvania for President Trump. But
(18:38):
what's the different this cycle is that Trump himself is
not on the ballot, and so it really remains to
be seen how close this election will be and whether
Musk's imprint had the suite that it did. Also, Elon
is a far less popular person now than he was
in October.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, I mean, Democrats are I mean Elon's involvement. He
is going to be a factor sort of on the
Democratic side. Democrats are tying this race to Elon Musk,
which would have happened probably even if he hadn't given
any money, frankly, because Elon Musk is like one of
the most unpopular parts of the Trace of Dose.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
But the fact that he's giving all his money, of course,
is going to make those attacks stickier. That said, like
the money that Elon's giving is so so so much
like well, I don't think we Yeah, it's it's a
little bit hard to even get your head around it.
You know, last week how much what has been number?
We don't know the total number because this is all
happening so quickly. You know, last week we had Ted
(19:36):
Man here saying that you know, third party estimates were
putting it around fourteen million dollars out of somewhere in
the seventies. This is already the most expensive state judicial
race ever. And that's before we saw all this additional spending.
Those were that was mostly TV money. Now we're seeing
Musk writing, I think my count, Dana is three million
(19:59):
dollar checks thus formed.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
We've seen he's he's paying one hundred dollars per petition signer.
By the way, all these payments are sort of designed
to be like right up to the edge of the
election law.
Speaker 6 (20:11):
The senses they are indeed on the right side of
the law.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Who knows, no, I don't think that sense is at
all clear. We were seeing repeated legal challenges, and you know,
even during this event, Musk acknowledged and he did He
did the same during the twenty twenty four race.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
He acknowledged. This is the point. The point is to
to do these stunts and get media coverage when Democrats
say you are breaking election law.
Speaker 6 (20:34):
Dan, did you have in that story today a hard
number on how much Musk has spent so far.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Well, the way that my brain thinks about the map
is the race is above eighty million total Musk is
put in I would say roughly twenty million. But to
Max's point, like we're not going to get a final
tally until later, but I would, I would. I think
it's fair to think of like Musk has put in
like a quarter or twenty five percent of all the
spending there is.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Yeah, and I think we should think about twenty million. Again, Dana,
this is a guestimate, but like it's a lower it's
a lower limit. You know.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
We just have to kind of remind our listeners that
the conventional wisdom in Washington was Elon and Trump are
not going to survive. They're going to have a big blowout.
Doe's just going to be this like short lived experiment
and then eventually Elon will take his ball and go
home and focus on Tesla. That hasn't happened yet. Tesla
stock is cratering, sales are going to be bad, and
(21:29):
yet Elon is doubling down on politics and making it
very clear that, you know, he it was not enough
to elect Trumps. He really wants to like keep the
House of Representatives, and he's going all in on these
state races. He's also giving money in Florida into some
house races there. So this is like a longer game
political play by Musk that Max and I have told
(21:51):
our listeners and our readers about for months now, Like
people have got to think wider about Musk's political ambitions.
Speaker 6 (21:59):
Tell us a little bit about those votes in Florida.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, so you have two house races. One Florida's first,
which is in the Panhandle. It's Matt Gates's seat. That
race is thought to be you know, I mean, that's
a very, very heavily Republican district, would be very hard
for the Democrats to win.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Florida's sixth, which is the.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
One where Elon Musk's pack came in at the very
last minute, is also heavily Republican, although not as heavily Republican,
and it looks like the Democrat might have kind of
an outside chance at least to make it close. We've
seen this kind of broader thing happen nationally where Republicans
are suddenly realizing that the electoral environment be very poor.
(22:41):
Trump pulled elist Stephonics nomination for UN Ambassador that was
seen as another effort to sort of shore up the House.
So you're seeing and that's one of the reasons.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Like, and Elon, as you said, in Florida, he's pretty
much involved, his packs involved pretty much in all these
in one shaper.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
No, I think.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
I think the one we know about is Florida six, uh,
the closer race, and he and it's not a ton
of money. I checked yesterday and it was sixty thousand dollars.
You know again, we're this is just a few days ago,
so you know, you could imagine it going up pretty quickly,
like if he does a TV buy or something. But
that said, this looks like more of a last minute thing,
(23:21):
not a you know where where Elon is reacting to
the same thing that Republicans nationally reacting.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
To like a holy smoke.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Oh no, we need to like do it, do anything
we can to help. Wisconsin has been a much more deliberate,
basically series of acts of political because the whole way
there's huge number of employees canvassers on the ground, a
lot of money. Like Dannis said, and you know, musk
Is during this town hall basically said I don't expect
(23:48):
to win now. Politicians and activists say that all the
time in a way to like, you know, lower expectations.
Maybe if he does win, then then he gets to
have a huge celebration. But but if you take him
out of his word, I don't think we should think
of this as like if Elon loses, he's out of
Republican politics. My reading is he is no matter what
(24:09):
after the Wisconsin Yeah, he is going to play. This
is more like a signal of what is to come
in the midterms rather than this is going to be
a test for how he behaves in the midterms.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:19):
And Dana also referenced how his involvement, as we well know,
is hurting His involvement in politics is hurting his company, Tesla,
quite a bit, and when he spoke the other day
in Wisconsin, he mentioned that this is what he had
to say.
Speaker 13 (24:35):
It's well, you know, my Teslis stock and the stock
of everyone who holst Tesla's gone went roughly in half.
