January 14, 2025 • 33 mins
On Monday, Bloomberg News broke the story that Chinese officials were considering allowing Elon Musk to buy TikTok—something that, if it happened, would be earth-shaking for a whole host of reasons (though Elon, Inc. listeners heard us discuss the possibility months ago). Host Max Chafkin talks to Bloomberg social media reporter Kurt Wagner about what a Musk-owned TikTok could mean for the US (and China).
Then Bloomberg political writer Joshua Green joins Chafkin and Musk reporter Dana Hull to unpack the ongoing MAGA feud between two of America’s most famous far-right figures: Musk and Steve Bannon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
it will be different.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
There is a reason the US government is so reliant
on him.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Welcome to Elon, Inc.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, January fourteenth.
I'm Max Chafkin in for David Papadopolis, who's.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
On vacation this week. We had big news last night.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
TikTok is reportedly under consideration by Chinese officials to be
sold or handed off. We're not totally sure what the
terms of this would look like to none other than
Elon Musk. We're gonna talk about the business implications, the
political implications, and of course the implications for teenagers everywhere.
And then, with the inauguration less than a week away,
(01:22):
we're going to talk about the brewing feud between Steve Bannon,
the kind of right wing influencer and podcaster, former Trump
administration official, and good old Elon. And to do this,
we've got a great cast of characters for you. Kurt
Wagner is joining us. He is Bloomberg's social media reporter
and my favorite high school quarterback.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Hey, Kurt, i'm ax.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Thanks.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
And later Dana Hall, our Elon Musk reporter, and Josh Green,
Bloomberg BusinessWeek political reporter, will be joining us to talk
about political stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
But Kurt, let's start here. There's some news.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
But to people who listen to the Elon podcast, it
would have been a little bit familiar. I want to
play a little bit of tape from our end of
the year, our New Year's Eve special.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I just don't see that being that beneficial for Elon,
like to have true social I think it's more likely
that he will will somehow end up with the US
version of TikTok Kurt.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
This is why Sarah Fryar makes a big bucks, Am
I right? I mean she called it.
Speaker 6 (02:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
The pay grade is high for Sarah Fryer for this
very reason. Right, She is seeing around corners that you
and I can only wish wish to be seen around.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
Max Okay, So Sarah was suggesting that Elon Musk could
somehow take over TikTok. Why don't she just break down
what Bloomberg reported last night. I mean this was a
big this is big news in the world of business.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Yeah, so we are admittedly still aways from Sarah's prediction
coming true. But what we reported was that senior officials
in China are basically game planning what do we do
if the TikTok ban goes into effect, right, which is
supposed to happen this coming Sunday. And one of the
options that has been discussed was the idea that, well,
(03:10):
maybe Elon Musk would be a reasonable owner for this platform, right,
And it kind of makes sense in a number of
ways if you want it to. One is that he
obviously already owns X. He has a very close relationship
with incoming President Trump, so it, you know, in all likelihood,
would be approved by the incoming administration, which is one
(03:31):
part of this equation. But then he also has business
in China, right with Tesla, and he has a huge
sort of foot in that country. And if you are
the Chinese government and you say well, is there someone
we want to curry favor with?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Right?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Is there somebody that we want to if this has
to be sold, if that's the only way for this
thing to exist, is Elon Musk perhaps the most stomachable
option for them, in part because they also maybe get
some leverage in return, and so for all those reasons,
it is sort of being discussed as a possibility. I
want to be clear that this is not necessarily going
(04:05):
to happen. That there's a whole bunch of other things
that would have to happen for this to ever actually
come to fruition. But again, senior officials in China sort
of thinking about Elon as a possible owner of TikTok
as a possibility.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, just to.
Speaker 5 (04:18):
Build on that for a second. So Number one, Byte
Dance the parent company of TikTok. They are not directly
controlled by the Chinese government. There is some question about
whether just because Chinese officials are talking about this would
Bite Dance to it, although, as as many people know,
China's government has a huge amount of sway on its businesses.
TikTok has actually called this report quote pure fiction. Responding
(04:43):
to a different news outlet, Kurt has Elon commented on
this yet, I.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Haven't seen him comment, but he did.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Someone posted on Twitter last night that was like, here's
all the TikTok users when Elon buys the company, and
it was all these people like screaming and crying and
being all sad. And Elon just responded to that tweet
with the laughing face emoji, right, like he he didn't
necessarily come out and say like this is crazy, I
would never buy it. He's sort of like leaned into
the joke, if you will. But no, you know, we
(05:10):
tried to reach out to Elon before publishing the story,
as you can imagine, Max, we did not hear back
from him or his representatives. So but I think what
you just said is important, right, which is the role
of byte Dance and all this So ByteDance, of course
is the Chinese parent company of TikTok, and it has
said it has no intention of selling this business. Now,
I think where the Chinese government comes in is if
(05:32):
they're the only way forward for TikTok to exist in
the US is a sale, and if they want to
sell it with the algorithm included, right, So that's the
technology that sort of determines what everyone.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Says, that type of sale, with that.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Type of technology changing hands would actually require Chinese government approval.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Kurt, how unusual is this?
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I mean, just from the outside, you know, a world
power sort of discussing handing one of the most successful
companies to a foreign politically connected executive, Like it sounds
so crazy, But I mean, like how I guess, I
guess question is, like how crazy is this? Obviously Sarah
Fryar predicted it, so it can't be that crazy, but still.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, I mean I'm not familiar of sort of a
similar situation, certainly in like the consumer tech space, right, Like,
nothing like this has ever happened from a social networking standpoint.
I can say that with a lot of confidence. I'm
not like a geopolitical expert when it comes to China
and trade and and all that stuff. So perhaps there
have been other businesses where there's been discussions like this,
(06:38):
But I think this sort of you know, is exemplifies
a little bit about like what is so unique about
our current moment in time, right like President Trump coming
back to office and all of sort of the unusual
or untraditional methods that he operates under. Elon Musk and
all of the sort of chaos that usually comes with him.
(06:59):
This and that you know, we've been talking about for
four years, but now is finally kind of coming together
at this exact moment in time, when when there's a
transition of power. So I do think that this is
very unique, very you know, interesting time for both tech
but also geopolitics. As you point out, I can't really
think of anything off the top of my head at
(07:19):
least that that sort of rivals this moment for me.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Well, and as you hinted at earlier there, it's probably
it's hard to think of another prominent American chief executive
officer who is as close to China as Elon Musk. Right,
he enjoys a very good relationship with Beijing. Tesla was
able to open a car factory, you know, quicker than
anybody else. They changed the rules effectively for ownership of
(07:45):
car factories for Elon Musk, So like you can imagine
him being a person that both Beijing could get comfortable
with and Trump. Kurt, what about Elon and TikTok. I
mean he has said in the past, unless I'm mistaken,
and that he wanted X to be more like TikTok,
So it seems like there's really a lot of synergy
with this proposal.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
I mean I think if you're Elon, this is like
the biggest coup of all time, right, Like you suddenly
get one of the most valuable, most exciting, up and
coming social networks sort of gift wrapped to you.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Right.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
And I think one element of this that we just
do not know is, let's pretend this all these stars
align max, right, and the Chinese government says, hey, we
want Elon to own this, And Trump says, hey, that
solves our national security concerns. And Elon says, great. What
does a deal actually look like here?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Right?
