June 4, 2024 • 34 mins
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s felony conviction for fraud, his followers scrambled to be first to reaffirm their fealty to the twice-impeached Republican. But for some reason, Trump’s new status as a convict also was accompanied by a resurgence of stories about another right-wing figure—Elon Musk—and their warming relationship.
Bloomberg has reported on how Musk is advising the presumptive GOP presidential candidate on all things crypto (maybe Dogecoin?), and the Wall Street Journal has related details about their time together in Florida—as well as the Tesla chief executive’s potential role in a second Trump administration. Bloomberg’s national politics correspondent Nancy Cook joins Max Chafkin and Kurt Wagner to talk about all of this. Also, the panel looked at some recent legal issues.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
it will be different. He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
There is a reason the US government is still reliant
on him. Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's
done nothing.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Welcome to elan Ing, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's June fourth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. This week,
with the US still reeling from Donald Trump's felony conviction,
we have politics on the brain, particularly the strange on again,
off again alliance that has been brewing between Musk and Trump.
(01:11):
There's been new reporting from US at Bloomberg and from
the Wall Street Journal about their meetings, plus news that
X will be hosting town hall events for Trump and
separately for RFK Junior. Before we dig into all that, though,
we'll do a rundown on some developments in Elon's seemingly
never ending legal troubles. To break down the latest on
a pair of X related lawsuits, were joined by BusinessWeek
(01:35):
senior writer and mister all around guy Clarksfield South High
School two thousand, Max.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Chafkins close, Thank you, great to be here, David, What
I get wrong?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Clarksfield, Clarkstown, Everyone knows that.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And Kurt Wagner, author of Battle for the Bird and
a reporter for US covering social platforms at Bloomberg.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Kurt, David, how are you?
Speaker 6 (02:01):
Thank you? Thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Later on, we're going to be joined by Bloomberg national
political correspondent Nancy Cook. But let's get right into this
suddenly seeming maze of lawsuits in legal troubles that Musk
is in again, Kurt, So bring us up to speed
a little bit here, because it's been coming on the
legal front fast and.
Speaker 6 (02:24):
Furious of late.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, there's probably a dozen or more legal disputes that
Elon and X are dealing with right now, but the
most prominent one is this SEC investigation into whether he
violated laws by purchasing the Twitter stock in the way
that he did back in early twenty twenty two. So
to remind folks.
Speaker 6 (02:45):
Prior to the takeover you meet.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
That's right before he actually acquired the company, he was
building a position in Twitter starting in late January of
twenty twenty two. The public didn't learn about that position,
that that stake that he'd acquired and to two months later,
and in those two months, Elon acquired more than nine
percent of Twitter stock without ever publicly disclosing this. Now,
(03:08):
the SEC's rules state that once you cross this five
percent ownership threshold, you're supposed to file paperwork. It then
becomes public everyone knows. Okay, Elon Musk is, you know,
a major shareholder in Twitter because he did not do that. Now,
the accusation is, did he keep the price of Twitter
stock artificially low so that he was able to buy
(03:28):
more of it at a lower price? Right because the
minute he says, hey, I'm buying Twitter stock, the price
just shoots up. So the longer he delays that, the
better deal he gets.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Just like when he says he's buying doge coin and
the price shoots up. Now, that's what the SEC is
looking into. And now there has also been a separate
lawsuit from investors more or less around the exact same issue.
Speaker 6 (03:53):
Is that right, it is the same issue.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Yeah, and this is the wrote down the Oklahoma Firefighter's
pension and retirement system them, So basically the pension fund
for firefighters in Oklahoma are saying, hey, wait a minute,
we own stock in Twitter. They actually, I believe sold
stock in Twitter during this period. And their complaint is
because they didn't know that Elon was buying these shares,
(04:15):
they sold that at a lower price than they could have. Right,
And so this lawsuit's really interesting. They just issued an
updated version of the lawsuit last week which had all
kinds of juicy details about Elon and his business manager,
Jared Birchall.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
And give us a couple of the best details.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
The biggest accusation in this lawsuit is that Elon was
ignoring advice from his bankers at Morgan Stanley to get
outside counsel as to when he should divulge these you know,
these sale or these purchases excuse me of Twitter stock. Right,
so Morgan Stanley's helping him out. We have all these
emails that are Morgan Stanley bankers saying, just want to
(04:53):
be sure we're approaching the five percent threshold. Okay, we
just crossed the five percent threshold, Like are you going
to disclose this? Are you getting outside legal advice on
what to do here? And Jared Birchall basically responds, yes, yes, yes,
we're you know, don't worry about it. We're getting advice
all this stuff. And the lawsuit claims that was all false,
that they were not speaking with outside counsel, they were
(05:14):
simply ignoring all of these warnings and essentially, you know,
blowing past the stop sign that the sec had put
up for them. And you know, it's a pretty damning
accusation in my opinion.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, I mean that's the interesting thing here to me, Max,
because going back a long long time in this country,
the rule is pretty simple, like if you go above
that threshold and stake in a company, thou shall declare
your position.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
I mean, there are few things that are sort of
fundamental to like Elon Musk's character. Like one is that
he really likes to be funny, he likes to crack jokes.