I mean, it's a big deal. So not only is
am I not getting I'm not getting paid definitely not
stealing money and would never get away with it, but
the value my Teslis stock is in half. So this
is a very expensive job, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Can I just do a little fact check here, so
the stock in half. I don't totally know what he's
talking about it.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I mean, I suppose what he's talking about is that
the stock is down from reaching its peak of like
post Trump euphoria in December. I think it's not about
forty percent, not quite half, but like it's still like about.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Where it was when the election happened.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
And we've seen Elon express similar sentiment elsewhere he was well,
I guess Tim Waltz was being mean to him, Like
he's definitely in a in a sort of mode where
he's primed to feel aggrieved.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
But again, like, but here's the way to think about it,
if you want to if you want to back him
on the way he's framing the numbers. Trump wins. He
plays a huge role in getting Trump elected. He's now
in with the administration. He and his company stand to
benefit a lot from that. Hence Tesla rips sores. It's
only when the true role he's going to play with
(25:53):
Doge and what Doge is going to do and the
havoc is going to reek that you really start to
see the stock crater believe, I mean, perhaps coming down
of it, I get to be backing Trump. I could
be his big you know, financial arm. I could be
tight with him and I don't need to do Doge.
Why do I need to do Doge in in order
to be close to Trump? I guess would be the
(26:15):
spin he's putting on it. But Den, while all this
is swirling, you also had Trump announced auto tariffs, which
we've been expecting a lot of tariffs, and a lot
of tarriffs are apparently coming tomorrow. We didn't quite expect
auto tariffs to come, and there's been a lot of
debate as to whether Tesla benefits from these auto tariffs
(26:37):
or is hurt by them.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
I don't know why people, I mean I expected auto
tariffs to come. I mean Trump campaigned on like America first,
and Tesla's CFO said, we are our profitability is going
to be hurt by tariffs on the last earnings call.
So like what shape the tariffs took, you know, people
were confused about. I think I think what people have
gotten wrong is they think that test somehow exempt from tariffs,
(27:01):
and they're not because it's not just cars, it's parts,
and Tesla does import a fair number of parts from
other countries, and so they're not like immune from tariffs.
They just start a slightly better position because they don't.
You know, the cars that they sell the United States
are made in the United States. They're not importing cars
from Mexico.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
It could be a big day tomorrow, right because we've
Liberation Day. Well, we're gonna learn yeah, because it's liberation
Day and we're gonna find out exactly how these tariffs shakeout.
I mean, that's come on, that's wishful thinking. But anyway,
there'll be some kind of tariff update. We're gonna get
the results.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
We're not gonna be liberated tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
We're gonna Dan and I will be staying up late,
but most normal people will get the results from the
Wisconsin election in the morning, and then TESLA is about
to report what most analysts believe is going to be
a very very, very bad quarter.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
That's right. I did mean to ask this. This comes
out tomorrow evening, Daniel, tomorrow morning, Tomorrow morninging. Okay, wow,
it is, Yeah, it is a big day.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I mean, it could be like it's like a triple witchy.
Speaker 6 (28:03):
It could be like a.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Perfect storm of bad. On the other hand, you know,
maybe who knows, Maybe it's all good. Maybe maybe they
romp in Wisconsin and and Tesla does a little bit.
You know, the expectations are so low right now with
Tesla's deliveries, you know, notwithstanding last week's conversation where you know,
of course we talked to a bull, but like if
you talk to a lot of analysts, they are very
down on this because of the political stuff, because of
(28:27):
what we've.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Seen from Europe.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
So if you know, I guess there's a possibility he
could surprise somehow.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
Okay, super hard pivot here, Max, away from Tesla auto
sales and tariffs. Let's talk babies, all right.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
So this is baby number thirteen. I believe that we
know thirteen. There are fourteen?
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Well, there are fourteen. I guess it's like are we counting?
Ashley's is number thirteen and Chavon's fourth is number fourteen,
and we don't know the order in which they were born.
Speaker 6 (29:04):
I was, can you show your math?
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Max? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
So sorry, Yeah, this is in the order that we
learned of the babies existing. Yes, this is maybe thirteen
or fourteen. And essentially we saw sort of a Twitter
spat between Elon Musk and the mother of this child,
Ashley Saint Clair, who is a conservative influencer. She showed
(29:28):
up in sort of a paparazzi video, essentially saying that
she was selling her Tesla in order to pay for
the cost of, you know, raising your children because Elon Musk,
according to her, has you know, cut her all, you know,
basically essentially stopped paying as much in.
Speaker 6 (29:44):
Child This is another thing driving consumers with one more
Tesla owner who who if you were bearished before, you're
bearish now.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Growing one step further than the sticker.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Musk responded, I don't know if the child is mine
or not, but don't sell your car. Put him not
against finding out finding out?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Okay, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
But then she responded, well, we asked you to take
a paternity test before the child was even born, and
you refuse and you're a petulant child. Like it's just
gotten very ugly. Laura Lumer is sort of adjacent to
all this too.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
It's just like, what's Laura she's attacking?
Speaker 3 (30:24):
So so Ashley Sinclair because she is beefing with Elon
Musk is now on the wrong side of the conservative
Twitter ecosystem. They are, including Lumur, are kind of talking
about her as a essentially as a turncoat and and worse.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
You know, you can imagine some of the kind.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Of sexist tropes that are being deployed against the you know,
the mother of one of his children, particularly locked in
a you know, dispute over her child support. Obviously, it's
it's not pretty. I can't imagine, and it does it does?
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I have to say it is.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
It is does show you maybe this was obvious, This
is probably obvious to most normal people. But Musk has
sort of gone around acting like he can have as
many children as he wants without any negative consequences. And
now we see, you know, he's in a dispute with
Ashley Saint Clair, He's in a dispute with Grimes, who's
a musician and the mother of another one of his children.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
You know, it's it's getting messy.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Let's not forget about Vivian, his biological child, who is
just on the cover of teen Vogue. She is being
very brave speaking out and giving her side of the
story about what it was like to have Elon Musk
as a father.
Speaker 6 (31:30):
Okay, we're going to rap, but as we do, Dana
On Elon ink here you are the keeper of such
things and I have to say, at the very beginning
of this little segment, I was confused, what is the
official number of children that you say? And as a
result we say, Elon Musk currently has This.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Is the line that I use. Elon Musk has fathered
at least fourteen children that we know of.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Very important. You use that you have that last.