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Because we know that he is, you know, has a
ton of loans that he has taken out over the
years that use his Tesla stock as collateral. He's obviously
the richest man in the world, no doubt he could
find go out and find banks and other investors to
help him finance something like this. But as we saw
with the Twitter deal, it's not always like quite as
easy as like, oh, he's super rich, he can totally
(08:58):
do this thing.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, what would TikTok go for? Like how much?
Speaker 5 (09:02):
What would be like a reasonable fair market value for
Elon Musk to pay.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
So I believe our analysts at Bloomberg have pegged the
value of the US business. You know, the US version
of TikTok is somewhere between forty and fifty billion dollars.
So this is not the kind of thing that you
just like pop over to the bank and withdraw from
your savings account to make this thing happen. So I
do think there, you know, that is a probably significant hurdle.
You could imagine perhaps the Chinese government again if the
(09:29):
if it ultimately comes down to them saying, hey, this
is a deal, we really want this guy to have this.
Maybe they give him a sweetheart deal, right, because they
know in return they're buying sort of a relationship with
Elon Musk that's even greater than the one, as you
mentioned that they already have.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
I mean, you're using a lot of language that is
going to set off alarm bells with critics, right, I mean,
the prospect of this hugely successful social media company just
being handed to Elon Musk, a politically connected both to
the the leaders of both countries, Like, I mean, this
sounds like just a I don't even want to bring
up anti trust, but like hugely problematic in terms of
(10:07):
self dealing, in terms of all the concerns that supposedly
prompted Elon Muck to buy Twitter in the first place.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Yeah, well, I want to be clear, like I'm sort
of a game scenario planning here, right. I Like what
we know is in the story, which is what we
talked about at the very beginning, Max, which is like,
these discussions are happening at the top levels of the
Chinese government. That's really where we are right now, right.
Everything else is sort of like a hypothetical situation. So
I do want to be clear about that. But I
(10:35):
also think it's fair for people to say, WHOA, this
feels a little bit questionable, This feels like a little
bit you know, maybe even scary, right, because it's not
as we've talked about on this pod, and as y'all
have covered much closer even than I have, Like, Elon
is someone who has relationships with a lot of world leaders,
not all of them necessarily friends of the United States
(10:57):
in the traditional sense, right, And so I think there
is a feeling from some of Elon's critics in particular,
that like this idea of him having any type of
advanced relationship with the Chinese government could be a questionable thing,
a questionable decision for the Trump administration to make. So
there's a lot that we don't know.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
I mean, what happens now, what are you going to
be watching over the next week or so as we
proceed to the inauguration and then the deadline for TikTok
potentially being banned from the US.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Yeah, So, I mean, the most immediate kind of domino
to fall here is the Supreme Court ruling. So on
Friday of last week, TikTok's lawyers and the US government's
lawyers argued before the Supreme Court about whether or not
this band should be upheld. We're still waiting for the
court to ultimately come up with the decision on that. Now,
the expectation is that the law will be upheld, the
ban will be upheld, and we will then get to Sunday,
(11:50):
this coming Sunday, the nineteenth, and it will go into effect, right,
and so that will mean Apple and Google and Oracle
like the people who make it possible for a mayors
to download this app taking it off of the App Store,
no longer supporting sort of the cloud infrastructure for TikTok
in the US, and then Monday comes along and President
Trump is inaugurated, and suddenly now the ball is sort
(12:13):
of in his court. Right, this app has been banned,
he said he doesn't want to be banned. What can
he do? We don't entirely know. There's a whole bunch
of different sort of theories as to what he could do.
Could he tell the Justice Department, hey, don't enforce this ban, right,
just simply let it happen and don't enforce the law.
Could he convince you know, Congress to basically, you know,
(12:33):
somehow reverse this law in some way or tweak it
so that it's delayed to the point where he can
try to negotiate. So I think immediately it's Supreme Court,
and then after that it's a lot of we don't know,
right because as the one thing we do know is
that President Trump is a bit of a wild card,
and so it's hard to sit here and really predict
what he's going to do. But I think we have
to get through the Supreme Court thing this week to
(12:55):
really have an idea of what the other options really
even are.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
All Right, Well, we'll be watching Kurt.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
I assume we'll be checking in on this, you know,
as soon as next week, depending on what happens. Thanks
again for joining us, and yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
We'll see you soon, my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
All right, let's bring in Josh Green, BusinessWeek's political reporter.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Josh welcome to Elon Inc.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Good to be back with you.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
And Dana Hall Elon Musk reporter and podcast regulator.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Dana welcome to Elon Inc.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
Hey, Max, So, Josh, your book, Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon,
Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency got into
basically the rise of Steve Bannon and the influence he
had on Trump and trump Ism. I want to play
a clip from Bannon's war Room podcast from earlier this
month in which Bannon a tax Elon, Let's give it
(13:47):
a listen.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
This is the United States of America.
Speaker 7 (13:49):
We're not gonna be lectured by a bunch of white
guys from South Africa.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Don't need it.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
We loving converts.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
But the converts sit in the back and study for
years and year and years to make sure you understand
the faith, and you understand the nuances of the faith
and understand how you can internalize the faith. Don't come
up and go to the pulpit in your first week
here and start lecturing people about the way things are
going to be. If you're gonna do that, we're gonna
get and we're gonna rip your face off.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
All right.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
So those are some that's some tough language from see Bannon. Josh,
what are the dynamics here? I mean, obviously Bannon doesn't
mean it literally, but what does he mean?
Speaker 8 (14:25):
I mean, look, Bannon, you know, as I wrote in
Devil's Part, Bannon was sort of the intellectual architect of
a lot of trump Ism and kind of maga economics.
He kind of pulled together this stuff into a philosophy
and sees himself as the kind of high priest. Is
that is that quote sort of reflected the trouble with
with Elon from Bannon's standpoint is that he sees him
(14:47):
as as a threat, but also it's kind of a
useful idiot in terms of being able to or being
willing to donate to get Trump elected, to keep him
in power, to help Republicans. The real fight, though, is
at the central tension in the new Trump administration is
shaping up to be between the Bannon camp and the
Elon camp. That's the way I think of it, the
(15:09):
kind of like analog one point zero populist nationalists, the
Bannon guys, and the kind of new breed of Silicon
Valley right wing provocateur Elon types, who include a whole
crowd of guys David Zachs, Vivek Ramaswami and others who
are trying to put their stamp on the incoming Trump administration.
(15:30):
And what Bannon's fulminating anger reflects is that there's a
big kind of intellectual tug of war going on right
now for who is going to control Trump, who is
going to be in Trump's ear, and Bannon is doing
everything he can to try and ensure that Elon does
not become that guy.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
I mean, these are basically the people who, as they
see it, built the MAGA movement, and now there's this,
you know, new guy who put a lot of money up,
but you know, is a newcomer.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Essentially.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
It didn't didn't believe any of this stuff until very recently.
I mean, Dana, I'm kind of curious watching this and
particularly watching Bannon bring up critiques that we've heard of
Elon Musk, but often from the left, like what do
you make of of what we've seen so far.
Speaker 6 (16:18):
Well, I have to admit, and I'm Josh, I'm so
glad you're here, Like I've kind of lost the plot
on this whole like Bannon Musk feud because I sort
of see it as like, Okay, you've got like Bannon
and Laura Lumer and all these people who were like
very central to Trump rise in twenty sixteen, like in
one camp, and then you have Elon and David Sachs
and all these other kind of tech bros. Is like
(16:40):
the Johnny cum latelies right, who are like yeah, right,
And so there's like a little bit of like wait,
like we were here first, like attention about the newcomers.