Another is like he really cares about sustainable transportation. And
like the third I'd say is that he does not
respect securities laws. He has a long history of kind
of make of sort of ignoring or sidestepping or skirting
(06:01):
the line ever so carefully around basic SEC laws, rules
and norms, which has led to essentially like a long
running dispute with the SEC.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
And he does that because he just find he finds
them absurd, not where not worth his time.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
I think, though, yeah, I think it's those two things
his whole attitude. Obviously it's not his fundamental nature, but
he does really believe that like you should reduce these
rules that like that the way you get to it
comes up over and over again in that Isaacson book.
You know anything, anything that's not physics is a suggestion,
not a requirement, right, And I think for him, you know,
all these SEC rules are just like these like ticki
(06:40):
tac bs, things that he views as more or less optional,
and that has that has led to a you know,
a year's long dispute with the SEC where we're honestly
like Musk, although he's settled at various times and he's
lost some judge, you know, he's basically gotten the better
of the SEC. He's he's more or less continued to
behave the way he has always behaved, which is to
(07:02):
you know, basically ignore many many securities laws, or at
least seem to ignore many securities laws. I should say
Elon Musk has in all of these cases denied wrongdoing.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
He constantly trash talks them.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
No.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Absolutely, Now the he's gonna have to give a deposition
in front of the SEC for five hours. They set
a five pretty precise five hours. Why five hours, Max?
Everyone gets hungry after that out.
Speaker 6 (07:26):
Of the.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
I mean, I assume they just ask for a big
chunk of time and five hours, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
It's like, sounds like a full day right now. Max.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
While all this Twitter stuff in these Twitter lawsuits and
the SEC deposition were come up, another totally unrelated to Twitter,
another lawsuit dropped out of the blue.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
Tell us about this one.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Yeah, so this is a lawsuit from investors in Tesla.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
The accusation here.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
If you look back in twenty twenty two, Tesla's stock
price fell a lot during that year, and the company
went from having a very positive outlook with Elon Musk
in October of twenty twenty two is saying essentially there's
demand as far as I can see, you know, no
demand issues. And then at the very end of the
year or sorry, early January, Tesla has this very bad
(08:14):
quarter the stock drops. You know, that was essentially a
low point for Elon Musk. He sold a bunch of stock,
I think a little over seven billion dollars worth of
Tesla's stock in December. And the allegation is from this
from these investors, that he had knowledge of how bad
the quarter was going to be and that he was
trading on that knowledge. Now, this kind of case happens
(08:37):
a lot when you have big swings in the stock price.
And also we should say Musk was selling a lot
because he was buying Twitter. I mean, the acquisition had
already closed at that point, but a lot of the
share sales earlier in the year were I think related
to like getting some cash for the Twitter acquisition. I
don't think Musk has responded to this. Must said he
(08:58):
needed dry powder, you know, he needed cash. That said, Like,
over the course of that year, Musk made several statements
that were like I'm done selling stock. He kept sort
of promising that he was done selling stock and then
selling some more stock. So you can sort of understand
why investors are upset about it and why they might
(09:19):
have a case. Now again, like these cases I think
tend to be hard to prove so we'll see, Kurt.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
There is just in general, though, a long litany of
lawsuits backed up going you know, going back months and
months against Twitter since he took over.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Now a huge list. Yeah, you know, we talked about
the two.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
Do you have an Do we have a number more
or less? Let's see.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I tried to write them down. I would say over
a dozen that I'm aware of. We talked about the
two related to his stock purchases. I briefly mentioned this
arbitration case to actually is like thousands of arbitration cases.