Speaker 6 (31:59):
Clad Very good, you know. I in hindsight, somebody in
the December twenty twenty four predictions should have come up
with a forecast on how many kids.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
We had one a week Dan Harmony yeh senior editor
and there on this very show. I can't remember, but
she predicted more children and it has come true. No, no, no, no,
but that's not a prediction.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
Well she'll have more.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
That's like saying the sun's gonna come up. How many children?
Is really the prick that's gonna be one of my
December twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
I feel like you're just ben because Chancer or whoever
the hell you pick to win the derby runs.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
This is injured runs this weekend. Max. Before I say
goodbye to you and Dana, remind us one more time.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yep, everybody's business. It'll be in your feed on Friday.
Please let us know what you think and give us chance.
We're really excited about this show and we think you're
gonna really like it.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Terrific.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
Max Dana, thanks as always, thanks for having us.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 6 (32:59):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Masirakis is
our editor, and Rayhan Harmansi our senior editor. Blake Maples
handles engineering in Dave percellfactchecks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson.
The Elaning theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa
and Alex Sudijira. Brandon Francis Newnham is our executive producer,
and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A
(33:21):
big thanks as always to our supporters Joel Weber and
Brad Stone. I'm David Papadoppolos. If you have a minute,
rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 5 (33:31):
See you next week. Hey, there, don't go yet.
Speaker 6 (33:43):
I want to tell you about a new series for
my colleagues here at Bloomberg. It's called Levittown. It's about
a technology that's moving faster than the law, about dozens
of young women in a New York suburb who discovered
manipulated photos of themselves in a porn website. Told there
isn't much the police or anyone else can do, decide
to fight back, joining a global battle against deep fakes.
(34:04):
Please note the trailer for the show you were about
to hear features adult themes.
Speaker 12 (34:15):
Five years ago, this was a vast checkerboard at Potato
Farms on New York's Long Island. Today this is Levittown,
one of the most remarkable housing developments ever conceived.
Speaker 7 (34:28):
Levettown, New York, America's first suburb, row after row after
row of cookie cutter homes, the picture of the American dream.
But recently, underneath the facade of perfect order, a group
of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Someone was posting photos of many of the girls that
we had gone to school with. There was one picture
of me in a bathing suit, and I didn't have
a bathing suit on anymore. It was just me naked,
well not me, but me with someone else's body parts
(35:17):
that looked exactly like my own.
Speaker 8 (35:21):
Over the last few years, rapid breakthroughs and machine learning
have made it a lot easier and cheaper to make
real looking photos or videos of pretty much anything you
can think of. But innovation comes at a price.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I felt gross.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
I felt like I needed to take a shower. I
felt like I wanted to cry.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
I wanted to throw up, I wanted to scream.
Speaker 7 (35:46):
This is a story about a technology that is moving
faster than the law, where everyone is a suspect, even
your neighbors.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
It was always in the back of my head, like, oh,
it's someone that I know. How you'll find out who
that someone is? When you know so many people from school, soccer,
all these things.
Speaker 8 (36:11):
What we discovered in Levertown led us on a winding journey.
I just always had in the back of my mind
that any of them could.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Be the one.
Speaker 8 (36:22):
Through the darkest corners of the Internet, they.
Speaker 11 (36:24):
Call it an arms race between law enforcement and technology,
and it's just we're losing.
Speaker 9 (36:31):
We are absolutely losing.
Speaker 8 (36:33):
Where online vigilantes and enterprising detectives are joining forces.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
If you're given prey, you want to go and get it.
Speaker 7 (36:42):
In this story, the victims flip the script, band together
and fight back alongside some unexpected global allies.
Speaker 8 (36:54):
I'm Margie Murphy and I'm Olivia Carvill. This is Levitown,
a new Pops series from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope.
Listen to Levettown starting on March twenty, first on Bloomberg's
Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elon mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 5 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 6 (00:21):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 7 (00:22):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 6 (00:25):
But those two percent.
Speaker 8 (00:26):
That are nasty, they are I'll pay in full post.
Speaker 6 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Us of that we don't have a fourth branch of
governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 6 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon, a Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, April First, I'm your host, David Papadopolis.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Now.
Speaker 6 (00:54):
On Friday night, Elon snuck out an announcement that, as
longtime listeners of this show was a long time coming.
His AI company Xai had acquired his social media company
x And, a deal that values the new joint company
at over one hundred billion dollars. Shades of Tesla buying
Solar City, a sign of things to come in the
(01:16):
world of AI. Both and then in Wisconsin today is
election day for the Musk funded race between a conservative
and liberal judge. The stakes are high, although perhaps not
as high as Musk has been suggesting. All this comes
as Tesla's stock price has been ping ponged up and
down by Tariff News and has protests of the brand
(01:37):
show no sign of slowing down. To talk about X,
were joined by one of our regulars, Max chaffickin Hello
to you, Max, Hello, Papa. Okay, Now we're good. This
is the first introduction of popns and our social media
reporter and by far the best high school quarterback has
ever been on this show. Kurt Wagner Kurt.
Speaker 9 (01:58):
Hello, Hey, thank you for having me.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
And later on Dana Hall, our other regular will swing
by to talk Wisconsin politics. We actually have a surprise
to start us off here. Max, You've got something that's
coming later this week. Tell us about it.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah, David, So later in the show. Not to spoil things,
but we will be talking about a little bundle of
joy that Elon has. But but I have my own
bundle of joy that's coming in your podcast feed this week.
On Friday, we'll have a the first episode of a
new show called Everybody's Business.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
It's I like that name. It's about business, it's and everybody.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
It's a little bit like Elon Inc.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
It's gonna be me and Stacey Vannox Smith, who people
probably know from Marketplace, Planet Money, the Indicator. She's done
tons of reporting about markets and business.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
She's going to carry money. Yeah, she's going to carry
the show.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
And we're gonna have a rotating crew of other experts guests.