But isn't it also this big fight about immigration?
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Like I thought that the.
Speaker 6 (16:54):
Whole H one B visa issue was central to this feud,
and I'm still a little stuck on, like I don't
really know what Bannon thinks about H one B visas.
I mean, clearly Musk is very pro H one B visa.
His companies have thrived because of a lot of talent
from elsewhere. You know, Musk always says that like it's
(17:14):
like if you're fielding an NBA team. You want to
be able to hire the best of the brightest. And
so could you maybe walk us through a little bit
why immigration is kind of central to this beef.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 8 (17:24):
I Mean the way, like one way to think about
it is that like there's going to be a year's
long fight now in the Republican Party over what Trump
does and what he stands for, and the fight over
H one b Visas. It's kind of like the first
shots at Fort Sumter in the Civil War, like this,
this is where the fight's happening first. It's going to
spread to a lot of other areas. So Bannon's complain
(17:45):
on H one b Visas is he is a nativist.
He is a you know, populous nationalist, is what he
calls himself. And he believes that immigrants should not be
allowed to come in, including high skilled immigrants, to take these
jobs that ought to go to Americans instead. And one
little twist Bannon has added lately, he spent four months
in prison and befriended a lot of black and Hispanic
(18:08):
folks and said, you know, if Elon weren't importing Indian workers,
these are abandoned words, you know, guys, like I was
hanging out with in prison, Hispanics Blacks would have the
opportunities to become trained and hired as engineers. And essentially
Bannon's contention is that Elon and his crowd are screwing
over hardworking American citizens and privileging foreigners because doing so
(18:32):
makes it cheaper and more profitable for them to run
their businesses. And to me, like the key quote from Bannon,
he gave an interview I think it was to Bright
Barton News about a week ago that really kind of
laid out his beef with Elon. He said, quote, he
will do anything to make sure that any of his
companies is protected or has a better deal, or he
makes more money his aggregation of wealth and then through
(18:56):
wealth power.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
That's what Elon is focused on Bannon.
Speaker 8 (19:00):
And I think that that sort of reflects what's at
the heart of a lot of these fights that Bannon
thinks Elon isn't a true believer and he's going to
have this sort of death match with Elon to try
and prevail and hold on to his influencer Trump.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
I mean the thing to me, h one b has
been basically like a tech lobbyist issue for a really
long time because it's a way for big tech companies
to get less expensive engineers, and big tech companies, including
Elon Musk right, have been complaining that they don't have
enough engineers or whatever. So like, it's kind of interesting
because as much as Elon has adopted these sort of
(19:37):
like super hard right positions, you know, at the same
time this is going on, he's banging the drum on
X about Tommy Robinson, who's you know, this this very
far right wing British guy who's in prison now, Like
he's adopting some issues that are like kind of just normal,
like help out my tech company type stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And that is what I mean, that's what Bannon's keying
in on.
Speaker 8 (19:57):
Yeah, And I mean the weird thing about all this
is I did a story for Bloomberg News last week
as part of a team that looked at Elon trying
to extend his political influence into Europe, getting involved in
politics there, and I ended up interviewing Bannon for the piece,
and Bannon supports what Elon is doing in Europe. He said,
you know, the enemy of my enemy is my is
(20:19):
my friend, and therefore I'm four square behind Elon going
after these kind of center left snooty European governments, and
I hope he puts as much you know, money and
manpower and tech savvy into those as he did into
the US election. So, you know, I think that Bannon
views Elon as a threat, but he also views him
as an instrument that he'd like to be able to
(20:41):
wield in a lot of political fights, both in the
US and abroad.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
Didn't Bannon kind of walk back some of his comments
today at some kind of political event, you know, he's like, well,
he like deserves a seat, you know, he's urged a
seat at the table because he strokes this big check.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (20:55):
Well, look, Ben, let's let's let's back up a little bit.
We talked about this on this podcast before. And be clear,
Bannon was wrong about Elon Musk. I mean he told
me a year ago, try two years ago, that Elon
was never going to be a big player in right
wing maga politics because he was a cheap skate, as
Bannon put it, he'll never stroke a check. Well, Elon
(21:16):
ended up stroking a lot of big checks during the
last presidential race, and his promise to keep stroking them
for all sorts of Republican incumbents Republican challengers to help
Trump and Republicans maintain a grip on power.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So Bannon has had to backpedal a little bit on that.
Speaker 8 (21:32):
And the fact of the matter is that the fact
that Elon is willing to do this has really bought
him a prime position in Trump's inner circle. Like I
expected Trump to very quickly tire of Elon and his
annex and you get a lot of leaks from folks,
and I've heard this myself along the lines of, you know,
Trump doesn't want any co stars. Trump is sick of Elond.
(21:56):
I had a source in the administration the other day
say that, you know, Trump asked him if Elon was
on the spectrum, And so you can tell there's an
annoyance factor there. And yet because Elon is both willing
to give money and has this big and an influential
platform in Twitter and X, you know, Trump doesn't want
to throw him overboard. And so he's there and he's influential,
(22:19):
and he's someone that Bannon is going to have to
contend with.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
To me, one of the things that's been most interesting
about this is the extent to which Bannon and like
Laura Lumer and some.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Of these right wing figures.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
They kind of have Elon's number, Like they're bringing up
issues that I think sting a little bit right, Like
Bannon and Lumer have brought up issues around China, you know,
Elon's proximity to Beijing, Elon's like the history around Tesla.
One of the things that Bannon has said is that,
you know, Elon's goal is to become the world's first trillionaire.
And Dan, I'm kind of curious, like, do you buy
(22:52):
that as a motivation? Is that is that his goal is?
Is Steve Bannon? I mean, he's a perceptive guy. He
might be right about this.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
Yeah, but I think that people need to recognize that,
like Musk is amassing all this wealth for his number
one goal, which is to get to Mars, and like
all of his wealth accumulation is really in service of
the Mars mission, which has been like the animating force
in his life since he was like twelve years old
or thirteen or whatever. And read Isaac Asimov. I mean,
all everything that Elon does is about getting to Mars.
(23:22):
He is a man in a hurry. He really wants
to get to Mars before he dies. He would like to,
you know, so It's like all of this accumulation is
in the service of that. It's not like to be
rich just to be rich. It's like to be rich
so that he can colonize another planet. And I think
that like you're looking at Tesla's stock price, and you're
looking at the valuation of SpaceX, and you're looking at now,
(23:43):
you know, as we just had in our first segment,
the possibility that must could buy TikTok at the US,
and you're looking at you know, all of his other companies,
and Yeah, I could totally see it. I would be
shocked if anyone else became the first trillion air besides him.
Speaker 5 (24:02):
So, Josh, let's talk about Doge for a second. I
mean this relates to the banned stuff. We've seen a
couple of reports come out around Doge, one in the
New York Times last night suggesting that Elon would have
office space in the Executive Office building. Now I'm curious,
just one of the things that Bannon has been railing
about is kind of trying to keep Musk from having
(24:23):
too much influence over Trump.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Is this good real estate or bad real estate?
Speaker 8 (24:27):
Like?
Speaker 5 (24:27):
How good is it to have an office in the
Executive Office building, Like, what does this tell us about
how much influence Elon has and how important Doge is,
at least in the mind of Trump and the people
who are close to him.