I believe there's more than two thousand employees that are
sort of signed up with this one lawyer for a
mass arbitration. But I think they may have to do
(10:03):
them all individually, which means you know, thousands of those.
There's a National Labor Relations Board case where they fired
an employee at X who's now suing him. You may
recall that the C suite at Twitter was due more
than one hundred million dollars in golden parachutes when Elon
took over and fired them, which he withheld. So the
(10:24):
C suite at Twitter's suing him. And then lastly, tons
of vendors, right, so a private Jet Company Law, a
law firm that did work for him. A lot of
the places where they just stopped paying rent at Twitter's offices,
those people are all coming to collect as well. So
it's been a steady stream. The line to sue Elon
(10:44):
is out the door and around the block.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
At this point.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Trump has a track record allegedly of not paying people,
so similar pattern here for Musk.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Yeah, I think it's very similar, and I mean it's
there are a lot of aggressive business people who kind
of do this in one way or another, and I
do think it's part of why, you know, we saw
after Trump was convicted in New York, Musk, you know,
sent out a flurry of replies essentially in support of
Donald Trump. And I think part of that is just,
(11:15):
you know, general he's now basically an anti Biden. The
fact of Trump support. A part of this is just
kind of political signaling. But I think part of it
is like he genuinely believes that it is dangerous and
he may worry in fact personally because he, like President
Trump formed. President Trump has tangled with with the government
and there are DOJ investigations and so on. And when
(11:37):
you see, you know, a successful business person being prosecuted.
I think that affects people, and it can affet people
on an emotional level.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
All right, now we're gonna bring in our national political correspondent,
Nancy Cook to talk about the on again, off again
Trump and Musk relationship.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Nancy, Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Okay, Nancy, So, if the on again, off again relationship
is on again, what exactly does on look like?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
So on looks like at this point, Well, it looks
pretty on, I have to be honest. You know, Trump
and Elon sort of had this relationship where they would
fight with each other. But really the Trump campaign for
the last several months has been on the hunt for donors.
They really want to close the fundraising gap between the
former president and President Biden, and so he has been
(12:34):
having a lot of meetings and breakfasts with rich people.
That's just the easiest way to put it. And so
in March in Palm Beach, he had a meeting with
a bunch of wealthy people at this donor's house in
Palm Beach and Trump went there. It was a brunch
and Elon Musk was there, and that's when they first
sort of started to speak again. I would say, behind
(12:56):
the scenes, which was what was happening during then, is
that Vivic Ramas, who as you remember, ran for president
in the Republican primary, had really started to broker this
truce between.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
The two of them.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Why why vivec Well, so Vivic is really auditioning to
be a vice president if Trump wins, or a cabinet member.
He is sucking up to Trump twenty four to seven.
He's going on TV, he's going to campaign events with Trump,
and so one key way to curry favor with the
Trump people at this point is to bring them rich
people who are donors. And so Vivic really brokeer this
(13:29):
cold war truce.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Between these because he knows Elon as well.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
He does know Elon as well. You know, Elon had
expressed admiration and some support for Vivic during the Republican primary.
They had their own relationship, and so Vivic tried to
sort of then steer that support around to Trump.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Okay, so they find themselves in this same launch and
they spoke directly then, and they begun speaking more frequently since, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
They were at this donor breakfast with a bunch of
donors or a handful of them, and then after that
they really started talking directly more to one another. And
so Trump loves to just call people on the phone.
He is, you know, old school that way. He likes
to you know, likes to pick up the phone. He's
never liked to email or text. He doesn't like to
leave a paper trail. So he has this whole informal
(14:21):
kitchen cabinet of people who he calls on the phone,
you know, rich people, economic people, TV hosts, Fox News people,
and he'll ask them their opinion on who he should
pick for vice president, or what they think of inflation
or you know, did they see that hit on CNN
last night? And so Elon has sort of joined this
list of people who Trump calls now and my reporting
(14:43):
shows that they do speak to one another directly with
some frequency now.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Now, Nancy apparently among other things they've been talking about,
Donald and Elon are our crypto that Elon has been
giving Trump advice on crypto.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
Tell us a little about that.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So the term campaign has started to think more about
crypto policy. I think in a bid to appeal to
younger voters, particularly young male voters, they're really going after
that demographic, and so they have really turned to you know,
silicon Valley and tech people much more for advice on this,
and so they have asked Elon about it. Also, they've
(15:22):
asked just a bunch of Silicon Valley people who with
ties to Elon about it as well. And so it's
sort of this like little orbit where they're not just
reaching out to him about it, but they're also reaching
out to a bunch of his friends. And then his
friends are like, oh, you should talk to Elon about it.