It's gonna be fun and we're really excited.
Speaker 9 (02:59):
For everyone to hear.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
So you're gonna hear it in your podcast feed on Friday,
and then for the next few weeks it'll be here
in the e lining feed. But we're hoping that when
the show launches for real in May, you will come
over with us to our own.
Speaker 6 (03:12):
No, we're not just hoping, we're insisting yet.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
We're commanded this.
Speaker 6 (03:15):
We're demanding. Right, you're dropping in in the feed on Friday, now,
well Friday going forward, will that be the day it'll
always come out on?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
That will be the day it'll it'll come out on
Friday kind of hopefully help people make sense of what
happened in the world of business for the past few days.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Get ready for the weekend.
Speaker 6 (03:32):
Yeah, that sounds great. Okay, very good. Okay, we're gonna
start off here and talk about that late night news
that broke on Friday, x AI purchasing x But to
get us started here on it, we're gonna go back
to December when one Kurt Wagner said this, I.
Speaker 10 (03:51):
Got two predictions for this year for Elon Musk. The
first is that he's gonna fold x social network formerly
known as Twitter into Xai. So it's going to be
a way for him to basically salvage that you know,
struggling business, get investors away out bang.
Speaker 6 (04:09):
That's what I'm talking about. Wagner. Huh.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I just feel like people spend huge sums of money
on intelligence and various things.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
They could just listen to our podcast and they would
know what is going to happen.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
Just listen to Kurt Wagner. Well done, sir. By the way,
what was your other prediction and has it flopped on you?
Speaker 11 (04:27):
Well, first off, thank you for having me back for
this victory lap. This is all I've ever dreamt about
since December. Honestly, I think my other prediction was that
Elon Donald Trump will go on a boy's trip to
visit I may have said Kim Jong un. But I
think Vladimir Putin should fall into that camp as well,
and I still think that's a real possibility.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
He's on the verge of two for two. All right,
that's very good, way, way way better than me. I'm
oh for so far. But let's focus on this one.
Give us a little bit of a little bit more
of a cent. So what you were thinking at the time,
and in turn, what your understanding of the particulars of
this deal now is.
Speaker 11 (05:09):
Well, I think it kind of shaped up how I thought,
which is that it feels like this is a deal
specifically tailored to bail out X investors, Right, and think
about it this way. If you are an investor in X.
A week ago, you had shares in what has mostly
been a struggling social networking company with an ADS business
(05:29):
that is about half the size that it was when
Elon acquired it, with no real reason to think that
that was going to change anytime soon. Suddenly your investment
is now part of an AI startup that is worth
three times the amount of money, and you really didn't
lose any money. Right, he acquired the company Xai acquired
(05:53):
X at roughly the same price that he paid for
it two and a half years ago. So you just
take your money from a business that has low ups
to a business with very high upside. And I think
this was really a way to make X investors whole
and give them something more optimistic to look forward to.
Speaker 6 (06:10):
Yeah, and I will say on that point that being
made whole is a hell of a lot better than
the way it looked at multiple points over the past
couple years. I think Fidelity was marketing it down forty
to fifty percent. The only thing to be clear on
here is just being made whole and getting out even
over a two and a half year period ain't great.
The S and P five hundred over that time period,
(06:32):
Max chef gin up forty six percent, I will note,
so really you could have just pretty much been blindly
investing in the index and been up made a hell
of a lot more money. But I want to talk
for a second Max on kurtz first point, which is
a bailout of X investors. We've seen this movie before
(06:53):
from Elon, one Elon company buying another, or at least
one Elon company buying a company he's closely affiliated with.
You know, Tesla and Solar City is this Teslas Solar
City part du.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I mean, it's very similar, and I think, you know,
we have anticipated not just Kurt's prediction, but on this
podcast for like more than a year we've been talking
about and I think it was actually Kurt also who
first suggested this around the time when his book came out,
which everyone should read. But basically the idea that that
x doesn't has sort of a diminished business outlook and
(07:26):
that AI is one of the only ways that it
can kind of find a way to find opportunity, and
you had this sort of awkwardness where xai is training
on Twitter data Xai. Many of Xai's shareholders are the
same as Twitter shareholders. The main distribution platform for Xai's chapbot,
(07:47):
which is called groc is x So like it was
weird that they were two separate companies to kind of
begin with.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
Of course, well maybe it was to have so the
Ai company had a clean slate, didn't have any baggage
with it. I think certainly there was a lot of
baggage from x for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
And you know, Musk has operated his companies. There's a
reason we call the show Elon Inc. Because Elon Musk
runs his businesses like one conglomerate like Elon Inc. And
what happened with Solar City is you had basically a
troubled solar panel installer. It had looked really promising when
Elon Musk started. They managed to get all these subsidies
(08:24):
from state and national governments to install panels. All of
a sudden, you had all these other companies come in
a lot of competition, turns into basically a low margin business.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Lo and behold.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Tesla acquires it and then sold as part of the
Elon Musk master plan. And at the time the Elon
Musk master Plan was around, you know, green energy, We're
gonna sort of your and have electric cars, You're gonna
have solar panels on your roofs.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
There were, of course shareholder lawsuits because.
Speaker 6 (08:51):
I'm not on the Tesla side, people saying hey, you're
bailing out this company, you're diluting me. I'm getting screwed.
Those lawsuits failed in the end, correct, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I mean, and it's kind of for the same I think, well,
there are probably other reasons too. But you know, we've
seen this movie over and over where shareholders and Elon
Musk companies have basically agreed that like they're going to
just do whatever Elon Musk wants. That it's hard to
separate Elon Musk. They've basically gone along with the story.
I just told that all these companies are basically one conglomerate.
So my guess is that the shareholders of Xai, as
(09:24):
much as they are, like Kurt says, bailing out a
struggling social media company, they're probably going along.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
With this as just as just the price of doing business.