Speaker 8 (24:38):
Well, let's back, it's good to have that kind of
real estate because it means you're a short walk away
from the West Wing and the president. And fights over
real estate and access go back probably a couple hundred years.
In US politics, every administration is you know, everybody is
jockeying to get close to the president. And that's especially
true when you have a president like Donald Trump or
(25:03):
like Ronald Reagan, who's particularly prone to listening to the
advice of the last person to have his ear. And
so Bannon's big fear. We talked about this the other day.
He said, mark my words, Elon is not going to
get a blue pass to the White House. A blue
pass is the best pass. It gives you all access,
it gives you drop in privileges and the president of
(25:24):
the Oval Office. Bannon doesn't want that to happen because
he knows that if Elon is sitting there talking in
Trump's ear, then Elon is the one with influence and
Bannon is not.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
Wait, so if you have the office in the Executive
Office building. Do you get the blue pass or is
that Are there levels here?
Speaker 1 (25:38):
No, that's separate.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
Look, the Executive Office Building is the building kind of
like it's a short walk from the West Wing, but
it's not an office in the West Wing. I mean,
what you ideally want to have is what Bannon had
when Trump was first selected in twenty seventeen. That's in
office in the West wing of the White House, you know,
ten feet from the Oval office, where you can kind
of drop in and you're talking to the president all day.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
You can control the paper flow of what.
Speaker 8 (26:02):
He sees, presuming the president reads, which I guess we
shouldn't presume anything, but in a normal White House, that's
that's what you want, is you want to be able
to control the flow of information. And that's the big
concern that Bannon has with Elon that if he's allowed
to be in Trump's inner orbit to have his ear,
then he's going to convince Trump. As Trump said, you
know a couple of weeks ago, I think that every
(26:24):
foreign college graduate in the US should have a visa
staple to his diploma. That's the kind of language that
Steve Bannon and his ilk have nightmares about that's the
sort of thing that Elon's pushing for and that a
lot of other people frankly would love.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
To have him.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, that's that's tech lobbyist language.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well, tech lobbyist language.
Speaker 8 (26:42):
And you know, look, a lot of kind of you know,
pro business folks on the left and the right would
love to have you know, more foreign educated students stay
in the US help grow US productivity. But it's absolutely
not what a Steve Bannon or a Steven.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Miller wants to have.
Speaker 8 (26:58):
And so the fact that Doze is going to be
in the Executive Office building means like, you know, it's
sort of a formal designation. You're part of this administration,
and you're very close to the West wing, but you're
not all the way into the West wing. So there's
still gonna be a question of is Elon going to
like do what normal EOB workers do and like get
(27:19):
your coffee at Starbucks every morning and sort of trudge
up to your office and work there all day. I
kind of doubt it, So, you know, I wouldn't read
too much meaning into like where their office space is
going to be. But you know, again, it's another kind
of like move on the chess board of Elon trying
to get closer to Trump and Bannon trying to checkmate
him and sort of knock all his pieces off the table.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
It isn't.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
I mean, Elon is close to Trump. Like Elon has
been camped out at mar A Lago, like renting some
little cottage like right there in Palm Beach. He's like
constantly flying back and forth. He's been at mari A
Lago like ever since the election, and he'll probably be
at inauguration on Monday, I would assume, Like, and they
talk to each other directly, Like there's no intermediary between
Elon and Donald. They like are texting each other and
(28:02):
talking to each other all the time. So like, isn't
Elon Musk closer to Trump than Bannon is at this point?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (28:10):
Look, you know, I think what happens when a president
goes into the White House is that the situation changes.
The people around him are very very tightly controlled, not
just by the Secret Service, but you know, if Trump
needs to go down to the situation room, like Elon
can't just sort of follow him in.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
There are rules that even Trump and.
Speaker 8 (28:28):
Elon can't flout, you know, And a lot of the
challenge for Susie Wiles, President Trump's incoming chief of staff
is going to be and this is true in the
last Trump administration, controlling who has access to the president.
If you let enough crazies in there, if you let
Laura Lumer in there, if you let Rudy Giuliani in there,
if you let all these kind of wacko election denihilists
(28:51):
you know who were in there kind of causing chaos
last time around, the things pretty quickly go off the rails.
And that's not what the kind of serious people in
trus Orbit want to happen. It's also not what like
Bannon and the MAGA hardcore people want to happen. So
it's not going to be quite as easy for Elon
to drop in on Trump in the White House as
it is in mar A Lago, where there's kind of
(29:13):
like an open door policy and any rich person or
celebrity it can just kind of come trapesing in and
shout up the President.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I think it'll be a little tougher this summer.
Speaker 5 (29:21):
Else, I just want you to know, both of you,
you have access to me unfettered. Anytime to Max, I
will I will pick up the phone, the blue pass
to my intellect.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Finally, we're going to have an update from the world
of sports E sports.
Speaker 5 (29:36):
Actually, we talked about Musk's very, very high ranking in
the game Diablo. For Josh this may come as news
to you, but he has apparently spent a huge amount
of time.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Playing this video game, playing video games.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
He streams video games, and during our year end specials,
Ryan Broderick, our guest, suggested that Musk might have a
ghost player. He might have someone essentially juicing his video
game stats, getting him better in the in the ratings
so he could like look better in.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
The world of Diablo. Now there's news here.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
There's a news development, and I just didn't want to
let this podcast end without bringing it up. So Musk
streamed himself playing another game. It's called Path of Exile
two and it basically he was sort of clumsy about
it in a way that sent a bunch of content
creators into a frenzy. The sort of leader of this
of these whistleblowers or would be whistleblowers, was a guy
named Quinn sixty nine TV. Quinn sixty nine TV identified
(30:33):
behavior that seemed inconsistent with having reached such a high level, Dana,
I just got to ask you, is Elon Musk doing
video game doping?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Wow?
Speaker 6 (30:43):
Well, you know this is the investigative like reporting line
that I think we have just really put top of
mind as we head into twenty twenty five. I mean,
Elon is a gamer, right, He's always been a video gamer.
Is how he unwinds.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I mean a lot of.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
His references are to video games. He is like fundamentally
like a thirteen year old boy in terms of so
much it wouldn't surprise me. But I don't have definitive proof.
And I think that he often plays video games when
he's like on his plane and at weird hours and
he's streaming because he's trying to like gain impressions and
like make X be this big thing. And so there's
(31:17):
a lot of motivations as to why I don't have
definitive proof, just like I don't have definitive proof about
Adrian Dittman.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Josh, if this scandal proves to be true, how damaging
do you think it'll be to the incoming administration? I mean,
is this this is gonna be the thing that finally
does Trump ban after all these years?
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, this will be like Watergate for sure.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
No.
Speaker 8 (31:38):
I love the fact, by the way, that there's like
video game truthers out there kind of like examining his
playing style and drawing these conclusions about what's real and
what's not real. But I don't know, Maybe maybe Congress
can appoint a special panel to investigate and get to
the bottom of this.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
Yeah, I mean, this is one of the problems with
Elon controlling Doge. This would be a perfect problem for
DOGE to tackle. But anyway, Yeah, I tried to dig
into this and honestly did not know enough about the
world of virtual goods to be able to evaluate the claims.
But listeners, we can promise you we will be following
this story, and you know, if you have thoughts about
this or any of the more serious topics we discussed
(32:16):
on the podcast, you can email us Eloninc. At Bloomberg
dot Net. Josh Dana, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Thank you. Yes.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Maserakas is
our editor and Rayhan Harmansi, our senior editor. The idea
for this very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples
handles engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising producer
is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
The Elon Inc.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
Theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sagiera.
Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to
Joel Weber and Bradstone. I'm Max Chafkin. If you have
a in it, rate and review our show, it'll help
other listeners find us and we will see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
it will be different.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
There is a reason the US government is so reliant
on him.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Welcome to Elon, Inc.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, January fourteenth.
I'm Max Chafkin in for David Papadopolis, who's.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
On vacation this week. We had big news last night.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
TikTok is reportedly under consideration by Chinese officials to be
sold or handed off. We're not totally sure what the
terms of this would look like to none other than
Elon Musk. We're gonna talk about the business implications, the
political implications, and of course the implications for teenagers everywhere.
And then, with the inauguration less than a week away,
(01:22):
we're going to talk about the brewing feud between Steve Bannon,
the kind of right wing influencer and podcaster, former Trump
administration official, and good old Elon. And to do this,
we've got a great cast of characters for you. Kurt
Wagner is joining us. He is Bloomberg's social media reporter
and my favorite high school quarterback.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Hey, Kurt, i'm ax.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Thanks.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
And later Dana Hall, our Elon Musk reporter, and Josh Green,
Bloomberg BusinessWeek political reporter, will be joining us to talk
about political stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
But Kurt, let's start here. There's some news.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
But to people who listen to the Elon podcast, it
would have been a little bit familiar. I want to
play a little bit of tape from our end of
the year, our New Year's Eve special.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I just don't see that being that beneficial for Elon,
like to have true social I think it's more likely
that he will will somehow end up with the US
version of TikTok Kurt.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
This is why Sarah Fryar makes a big bucks, Am
I right? I mean she called it.
Speaker 6 (02:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
The pay grade is high for Sarah Fryer for this
very reason. Right, She is seeing around corners that you
and I can only wish wish to be seen around.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
Max Okay, So Sarah was suggesting that Elon Musk could
somehow take over TikTok. Why don't she just break down
what Bloomberg reported last night. I mean this was a
big this is big news in the world of business.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Yeah, so we are admittedly still aways from Sarah's prediction
coming true. But what we reported was that senior officials
in China are basically game planning what do we do
if the TikTok ban goes into effect, right, which is
supposed to happen this coming Sunday. And one of the
options that has been discussed was the idea that, well,
(03:10):
maybe Elon Musk would be a reasonable owner for this platform, right,
And it kind of makes sense in a number of
ways if you want it to. One is that he
obviously already owns X. He has a very close relationship
with incoming President Trump, so it, you know, in all likelihood,
would be approved by the incoming administration, which is one
(03:31):
part of this equation. But then he also has business
in China, right with Tesla, and he has a huge
sort of foot in that country. And if you are
the Chinese government and you say well, is there someone
we want to curry favor with?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Right?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Is there somebody that we want to if this has
to be sold, if that's the only way for this
thing to exist, is Elon Musk perhaps the most stomachable
option for them, in part because they also maybe get
some leverage in return, and so for all those reasons,
it is sort of being discussed as a possibility. I
want to be clear that this is not necessarily going
(04:05):
to happen. That there's a whole bunch of other things
that would have to happen for this to ever actually
come to fruition. But again, senior officials in China sort
of thinking about Elon as a possible owner of TikTok
as a possibility.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, just to.
Speaker 5 (04:18):
Build on that for a second. So Number one, Byte
Dance the parent company of TikTok. They are not directly
controlled by the Chinese government. There is some question about
whether just because Chinese officials are talking about this would
Bite Dance to it, although, as as many people know,
China's government has a huge amount of sway on its businesses.
TikTok has actually called this report quote pure fiction. Responding
(04:43):
to a different news outlet, Kurt has Elon commented on
this yet, I.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Haven't seen him comment, but he did.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Someone posted on Twitter last night that was like, here's
all the TikTok users when Elon buys the company, and
it was all these people like screaming and crying and
being all sad. And Elon just responded to that tweet
with the laughing face emoji, right, like he he didn't
necessarily come out and say like this is crazy, I
would never buy it. He's sort of like leaned into
the joke, if you will. But no, you know, we
(05:10):
tried to reach out to Elon before publishing the story,
as you can imagine, Max, we did not hear back
from him or his representatives. So but I think what
you just said is important, right, which is the role
of byte Dance and all this So ByteDance, of course
is the Chinese parent company of TikTok, and it has
said it has no intention of selling this business. Now,
I think where the Chinese government comes in is if
(05:32):
they're the only way forward for TikTok to exist in
the US is a sale, and if they want to
sell it with the algorithm included, right, So that's the
technology that sort of determines what everyone.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Says, that type of sale, with that.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Type of technology changing hands would actually require Chinese government approval.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Kurt, how unusual is this?
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I mean, just from the outside, you know, a world
power sort of discussing handing one of the most successful
companies to a foreign politically connected executive, Like it sounds
so crazy, But I mean, like how I guess, I
guess question is, like how crazy is this? Obviously Sarah
Fryar predicted it, so it can't be that crazy, but still.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, I mean I'm not familiar of sort of a
similar situation, certainly in like the consumer tech space, right, Like,
nothing like this has ever happened from a social networking standpoint.
I can say that with a lot of confidence. I'm
not like a geopolitical expert when it comes to China
and trade and and all that stuff. So perhaps there
have been other businesses where there's been discussions like this,
(06:38):
But I think this sort of you know, is exemplifies
a little bit about like what is so unique about
our current moment in time, right like President Trump coming
back to office and all of sort of the unusual
or untraditional methods that he operates under. Elon Musk and
all of the sort of chaos that usually comes with him.
(06:59):
This and that you know, we've been talking about for
four years, but now is finally kind of coming together
at this exact moment in time, when when there's a
transition of power. So I do think that this is
very unique, very you know, interesting time for both tech
but also geopolitics. As you point out, I can't really
think of anything off the top of my head at
(07:19):
least that that sort of rivals this moment for me.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Well, and as you hinted at earlier there, it's probably
it's hard to think of another prominent American chief executive
officer who is as close to China as Elon Musk. Right,
he enjoys a very good relationship with Beijing. Tesla was
able to open a car factory, you know, quicker than
anybody else. They changed the rules effectively for ownership of
(07:45):
car factories for Elon Musk, So like you can imagine
him being a person that both Beijing could get comfortable
with and Trump. Kurt, what about Elon and TikTok. I
mean he has said in the past, unless I'm mistaken,
and that he wanted X to be more like TikTok,
So it seems like there's really a lot of synergy
with this proposal.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
I mean I think if you're Elon, this is like
the biggest coup of all time, right, Like you suddenly
get one of the most valuable, most exciting, up and
coming social networks sort of gift wrapped to you.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Right.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
And I think one element of this that we just
do not know is, let's pretend this all these stars
align max, right, and the Chinese government says, hey, we
want Elon to own this, And Trump says, hey, that
solves our national security concerns. And Elon says, great. What
does a deal actually look like here?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Right?
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Because we know that he is, you know, has a
ton of loans that he has taken out over the
years that use his Tesla stock as collateral. He's obviously
the richest man in the world, no doubt he could
find go out and find banks and other investors to
help him finance something like this. But as we saw
with the Twitter deal, it's not always like quite as
easy as like, oh, he's super rich, he can totally
(08:58):
do this thing.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, what would TikTok go for? Like how much?