He's smart, and so I feel like I was told
that just sort of keeps reinforcing his influence.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Now now Max, I think Mosk has denied having discussed it.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Yeah, we should also say, like there's the possibility of
like a crypto voter demographic. But I think another possible explanation,
and one that I would credit a little bit more,
is the idea that there's a lot of money in
crypto to spend the election. You know, there's this massive
political Action committee, you know, more than one hundred million dollars.
(16:05):
You have a bunch of big name venture capitalists pouring
money into politics right now because of they want to
influence crypto regulations. You also have a bunch of you know,
kind of prominent crypto figures who have like suddenly become
like big time maga people. So it feels like part
of what's happening anyways, like the Trump campaign has figured
(16:25):
out that crypto is a way to appeal to Silicon
Valley types, and not just Elon Musk, but you know,
David Sachs and a lot of these other guys, like
a lot of big name vcs have crypto investments.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Okay, And when we spoke about politics some last week,
the sense was from mister Chafkin and others was that
must still hadn't cut Trump a check. Does that remain
the case as we understand it.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
As far as I know, we have not seen the
Federal Election Commission report filing yet, which is what the
Trump campaign has file with the federal government, which is
basically like a verified list of donations. But I do
think that if he did cut a check, the Trump
people would be so excited that we would know about
it at this point. And you have to remember that
the DeSantis campaign also were very confident that they would
(17:15):
get a check edit that never arrived. And so I'm
not really holding my breath as to whether or not
Elon becomes a donor but even if he is a
supporter and sort of in the Trump orbit and giving advice,
I think that's a pretty significant political development.
Speaker 5 (17:30):
Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, remember a
lot of people talk about Peter Teel and Trump. Teal
actually gave that his million dollar check pretty late in
the cycle and spoke at the Republican National Convention in
twenty sixteen, you know, before he donated any money or
any significant money.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
You can imagine the same thing happening here, right.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
Like Elon Musk, for all all the ways he's like controversial,
he is a famous, rich and successful businessman, and Donald
Trump respects. Donald Trump supporters respect that like he brings
even in his extremely red pilled ship posting persona, he
brings a level of respectability to you know, the Trump
(18:12):
campaign that is very valuable. Not only that, but he
has the potential to bring in other donors. You know,
the there are all these other rich guys who really
care about Elon Musk. Just one thing I'm keeping an
eye on later this week. You know, David Sachs I
mentioned him earlier. He's a good friend of Elon Musk.
I think he's probably the person in Silicon Valley, who
has Elon's ear in the most sustained way, is having
(18:34):
a big fundraiser, you know, up to five hundred thousand
dollars per couple. That's the highest tier in San Francisco.
We don't know who's going to be there, but it
is possible that Elon Musk will show up and so
like this, you know, by the end of the week,
we may have some serious developments.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
He also may just post about it, which seems you know,
i'd say a.
Speaker 6 (18:54):
New Sun and Kurt.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
The way Musk has X tacking it's it's public posture
has to be also has to square a bit with
and get them more aligned with the Trump camp.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Now I think so, I mean, I think donation aside
what Elon's doing with X and the opportunities that he's
providing Trump, you know, with this upcoming town hall that
they're going to do with everything that Elon usually says
about Biden and pushing back on Biden's agenda, like that's
more valuable, I would imagine, honestly than you know, some
(19:28):
check that he's going to write to him anyway, because
Elon's out here the setting the stage for Donald Trump
and this town hall is going to be a huge
moment only because it'll be you know, one, Elon's going
to make sure that everybody on the service, you know,
basically sees it. And two, it's kind of a return
of sorts for Donald Trump to this platform that he
(19:48):
really rode for four years as president. And so that
moment is going to be so, in my opinion, so
big for President Trump that you know, I don't think
the donation. I think that's a secondary thing, to be
honest with.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
You, Curtin, Yeah, tell us a little bit more about
those planned X town halls.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yeah, so X is going to broadcast essentially a live
town hall, one with Donald Trump and one with Robert F.
Kennedy Junior. And these are separate town halls, but you
know they'll be part of this new X video strategy
that they're trying to lean into this idea of like
live newsy video, and they're partnering with News Nation, which
(20:29):
is a TV network, to do this. But you know,
I think the big thing here is, and I kind
of alluded to this, this would be a return of
sorts for Donald Trump to X. Right, he was so
prevalent on what was then Twitter for years. He got banned.