I do want to.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
See also, by the way, in the case of Xai,
it's a much smaller investor universe than you'd have in
the case of Tesla, where you have I don't know,
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of investors.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Perhaps Yeah, I do want to say, I think there's
something here for these Xai shareholders. You know, as much
as we're bailing out x the fundraising environment for AI
companies is getting worse right now. If I were a
prospective investor in a company like xa yeah, I would
ask myself what exactly is the relationship between XAI and
(10:05):
x That would be like a risk factor. And in
a way, I think this clarifies it makes it easier
for Elon musk to potentially package this to investors, as
much as it's kind of week funky that he's combined
this like troll farm slash social network slash political influence
project that is x with this like world leading chatbot
(10:25):
or what.
Speaker 6 (10:26):
Yeah, I mean, Kurt. That is a good point, right
where you have had up till now a pretty funky
intercompany relationship where you know, x and XAI do business together.
It seems like at some point, right XAI pays x by,
like I will buy you five cups of coffee, you know,
(10:46):
at a star by an in turn, you know you will, uh,
we'll let you babysit for our Like it was all
sort of weird, funky account Like why not They're just
like this just simplifies the whole thing. Hey, it's all
just one big company.
Speaker 9 (10:58):
I think that's right on paper.
Speaker 11 (11:00):
This makes sense when you think, okay, an AI company
is buying a giant social network that has this proprietary
data set. It's going to help GROCK reach millions of consumers.
Like all of those things make sense. Where they don't
make sense for a thirty three billion dollar acquisition is
that the owner of both those companies is the same
person who already has control over them. So it's not
(11:22):
as if x was going to go suddenly do some
data licensing deal with open Ai, because Elon would never
do that. It's not as if Xai was going to go,
you know, kick X to the curb and say, never mind,
we're going to do our distribution over on Facebook, because
Elon would never do that. So my point is that,
while yes, this makes sense on paper, the lynchpin here
is the Elon of it all, and because he owned
(11:43):
and controls both companies, buying one of them for this
amount of money to the other, to me feels like
a weird financial transaction that didn't need to happen to
get the benefits.
Speaker 6 (11:55):
Yeah, no, I get it, but there is a face
saving value here to be able to start. You got out,
everyone got out whole hold.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
But do you think Kurt anyone would use xai without
GROC like without Twitter?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Does xai have a business?
Speaker 11 (12:07):
I mean it has a business as much as open
ai has a business.
Speaker 9 (12:12):
Right like they would they would, They would.
Speaker 11 (12:14):
Just have to find a different distribution model for their chatbots.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
So right in a different set of raw material to
train off of. And I guess this is My other
question for you, Kurt, is this truly the future of
social media companies? That they are largely just human social
posting farms or fast sorties, some iteration of soilent in
essence to feed the romance.
Speaker 9 (12:39):
Well, let's think about it.
Speaker 11 (12:40):
So x is doing this with xai, Facebook, Instagram are
doing this with meta ai. Reddit has licensed its data
to Google. What does that leave right? I think Snap
has a relationship with Google as well. I believe so
pretty much every social network out there is doing a
(13:01):
version of this.
Speaker 12 (13:02):
Now.
Speaker 11 (13:02):
Is that the only reason for them to exist? I
would certainly say no. But has this become a you know,
maybe unexpected business opportunity for all of these places? Certainly
that seems to be the case.
Speaker 6 (13:15):
Okay, so there, I should keep posting. If I do post,
if I were to post, which I don't, I should
keep posting, appreciating that there's some other value out there
beyond just informing the robots.
Speaker 11 (13:27):
I presume someone follows you, David, I don't know, so
can I.
Speaker 9 (13:32):
Say that follower? Yeah, your follower might appreciate you still posting.
Speaker 6 (13:36):
But all right, who invited Kirk to this show? Can I?
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Was it you?
Speaker 6 (13:40):
Max? Why do we have Kerk first of all gloating
about his grand prediction and second of all talking the host.
But I will just say x I do have a
few followers, which is kind of amazing because I've never
posted on it. Now, Max, he goes here from six
companies in the constellation of e in to five, Does
(14:02):
it make his life any easier, simpler? Same difference.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
No, I think it's the same. Like I said, he
was already running them like one company. I do wonder
what this means for live front of the pod who, Kurt,
I don't know. Do you have an understanding of what
her role is going forward.
Speaker 11 (14:23):
Currently CEO of x Yeah, thoughts Kurt, I don't know.
And that was one of the questions I posed after this, right,
is what does this mean for her? In the one hand,
she could continue to run X in the way she's
already doing that as sort of maybe a business unit
of XAI.
Speaker 9 (14:42):
Right, But as these.
Speaker 11 (14:43):
Companies become closer and closer together, usually when there's a
merger like this, you know, you merge HR and you
merge sales, and you merge engineering, and so it kind
of becomes a little bit unless they're going to keep
X completely independent of Xai, which feel like it would
defeat the purpose of this merger. It sort of also
feels like it would erode her power, right because she's
(15:07):
not going to have as many people reporting to her,
as many divisions or whatever. So I don't know, I
don't know what's going to happen. She was obviously, you know,
she was cheerleading this deal when it happened on Friday, and.
Speaker 6 (15:20):
Well it could just be a nice opportunity to actually
exit stage last year for her.
Speaker 11 (15:24):
Yeah, yeah, but I don't know what's going to happen,
is the short answer.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Got it?
Speaker 6 (15:27):
Kurt Wagner, as always, thank you for joining us, sir,
Congratulations on your brilliant December twenty twenty four prediction.
Speaker 9 (15:35):
Thank you for having me hope to be back.
Speaker 13 (15:41):
It's one of those things that may seem like it's
obviously important in the state of wisconstant, but I think
it could actually be important for the country as well,
and maybe for the world.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
So okay, we're joined now by our other regular Dana Hall. Dana,
welcome back, he Hey, and Dan.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
Of course.