Speaker 5 (09:02):
What would be like a reasonable fair market value for
Elon Musk to pay.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
So I believe our analysts at Bloomberg have pegged the
value of the US business. You know, the US version
of TikTok is somewhere between forty and fifty billion dollars.
So this is not the kind of thing that you
just like pop over to the bank and withdraw from
your savings account to make this thing happen. So I
do think there, you know, that is a probably significant hurdle.
You could imagine perhaps the Chinese government again if the
(09:29):
if it ultimately comes down to them saying, hey, this
is a deal, we really want this guy to have this.
Maybe they give him a sweetheart deal, right, because they
know in return they're buying sort of a relationship with
Elon Musk that's even greater than the one, as you
mentioned that they already have.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
I mean, you're using a lot of language that is
going to set off alarm bells with critics, right, I mean,
the prospect of this hugely successful social media company just
being handed to Elon Musk, a politically connected both to
the the leaders of both countries, Like, I mean, this
sounds like just a I don't even want to bring
up anti trust, but like hugely problematic in terms of
(10:07):
self dealing, in terms of all the concerns that supposedly
prompted Elon Muck to buy Twitter in the first place.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Yeah, well, I want to be clear, like I'm sort
of a game scenario planning here, right. I Like what
we know is in the story, which is what we
talked about at the very beginning, Max, which is like,
these discussions are happening at the top levels of the
Chinese government. That's really where we are right now, right.
Everything else is sort of like a hypothetical situation. So
I do want to be clear about that. But I
(10:35):
also think it's fair for people to say, WHOA, this
feels a little bit questionable, This feels like a little
bit you know, maybe even scary, right, because it's not
as we've talked about on this pod, and as y'all
have covered much closer even than I have, Like, Elon
is someone who has relationships with a lot of world leaders,
not all of them necessarily friends of the United States
(10:57):
in the traditional sense, right, And so I think there
is a feeling from some of Elon's critics in particular,
that like this idea of him having any type of
advanced relationship with the Chinese government could be a questionable thing,
a questionable decision for the Trump administration to make. So
there's a lot that we don't know.
Speaker 5 (11:17):
I mean, what happens now, what are you going to
be watching over the next week or so as we
proceed to the inauguration and then the deadline for TikTok
potentially being banned from the US.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Yeah, So, I mean, the most immediate kind of domino
to fall here is the Supreme Court ruling. So on
Friday of last week, TikTok's lawyers and the US government's
lawyers argued before the Supreme Court about whether or not
this band should be upheld. We're still waiting for the
court to ultimately come up with the decision on that. Now,
the expectation is that the law will be upheld, the
ban will be upheld, and we will then get to Sunday,
(11:50):
this coming Sunday, the nineteenth, and it will go into effect, right,
and so that will mean Apple and Google and Oracle
like the people who make it possible for a mayors
to download this app taking it off of the App Store,
no longer supporting sort of the cloud infrastructure for TikTok
in the US, and then Monday comes along and President
Trump is inaugurated, and suddenly now the ball is sort
(12:13):
of in his court. Right, this app has been banned,
he said he doesn't want to be banned. What can
he do? We don't entirely know. There's a whole bunch
of different sort of theories as to what he could do.
Could he tell the Justice Department, hey, don't enforce this ban, right,
just simply let it happen and don't enforce the law.
Could he convince you know, Congress to basically, you know,
(12:33):
somehow reverse this law in some way or tweak it
so that it's delayed to the point where he can
try to negotiate. So I think immediately it's Supreme Court,
and then after that it's a lot of we don't know,
right because as the one thing we do know is
that President Trump is a bit of a wild card,
and so it's hard to sit here and really predict
what he's going to do. But I think we have
to get through the Supreme Court thing this week to
(12:55):
really have an idea of what the other options really
even are.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
All Right, Well, we'll be watching Kurt.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
I assume we'll be checking in on this, you know,
as soon as next week, depending on what happens. Thanks
again for joining us, and yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
We'll see you soon, my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
All right, let's bring in Josh Green, BusinessWeek's political reporter.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Josh welcome to Elon Inc.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Good to be back with you.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
And Dana Hall Elon Musk reporter and podcast regulator.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Dana welcome to Elon Inc.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
Hey, Max, So, Josh, your book, Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon,
Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency got into
basically the rise of Steve Bannon and the influence he
had on Trump and trump Ism. I want to play
a clip from Bannon's war Room podcast from earlier this
month in which Bannon a tax Elon, Let's give it
(13:47):
a listen.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
This is the United States of America.
Speaker 7 (13:49):
We're not gonna be lectured by a bunch of white
guys from South Africa.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Don't need it.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
We loving converts.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
But the converts sit in the back and study for
years and year and years to make sure you understand
the faith, and you understand the nuances of the faith
and understand how you can internalize the faith. Don't come
up and go to the pulpit in your first week
here and start lecturing people about the way things are
going to be. If you're gonna do that, we're gonna
get and we're gonna rip your face off.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
All right.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
So those are some that's some tough language from see Bannon. Josh,
what are the dynamics here? I mean, obviously Bannon doesn't
mean it literally, but what does he mean?
Speaker 8 (14:25):
I mean, look, Bannon, you know, as I wrote in
Devil's Part, Bannon was sort of the intellectual architect of
a lot of trump Ism and kind of maga economics.
He kind of pulled together this stuff into a philosophy
and sees himself as the kind of high priest. Is
that is that quote sort of reflected the trouble with
with Elon from Bannon's standpoint is that he sees him
(14:47):
as as a threat, but also it's kind of a
useful idiot in terms of being able to or being
willing to donate to get Trump elected, to keep him
in power, to help Republicans. The real fight, though, is
at the central tension in the new Trump administration is
shaping up to be between the Bannon camp and the
Elon camp. That's the way I think of it, the
(15:09):
kind of like analog one point zero populist nationalists, the
Bannon guys, and the kind of new breed of Silicon
Valley right wing provocateur Elon types, who include a whole
crowd of guys David Zachs, Vivek Ramaswami and others who
are trying to put their stamp on the incoming Trump administration.
(15:30):
And what Bannon's fulminating anger reflects is that there's a
big kind of intellectual tug of war going on right
now for who is going to control Trump, who is
going to be in Trump's ear, and Bannon is doing
everything he can to try and ensure that Elon does
not become that guy.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
I mean, these are basically the people who, as they
see it, built the MAGA movement, and now there's this,
you know, new guy who put a lot of money up,
but you know, is a newcomer.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Essentially.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
It didn't didn't believe any of this stuff until very recently.
I mean, Dana, I'm kind of curious watching this and
particularly watching Bannon bring up critiques that we've heard of
Elon Musk, but often from the left, like what do
you make of of what we've seen so far.
Speaker 6 (16:18):
Well, I have to admit, and I'm Josh, I'm so
glad you're here, Like I've kind of lost the plot
on this whole like Bannon Musk feud because I sort
of see it as like, Okay, you've got like Bannon
and Laura Lumer and all these people who were like
very central to Trump rise in twenty sixteen, like in
one camp, and then you have Elon and David Sachs
and all these other kind of tech bros. Is like
(16:40):
the Johnny cum latelies right, who are like yeah, right,
And so there's like a little bit of like wait,
like we were here first, like attention about the newcomers.
But isn't it also this big fight about immigration?
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Like I thought that the.
Speaker 6 (16:54):
Whole H one B visa issue was central to this feud,
and I'm still a little stuck on, like I don't
really know what Bannon thinks about H one B visas.