You'll remember in the days after the January sixth, right,
and he's only tweeted one time, one time since then,
(20:50):
and that was his mugshot when he was booked in
I believe, Georgia several months ago. And so you know,
this would be a chance for him to come back.
He has like eighty plus million followers there. He's obviously
known to be a Twitter person. So for me, this
would be a homecoming of sorts, and I wonder if
it would be the beginning of him starting to tweet
(21:13):
and use that platform in that audience more regularly. I
wouldn't be shocked.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
But the risk there for him is he's got his
own social platform that is at a very lofty valuation.
The only scenario in which it makes even an iota
of sense that valuation is if Trump sticks on true
Social never goes back to any other platform. He wins
the presidency, and suddenly a whole bunch of people are
forced onto truth social because he's the president.
Speaker 6 (21:39):
You have to follow his post. If he's suddenly back.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
On Twitter or X, I should say, well, then even
that far fetched idea dies.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
You're right, But also, like the evaluation of truth Social,
I mean, to my eye, is just based on the
fact that a lot of people like Donald Trump, they
think he's going to be pre you know, like it's sort.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Of vibe based.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
So you could imagine situation where he came back to
Twitter in some way. Like the thing that I've been
thinking about is, you know, he has supposedly has this
deal where he's supposed to, you know, have his tweets
on truth Social rather than Twitter. Now, what about spaces,
right these these audio calls, maybe that is a loophole.
You know, audio is much bigger on Twitter. Elon Musk
(22:20):
loves spaces. You know, you could imagine a situation where
like Kurt's kind of hinting at you know, this News
Nation X town Hall, which feels like a TV thing
that's going to be broadcast, could lead to sort of
more what what we more think of as like native
Twitter content and you know, spaces audio getting on X
you know a couple of times a month with Elon,
(22:42):
which you know you could totally see Trump doing.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
So, Nancy, So Trump goes to X spaces and Musk
potentially goes to the Republican Convention and speaks there.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, there is some discussion about having him speak at
their Republic invention. I mean, my reporting shows that that's
not totally nailed down yet, but I think that there
is interest from the Trump campaign and potentially having him
speak there.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
They should look for a video of Elon Musk speaking anywhere,
because like he never does, like I like, honestly, one
thing they'll have to figure out is like, I don't
think Elon Musk has ever I don't know, I mean.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
When he when he did SNL, I mean presumably there
was a right, there.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
Was SNL, but normally it's it's in the context of
an interview, like he almost always is interviewed. He doesn't
give these kind of speeches, and so they would have
to figure out a way. I guess that, you know,
they'll study the SNL.
Speaker 6 (23:36):
Tape, right.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
And the other thing I'll just say is, uh, Teal
wasn't much of a public speaker before he spoke at
the at the convention back in sixteen, right, I.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Mean, Teal had given some talks.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
He's not a very I don't think he's you would
anyone call him like a polished public speaker. But it's
a little bit different than Elon, who I say, even
as unpolished if Peter teel as Elon is even more
off the cup. You know, a lot of these appearances
in recent months have been like on zoom, He's like
holding the phone, Like you could imagine a universe of
(24:09):
this where Elon says like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll speak
of the Republican Convention and then it turns out he's
going to be like facetiming in from it would be
a real letdown.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
The reporting that I do have about the convention so far,
the convention planning, is that they are thinking about it
in a different way, do you know what I mean?
Just because conventions have always sort of been handled a
certain way doesn't mean that the Trump campaign has to
do it that way. And we saw that when Trump
was president, like he blew up that last State of
the Union and did it totally differently. He gave Rush
(24:39):
Limbau the Medal of Freedom like in the middle of
the State of the Union, Like it was like really
kind of highly a high TV production, lots of surprises,
surprise guests, people popping up. I mean, I could see
them doing the same with the convention. And so rather
than having Elon come and just talk at a podium
for like thirty minutes, which I agree might be weird.