Speaker 6 (16:05):
Elon here is referring to the Supreme Court election coming
up in Wisconsin. The vote ends today results. Maybe we'll
know as soon as tonight. You have a terrific story
out about the election this morning. Remind us of the
particulars here.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Yeah, So, Wisconsin is one of the states that has
an open, you know, open election for its Supreme Court justices.
And Elon, as Elon does, is kind of like doubling
down on this race in Wisconsin. He flew to Wisconsin
on Sunday, gave a town hall. He also did some
kind of like tell a call about the race last night.
And this is all a time when there is enormous
(16:44):
backlash two Musk being involved with politics and the Trump
administration and Doge, but he is basically repeating his playbook,
you know, dangling money before voters. He wore a cheesehead
on stage and like he sort of was like, you know,
this is We've got to do this. People on his
pack is texting everyone, and it'll be a real test
(17:04):
of whether the political operation that he's built will endure
beyond Trump and be able to impact these statewide races.
Speaker 6 (17:12):
Okay, and the vote for the Supreme Court justice will
whichever parties candidate gets it will effectively take control of
the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Correct correct.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Right now, it's a seven member court. Four to three
majority hangs in the balance, and you know state Supreme
Court does. It looks at everything from collective bargaining rights,
abortion rights, registricting. Registricting is always very important when it
comes to determining House seats, and so in Elon's mind,
this is like another fork in the road of destiny
for civilization, and he is, you know, encouraging everyone to
(17:50):
vote and really pushing it very hard in the final days.
Speaker 6 (17:54):
One of the big questions we had at the time
last week was would the value the money he's putting
up ultimately be greater than the downside that he creates,
But by attaching his name to the Republican candidate there,
we weren't exactly sure at the time. Seven days later,
(18:14):
any greater clarity on that point, well.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
I think, I mean, there's no question that Elon's involvement
is helping is shaping the contours of the race. I mean,
a lot of people went to see Elon speak on
Sunday night. His pack has door knockers, they are running
digital ads on Facebook. I mean, he is very much swinging,
helping to swing the race in the way that he
did when he barstormed across Pennsylvania for President Trump. But
(18:38):
what's the different this cycle is that Trump himself is
not on the ballot, and so it really remains to
be seen how close this election will be and whether
Musk's imprint had the suite that it did. Also, Elon
is a far less popular person now than he was
in October.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, I mean, Democrats are I mean Elon's involvement. He
is going to be a factor sort of on the
Democratic side. Democrats are tying this race to Elon Musk,
which would have happened probably even if he hadn't given
any money, frankly, because Elon Musk is like one of
the most unpopular parts of the Trace of Dose.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
But the fact that he's giving all his money, of course,
is going to make those attacks stickier. That said, like
the money that Elon's giving is so so so much
like well, I don't think we Yeah, it's it's a
little bit hard to even get your head around it.
You know, last week how much what has been number?
We don't know the total number because this is all
happening so quickly. You know, last week we had Ted
(19:36):
Man here saying that you know, third party estimates were
putting it around fourteen million dollars out of somewhere in
the seventies. This is already the most expensive state judicial
race ever. And that's before we saw all this additional spending.
Those were that was mostly TV money. Now we're seeing
Musk writing, I think my count, Dana is three million
(19:59):
dollar checks thus formed.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
We've seen he's he's paying one hundred dollars per petition signer.
By the way, all these payments are sort of designed
to be like right up to the edge of the
election law.
Speaker 6 (20:11):
The senses they are indeed on the right side of
the law.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Who knows, no, I don't think that sense is at
all clear. We were seeing repeated legal challenges, and you know,
even during this event, Musk acknowledged and he did He
did the same during the twenty twenty four race.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
He acknowledged. This is the point. The point is to
to do these stunts and get media coverage when Democrats
say you are breaking election law.
Speaker 6 (20:34):
Dan, did you have in that story today a hard
number on how much Musk has spent so far.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Well, the way that my brain thinks about the map
is the race is above eighty million total Musk is
put in I would say roughly twenty million. But to
Max's point, like we're not going to get a final
tally until later, but I would, I would. I think
it's fair to think of like Musk has put in
like a quarter or twenty five percent of all the
spending there is.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Yeah, and I think we should think about twenty million. Again, Dana,
this is a guestimate, but like it's a lower it's
a lower limit. You know.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
We just have to kind of remind our listeners that
the conventional wisdom in Washington was Elon and Trump are
not going to survive. They're going to have a big blowout.
Doe's just going to be this like short lived experiment
and then eventually Elon will take his ball and go
home and focus on Tesla. That hasn't happened yet. Tesla
stock is cratering, sales are going to be bad, and
(21:29):
yet Elon is doubling down on politics and making it
very clear that, you know, he it was not enough
to elect Trumps. He really wants to like keep the
House of Representatives, and he's going all in on these
state races. He's also giving money in Florida into some
house races there. So this is like a longer game
political play by Musk that Max and I have told
(21:51):
our listeners and our readers about for months now, Like
people have got to think wider about Musk's political ambitions.
Speaker 6 (21:59):
Tell us a little bit about those votes in Florida.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, so you have two house races. One Florida's first,
which is in the Panhandle. It's Matt Gates's seat. That
race is thought to be you know, I mean, that's
a very, very heavily Republican district, would be very hard
for the Democrats to win.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Florida's sixth, which is the.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
One where Elon Musk's pack came in at the very
last minute, is also heavily Republican, although not as heavily Republican,
and it looks like the Democrat might have kind of
an outside chance at least to make it close. We've
seen this kind of broader thing happen nationally where Republicans
are suddenly realizing that the electoral environment be very poor.
(22:41):
Trump pulled elist Stephonics nomination for UN Ambassador that was
seen as another effort to sort of shore up the House.
So you're seeing and that's one of the reasons.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Like, and Elon, as you said, in Florida, he's pretty
much involved, his packs involved pretty much in all these
in one shaper.