I mean, clearly Musk is very pro H one B visa.
His companies have thrived because of a lot of talent
from elsewhere. You know, Musk always says that like it's
(17:14):
like if you're fielding an NBA team. You want to
be able to hire the best of the brightest. And
so could you maybe walk us through a little bit
why immigration is kind of central to this beef.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 8 (17:24):
I Mean the way, like one way to think about
it is that like there's going to be a year's
long fight now in the Republican Party over what Trump
does and what he stands for, and the fight over
H one b Visas. It's kind of like the first
shots at Fort Sumter in the Civil War, like this,
this is where the fight's happening first. It's going to
spread to a lot of other areas. So Bannon's complain
(17:45):
on H one b Visas is he is a nativist.
He is a you know, populous nationalist, is what he
calls himself. And he believes that immigrants should not be
allowed to come in, including high skilled immigrants, to take these
jobs that ought to go to Americans instead. And one
little twist Bannon has added lately, he spent four months
in prison and befriended a lot of black and Hispanic
(18:08):
folks and said, you know, if Elon weren't importing Indian workers,
these are abandoned words, you know, guys, like I was
hanging out with in prison, Hispanics Blacks would have the
opportunities to become trained and hired as engineers. And essentially
Bannon's contention is that Elon and his crowd are screwing
over hardworking American citizens and privileging foreigners because doing so
(18:32):
makes it cheaper and more profitable for them to run
their businesses. And to me, like the key quote from Bannon,
he gave an interview I think it was to Bright
Barton News about a week ago that really kind of
laid out his beef with Elon. He said, quote, he
will do anything to make sure that any of his
companies is protected or has a better deal, or he
makes more money his aggregation of wealth and then through
(18:56):
wealth power.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
That's what Elon is focused on Bannon.
Speaker 8 (19:00):
And I think that that sort of reflects what's at
the heart of a lot of these fights that Bannon
thinks Elon isn't a true believer and he's going to
have this sort of death match with Elon to try
and prevail and hold on to his influencer Trump.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
I mean the thing to me, h one b has
been basically like a tech lobbyist issue for a really
long time because it's a way for big tech companies
to get less expensive engineers, and big tech companies, including
Elon Musk right, have been complaining that they don't have
enough engineers or whatever. So like, it's kind of interesting
because as much as Elon has adopted these sort of
(19:37):
like super hard right positions, you know, at the same
time this is going on, he's banging the drum on
X about Tommy Robinson, who's you know, this this very
far right wing British guy who's in prison now, Like
he's adopting some issues that are like kind of just normal,
like help out my tech company type stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And that is what I mean, that's what Bannon's keying
in on.
Speaker 8 (19:57):
Yeah, And I mean the weird thing about all this
is I did a story for Bloomberg News last week
as part of a team that looked at Elon trying
to extend his political influence into Europe, getting involved in
politics there, and I ended up interviewing Bannon for the piece,
and Bannon supports what Elon is doing in Europe. He said,
you know, the enemy of my enemy is my is
(20:19):
my friend, and therefore I'm four square behind Elon going
after these kind of center left snooty European governments, and
I hope he puts as much you know, money and
manpower and tech savvy into those as he did into
the US election. So, you know, I think that Bannon
views Elon as a threat, but he also views him
as an instrument that he'd like to be able to
(20:41):
wield in a lot of political fights, both in the
US and abroad.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
Didn't Bannon kind of walk back some of his comments
today at some kind of political event, you know, he's like, well,
he like deserves a seat, you know, he's urged a
seat at the table because he strokes this big check.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (20:55):
Well, look, Ben, let's let's let's back up a little bit.
We talked about this on this podcast before. And be clear,
Bannon was wrong about Elon Musk. I mean he told
me a year ago, try two years ago, that Elon
was never going to be a big player in right
wing maga politics because he was a cheap skate, as
Bannon put it, he'll never stroke a check. Well, Elon
(21:16):
ended up stroking a lot of big checks during the
last presidential race, and his promise to keep stroking them
for all sorts of Republican incumbents Republican challengers to help
Trump and Republicans maintain a grip on power.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So Bannon has had to backpedal a little bit on that.
Speaker 8 (21:32):
And the fact of the matter is that the fact
that Elon is willing to do this has really bought
him a prime position in Trump's inner circle. Like I
expected Trump to very quickly tire of Elon and his
annex and you get a lot of leaks from folks,
and I've heard this myself along the lines of, you know,
Trump doesn't want any co stars. Trump is sick of Elond.
(21:56):
I had a source in the administration the other day
say that, you know, Trump asked him if Elon was
on the spectrum, And so you can tell there's an
annoyance factor there. And yet because Elon is both willing
to give money and has this big and an influential
platform in Twitter and X, you know, Trump doesn't want
to throw him overboard. And so he's there and he's influential,
(22:19):
and he's someone that Bannon is going to have to
contend with.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
To me, one of the things that's been most interesting
about this is the extent to which Bannon and like
Laura Lumer and some.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Of these right wing figures.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
They kind of have Elon's number, Like they're bringing up
issues that I think sting a little bit right, Like
Bannon and Lumer have brought up issues around China, you know,
Elon's proximity to Beijing, Elon's like the history around Tesla.
One of the things that Bannon has said is that,
you know, Elon's goal is to become the world's first trillionaire.
And Dan, I'm kind of curious, like, do you buy
(22:52):
that as a motivation? Is that is that his goal is?
Is Steve Bannon? I mean, he's a perceptive guy. He
might be right about this.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
Yeah, but I think that people need to recognize that,
like Musk is amassing all this wealth for his number
one goal, which is to get to Mars, and like
all of his wealth accumulation is really in service of
the Mars mission, which has been like the animating force
in his life since he was like twelve years old
or thirteen or whatever. And read Isaac Asimov. I mean,
all everything that Elon does is about getting to Mars.
(23:22):
He is a man in a hurry. He really wants
to get to Mars before he dies. He would like to,
you know, so It's like all of this accumulation is
in the service of that. It's not like to be
rich just to be rich. It's like to be rich
so that he can colonize another planet. And I think
that like you're looking at Tesla's stock price, and you're
looking at the valuation of SpaceX, and you're looking at now,
(23:43):
you know, as we just had in our first segment,
the possibility that must could buy TikTok at the US,
and you're looking at you know, all of his other companies,
and Yeah, I could totally see it. I would be
shocked if anyone else became the first trillion air besides him.
Speaker 5 (24:02):
So, Josh, let's talk about Doge for a second. I
mean this relates to the banned stuff. We've seen a
couple of reports come out around Doge, one in the
New York Times last night suggesting that Elon would have
office space in the Executive Office building. Now I'm curious,
just one of the things that Bannon has been railing
about is kind of trying to keep Musk from having
(24:23):
too much influence over Trump.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Is this good real estate or bad real estate?
Speaker 8 (24:27):
Like?
Speaker 5 (24:27):
How good is it to have an office in the
Executive Office building, Like, what does this tell us about
how much influence Elon has and how important Doge is,
at least in the mind of Trump and the people
who are close to him.
Speaker 8 (24:38):
Well, let's back, it's good to have that kind of
real estate because it means you're a short walk away
from the West Wing and the president. And fights over
real estate and access go back probably a couple hundred years.
In US politics, every administration is you know, everybody is
jockeying to get close to the president. And that's especially
true when you have a president like Donald Trump or
(25:03):
like Ronald Reagan, who's particularly prone to listening to the
advice of the last person to have his ear. And
so Bannon's big fear. We talked about this the other day.