Speaker 5 (22:58):
No, I think.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
I think the one we know about is Florida six, uh,
the closer race, and he and it's not a ton
of money. I checked yesterday and it was sixty thousand dollars.
You know again, we're this is just a few days ago,
so you know, you could imagine it going up pretty quickly,
like if he does a TV buy or something. But
that said, this looks like more of a last minute thing,
(23:21):
not a you know where where Elon is reacting to
the same thing that Republicans nationally reacting.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
To like a holy smoke.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Oh no, we need to like do it, do anything
we can to help. Wisconsin has been a much more deliberate,
basically series of acts of political because the whole way
there's huge number of employees canvassers on the ground, a
lot of money. Like Dannis said, and you know, musk
Is during this town hall basically said I don't expect
(23:48):
to win now. Politicians and activists say that all the
time in a way to like, you know, lower expectations.
Maybe if he does win, then then he gets to
have a huge celebration. But but if you take him
out of his word, I don't think we should think
of this as like if Elon loses, he's out of
Republican politics. My reading is he is no matter what
(24:09):
after the Wisconsin Yeah, he is going to play. This
is more like a signal of what is to come
in the midterms rather than this is going to be
a test for how he behaves in the midterms.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:19):
And Dana also referenced how his involvement, as we well know,
is hurting His involvement in politics is hurting his company, Tesla,
quite a bit, and when he spoke the other day
in Wisconsin, he mentioned that this is what he had
to say.
Speaker 13 (24:35):
It's well, you know, my Teslis stock and the stock
of everyone who holst Tesla's gone went roughly in half.
I mean, it's a big deal. So not only is
am I not getting I'm not getting paid definitely not
stealing money and would never get away with it, but
the value my Teslis stock is in half. So this
is a very expensive job, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Can I just do a little fact check here, so
the stock in half. I don't totally know what he's
talking about it.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I mean, I suppose what he's talking about is that
the stock is down from reaching its peak of like
post Trump euphoria in December. I think it's not about
forty percent, not quite half, but like it's still like about.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Where it was when the election happened.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
And we've seen Elon express similar sentiment elsewhere he was well,
I guess Tim Waltz was being mean to him, Like
he's definitely in a in a sort of mode where
he's primed to feel aggrieved.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
But again, like, but here's the way to think about it,
if you want to if you want to back him
on the way he's framing the numbers. Trump wins. He
plays a huge role in getting Trump elected. He's now
in with the administration. He and his company stand to
benefit a lot from that. Hence Tesla rips sores. It's
only when the true role he's going to play with
(25:53):
Doge and what Doge is going to do and the
havoc is going to reek that you really start to
see the stock crater believe, I mean, perhaps coming down
of it, I get to be backing Trump. I could
be his big you know, financial arm. I could be
tight with him and I don't need to do Doge.
Why do I need to do Doge in in order
to be close to Trump? I guess would be the
(26:15):
spin he's putting on it. But Den, while all this
is swirling, you also had Trump announced auto tariffs, which
we've been expecting a lot of tariffs, and a lot
of tarriffs are apparently coming tomorrow. We didn't quite expect
auto tariffs to come, and there's been a lot of
debate as to whether Tesla benefits from these auto tariffs
(26:37):
or is hurt by them.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
I don't know why people, I mean I expected auto
tariffs to come. I mean Trump campaigned on like America first,
and Tesla's CFO said, we are our profitability is going
to be hurt by tariffs on the last earnings call.
So like what shape the tariffs took, you know, people
were confused about. I think I think what people have
gotten wrong is they think that test somehow exempt from tariffs,
(27:01):
and they're not because it's not just cars, it's parts,
and Tesla does import a fair number of parts from
other countries, and so they're not like immune from tariffs.
They just start a slightly better position because they don't.
You know, the cars that they sell the United States
are made in the United States. They're not importing cars
from Mexico.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
It could be a big day tomorrow, right because we've
Liberation Day. Well, we're gonna learn yeah, because it's liberation
Day and we're gonna find out exactly how these tariffs shakeout.
I mean, that's come on, that's wishful thinking. But anyway,
there'll be some kind of tariff update. We're gonna get
the results.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
We're not gonna be liberated tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
We're gonna Dan and I will be staying up late,
but most normal people will get the results from the
Wisconsin election in the morning, and then TESLA is about
to report what most analysts believe is going to be
a very very, very bad quarter.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
That's right. I did mean to ask this. This comes
out tomorrow evening, Daniel, tomorrow morning, Tomorrow morninging. Okay, wow,
it is, Yeah, it is a big day.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I mean, it could be like it's like a triple witchy.
Speaker 6 (28:03):
It could be like a.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Perfect storm of bad. On the other hand, you know,
maybe who knows, Maybe it's all good. Maybe maybe they
romp in Wisconsin and and Tesla does a little bit.
You know, the expectations are so low right now with
Tesla's deliveries, you know, notwithstanding last week's conversation where you know,
of course we talked to a bull, but like if
you talk to a lot of analysts, they are very
down on this because of the political stuff, because of
(28:27):
what we've.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Seen from Europe.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
So if you know, I guess there's a possibility he
could surprise somehow.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
Okay, super hard pivot here, Max, away from Tesla auto
sales and tariffs. Let's talk babies, all right.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
So this is baby number thirteen. I believe that we
know thirteen. There are fourteen?
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Well, there are fourteen. I guess it's like are we counting?
Ashley's is number thirteen and Chavon's fourth is number fourteen,
and we don't know the order in which they were born.
Speaker 6 (29:04):
I was, can you show your math?
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Max? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
So sorry, Yeah, this is in the order that we
learned of the babies existing. Yes, this is maybe thirteen
or fourteen. And essentially we saw sort of a Twitter
spat between Elon Musk and the mother of this child,
Ashley Saint Clair, who is a conservative influencer. She showed
(29:28):
up in sort of a paparazzi video, essentially saying that
she was selling her Tesla in order to pay for
the cost of, you know, raising your children because Elon Musk,
according to her, has you know, cut her all, you know,
basically essentially stopped paying as much in.
Speaker 6 (29:44):
Child This is another thing driving consumers with one more
Tesla owner who who if you were bearished before, you're
bearish now.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Growing one step further than the sticker.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Musk responded, I don't know if the child is mine
or not, but don't sell your car. Put him not
against finding out finding out?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Okay, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
But then she responded, well, we asked you to take
a paternity test before the child was even born, and
you refuse and you're a petulant child. Like it's just
gotten very ugly. Laura Lumer is sort of adjacent to
all this too.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
It's just like, what's Laura she's attacking?
Speaker 3 (30:24):
So so Ashley Sinclair because she is beefing with Elon
Musk is now on the wrong side of the conservative
Twitter ecosystem. They are, including Lumur, are kind of talking
about her as a essentially as a turncoat and and worse.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
You know, you can imagine some of the kind.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Of sexist tropes that are being deployed against the you know,
the mother of one of his children, particularly locked in
a you know, dispute over her child support. Obviously, it's
it's not pretty. I can't imagine, and it does it does?
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I have to say it is.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
It is does show you maybe this was obvious, This
is probably obvious to most normal people. But Musk has
sort of gone around acting like he can have as
many children as he wants without any negative consequences. And
now we see, you know, he's in a dispute with
Ashley Saint Clair, He's in a dispute with Grimes, who's
a musician and the mother of another one of his children.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
You know, it's it's getting messy.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Let's not forget about Vivian, his biological child, who is
just on the cover of teen Vogue. She is being
very brave speaking out and giving her side of the
story about what it was like to have Elon Musk
as a father.
Speaker 6 (31:30):
Okay, we're going to rap, but as we do, Dana
On Elon ink here you are the keeper of such
things and I have to say, at the very beginning
of this little segment, I was confused, what is the
official number of children that you say? And as a
result we say, Elon Musk currently has This.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Is the line that I use. Elon Musk has fathered
at least fourteen children that we know of.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Very important. You use that you have that last.
Speaker 6 (31:59):
Clad Very good, you know. I in hindsight, somebody in
the December twenty twenty four predictions should have come up
with a forecast on how many kids.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
We had one a week Dan Harmony yeh senior editor
and there on this very show. I can't remember, but
she predicted more children and it has come true. No, no, no, no,
but that's not a prediction.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
Well she'll have more.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
That's like saying the sun's gonna come up. How many children?
Is really the prick that's gonna be one of my
December twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
I feel like you're just ben because Chancer or whoever
the hell you pick to win the derby runs.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
This is injured runs this weekend. Max. Before I say
goodbye to you and Dana, remind us one more time.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yep, everybody's business. It'll be in your feed on Friday.
Please let us know what you think and give us chance.
We're really excited about this show and we think you're
gonna really like it.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Terrific.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
Max Dana, thanks as always, thanks for having us.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 6 (32:59):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Anna Masirakis is
our editor, and Rayhan Harmansi our senior editor. Blake Maples
handles engineering in Dave percellfactchecks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson.
The Elaning theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa
and Alex Sudijira. Brandon Francis Newnham is our executive producer,
and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A
(33:21):
big thanks as always to our supporters Joel Weber and
Brad Stone. I'm David Papadoppolos. If you have a minute,
rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 5 (33:31):
See you next week. Hey, there, don't go yet.
Speaker 6 (33:43):
I want to tell you about a new series for
my colleagues here at Bloomberg. It's called Levittown. It's about
a technology that's moving faster than the law, about dozens
of young women in a New York suburb who discovered
manipulated photos of themselves in a porn website. Told there
isn't much the police or anyone else can do, decide
to fight back, joining a global battle against deep fakes.
(34:04):
Please note the trailer for the show you were about
to hear features adult themes.
Speaker 12 (34:15):
Five years ago, this was a vast checkerboard at Potato
Farms on New York's Long Island. Today this is Levittown,
one of the most remarkable housing developments ever conceived.
Speaker 7 (34:28):
Levettown, New York, America's first suburb, row after row after
row of cookie cutter homes, the picture of the American dream.
But recently, underneath the facade of perfect order, a group
of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Someone was posting photos of many of the girls that
we had gone to school with. There was one picture
of me in a bathing suit, and I didn't have
a bathing suit on anymore. It was just me naked,
well not me, but me with someone else's body parts
(35:17):
that looked exactly like my own.
Speaker 8 (35:21):
Over the last few years, rapid breakthroughs and machine learning
have made it a lot easier and cheaper to make
real looking photos or videos of pretty much anything you
can think of. But innovation comes at a price.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I felt gross.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
I felt like I needed to take a shower. I
felt like I wanted to cry.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
I wanted to throw up, I wanted to scream.
Speaker 7 (35:46):
This is a story about a technology that is moving
faster than the law, where everyone is a suspect, even
your neighbors.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
It was always in the back of my head, like, oh,
it's someone that I know. How you'll find out who
that someone is? When you know so many people from school, soccer,
all these things.
Speaker 8 (36:11):
What we discovered in Levertown led us on a winding journey.
I just always had in the back of my mind
that any of them could.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Be the one.
Speaker 8 (36:22):
Through the darkest corners of the Internet, they.
Speaker 11 (36:24):
Call it an arms race between law enforcement and technology,
and it's just we're losing.
Speaker 9 (36:31):
We are absolutely losing.
Speaker 8 (36:33):
Where online vigilantes and enterprising detectives are joining forces.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
If you're given prey, you want to go and get it.
Speaker 7 (36:42):
In this story, the victims flip the script, band together
and fight back alongside some unexpected global allies.
Speaker 8 (36:54):
I'm Margie Murphy and I'm Olivia Carvill. This is Levitown,
a new Pops series from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope.
Listen to Levettown starting on March twenty, first on Bloomberg's
Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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