He said, mark my words, Elon is not going to
get a blue pass to the White House. A blue
pass is the best pass. It gives you all access,
it gives you drop in privileges and the president of
(25:24):
the Oval Office. Bannon doesn't want that to happen because
he knows that if Elon is sitting there talking in
Trump's ear, then Elon is the one with influence and
Bannon is not.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
Wait, so if you have the office in the Executive
Office building. Do you get the blue pass or is
that Are there levels here?
Speaker 1 (25:38):
No, that's separate.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
Look, the Executive Office Building is the building kind of
like it's a short walk from the West Wing, but
it's not an office in the West Wing. I mean,
what you ideally want to have is what Bannon had
when Trump was first selected in twenty seventeen. That's in
office in the West wing of the White House, you know,
ten feet from the Oval office, where you can kind
of drop in and you're talking to the president all day.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
You can control the paper flow of what.
Speaker 8 (26:02):
He sees, presuming the president reads, which I guess we
shouldn't presume anything, but in a normal White House, that's
that's what you want, is you want to be able
to control the flow of information. And that's the big
concern that Bannon has with Elon that if he's allowed
to be in Trump's inner orbit to have his ear,
then he's going to convince Trump. As Trump said, you
know a couple of weeks ago, I think that every
(26:24):
foreign college graduate in the US should have a visa
staple to his diploma. That's the kind of language that
Steve Bannon and his ilk have nightmares about that's the
sort of thing that Elon's pushing for and that a
lot of other people frankly would love.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
To have him.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, that's that's tech lobbyist language.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well, tech lobbyist language.
Speaker 8 (26:42):
And you know, look, a lot of kind of you know,
pro business folks on the left and the right would
love to have you know, more foreign educated students stay
in the US help grow US productivity. But it's absolutely
not what a Steve Bannon or a Steven.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Miller wants to have.
Speaker 8 (26:58):
And so the fact that Doze is going to be
in the Executive Office building means like, you know, it's
sort of a formal designation. You're part of this administration,
and you're very close to the West wing, but you're
not all the way into the West wing. So there's
still gonna be a question of is Elon going to
like do what normal EOB workers do and like get
(27:19):
your coffee at Starbucks every morning and sort of trudge
up to your office and work there all day. I
kind of doubt it, So, you know, I wouldn't read
too much meaning into like where their office space is
going to be. But you know, again, it's another kind
of like move on the chess board of Elon trying
to get closer to Trump and Bannon trying to checkmate
him and sort of knock all his pieces off the table.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
It isn't.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
I mean, Elon is close to Trump. Like Elon has
been camped out at mar A Lago, like renting some
little cottage like right there in Palm Beach. He's like
constantly flying back and forth. He's been at mari A
Lago like ever since the election, and he'll probably be
at inauguration on Monday, I would assume, Like, and they
talk to each other directly, Like there's no intermediary between
Elon and Donald. They like are texting each other and
(28:02):
talking to each other all the time. So like, isn't
Elon Musk closer to Trump than Bannon is at this point?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (28:10):
Look, you know, I think what happens when a president
goes into the White House is that the situation changes.
The people around him are very very tightly controlled, not
just by the Secret Service, but you know, if Trump
needs to go down to the situation room, like Elon
can't just sort of follow him in.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
There are rules that even Trump and.
Speaker 8 (28:28):
Elon can't flout, you know, And a lot of the
challenge for Susie Wiles, President Trump's incoming chief of staff
is going to be and this is true in the
last Trump administration, controlling who has access to the president.
If you let enough crazies in there, if you let
Laura Lumer in there, if you let Rudy Giuliani in there,
if you let all these kind of wacko election denihilists
(28:51):
you know who were in there kind of causing chaos
last time around, the things pretty quickly go off the rails.
And that's not what the kind of serious people in
trus Orbit want to happen. It's also not what like
Bannon and the MAGA hardcore people want to happen. So
it's not going to be quite as easy for Elon
to drop in on Trump in the White House as
it is in mar A Lago, where there's kind of
(29:13):
like an open door policy and any rich person or
celebrity it can just kind of come trapesing in and
shout up the President.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I think it'll be a little tougher this summer.
Speaker 5 (29:21):
Else, I just want you to know, both of you,
you have access to me unfettered. Anytime to Max, I
will I will pick up the phone, the blue pass
to my intellect.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Finally, we're going to have an update from the world
of sports E sports.
Speaker 5 (29:36):
Actually, we talked about Musk's very, very high ranking in
the game Diablo. For Josh this may come as news
to you, but he has apparently spent a huge amount
of time.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Playing this video game, playing video games.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
He streams video games, and during our year end specials,
Ryan Broderick, our guest, suggested that Musk might have a
ghost player. He might have someone essentially juicing his video
game stats, getting him better in the in the ratings
so he could like look better in.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
The world of Diablo. Now there's news here.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
There's a news development, and I just didn't want to
let this podcast end without bringing it up. So Musk
streamed himself playing another game. It's called Path of Exile
two and it basically he was sort of clumsy about
it in a way that sent a bunch of content
creators into a frenzy. The sort of leader of this
of these whistleblowers or would be whistleblowers, was a guy
named Quinn sixty nine TV. Quinn sixty nine TV identified
(30:33):
behavior that seemed inconsistent with having reached such a high level, Dana,
I just got to ask you, is Elon Musk doing
video game doping?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Wow?
Speaker 6 (30:43):
Well, you know this is the investigative like reporting line
that I think we have just really put top of
mind as we head into twenty twenty five. I mean,
Elon is a gamer, right, He's always been a video gamer.
Is how he unwinds.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I mean a lot of.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
His references are to video games. He is like fundamentally
like a thirteen year old boy in terms of so
much it wouldn't surprise me. But I don't have definitive proof.
And I think that he often plays video games when
he's like on his plane and at weird hours and
he's streaming because he's trying to like gain impressions and
like make X be this big thing. And so there's
(31:17):
a lot of motivations as to why I don't have
definitive proof, just like I don't have definitive proof about
Adrian Dittman.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Josh, if this scandal proves to be true, how damaging
do you think it'll be to the incoming administration? I mean,
is this this is gonna be the thing that finally
does Trump ban after all these years?
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, this will be like Watergate for sure.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
No.
Speaker 8 (31:38):
I love the fact, by the way, that there's like
video game truthers out there kind of like examining his
playing style and drawing these conclusions about what's real and
what's not real. But I don't know, Maybe maybe Congress
can appoint a special panel to investigate and get to
the bottom of this.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
Yeah, I mean, this is one of the problems with
Elon controlling Doge. This would be a perfect problem for
DOGE to tackle. But anyway, Yeah, I tried to dig
into this and honestly did not know enough about the
world of virtual goods to be able to evaluate the claims.
But listeners, we can promise you we will be following
this story, and you know, if you have thoughts about
this or any of the more serious topics we discussed
(32:16):
on the podcast, you can email us Eloninc. At Bloomberg
dot Net. Josh Dana, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Thank you. Yes.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Maserakas is
our editor and Rayhan Harmansi, our senior editor. The idea
for this very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples
handles engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Our supervising producer
is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
The Elon Inc.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
Theme is written and performed by Taka Yazuzawa and Alex Sagiera.
Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to
Joel Weber and Bradstone. I'm Max Chafkin. If you have
a in it, rate and review our show, it'll help
other listeners find us and we will see you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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