Maybe they do do an interview, maybe they video, maybe
(25:01):
they record him talking ahead of time and then play
it and it's only ten minutes. I mean, I think
they would love to have him, and so I could
see them really being like, hey, you know, Trump did
the Apprentice. Surely we can figure out like a kind
of cool TV way to do this for Elin.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
It would be pretty cool if if they put Elin
in a rocket ship and then they they blasted off
and they had him do it from like you know,
orbiting Earth or something that would it's there.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
It seemed like there are a lot of cool options.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Okay, now, Max, you're our feud guy here, mister feud.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
Uh weren't these two feuding? Uh?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
They had? I mean they had one of my favorite feuds.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And in fact, you know, Donald Trump, do I have
a ranking on it?
Speaker 5 (25:40):
I mean, it never rose to the top five because,
as Nancy says, there was kind of always a little
bit of a question of.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Like how you know, how real is?
Speaker 5 (25:50):
But I have to say, you know, Trump obviously master
of kind of a put down, and he had I
think one of the best all time you know, insults
Elon Musk, he called him a yes artist. In twenty
twenty two, around the time that that Elon Musk was,
you know, trying to buy Twitter, and of course, you know,
Trump has had a competing service, so there there was
(26:10):
a little bit of that. And then there was this
like lengthy tweet with very colorful like he was begging
on his knees.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I guess, well, that's.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
One of Trump's favorite lines. So and so came to
me begging on their knees, asking for forgiveness or this
or that thing.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yeah, but it kind of cut it did It did.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
Cut to certain things about Elon Musk because of course
he has been incredibly effective at getting you know, money
from from government and the form of subsidies or attacks,
incentives and so on, and of course that's part of
what's going on here right Elon Musk is you know,
no doubt he's had some sort of political evolution. He's
he's much more conservative or far right or whatever than
(26:47):
he was previously. But he is also making a calculation,
making a I think what is like a self conscious
bet on the person who he thinks is going to
be president. And that you know, matters to Tesla and
space and really to.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
About all his companies.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
So I think there's a there's definitely like a self
interest component here, and he has almost like backed himself
into the corner a little bit where he's become so
anti Biden and so you know, so opposed to the
Democrats and so unwilling. It seems anyway that bridge has
been burned that you know, he almost has no choice.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Max is right. Elon really understands something about Trump that
like a raft of lobbyists in DC are are sort
of missing where you don't if you want to get
to Trump and influence him, you don't like hire a
bunch of lobbyists who have been in DC forever who
work at law firms. What you do is like, if
you're a business person and you want to influence him,
you want to have his cell phone number and you
(27:42):
just want to reach out to him directly. And that
is basically what Elon is setting up in case Trump wins,
and it could mean a lot for his business interests.
You know, if Trump wins, you know the White House
wants to do something in space. Elon can call Trump directly,
same thing with electric vehicles. He will call Trump directly.
Trump does not like all these intermediaries and lobbyists and
(28:04):
lawyers and advisors and chiefs of staff. He just wants
to deal with the CEO directly. And that's what Elon
has set up.
Speaker 6 (28:10):
Nancy.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Is there's no sort of explicit quid pro quo here
in the dealings between Musk and Trump.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
Is there no?
Speaker 1 (28:19):
But I think that Trump is trying to position himself,
particularly after the trial, as someone who is scooping up support,
you know, among these different sort of donor groups. So
you know, he has made a big play with oil executives,
sort of trying to say, oh, look, they're all supporting me.
And I think he's trying to make that same play
with Silicon Valley. You know, Wall Street hasn't totally come
around him yet, although it seems like they're you know,
(28:41):
more people are real way little and so I think
he's using Elon as sort of a proxy to help
to get to more tech people and they want to
be able to say, oh, look, all these influential and
rich different sectors of the economy are starting to support me,
and Elon is part of that.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Now, does or do these conversations in this growing dialogue
do they lead to an actual cabinet post. I've heard
and seen some reporting to that fact, or what exactly
are we talking about here? And if Trump is indeed
the next president of this country.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
So Trump is really superstitious and does not like to
think about who will fill government posts before he wins.
There are people around him that are thinking about like who,
you know, sort of spitballing ideas of like who could
fill the top economic jobs. But it is not at
the level where like he is picking people because remember,
he just got out of many weeks of a trial
in New York. You know, he hasn't even sort of
(29:38):
focused on the VP stuff yet. What I was told
in my reporting was that there has been some discussion about,
you know, Elon playing some advisory role if Trump wins
the White House. So that could be on one of
these like you know, CEO advisory boards, or they could
make a special role for Elon. But again, like an
advisory role, it wouldn't be a cabinet post where he
(30:00):
would have to give up his stakes and his companies
because I don't think that. I think Trump Blake's having
him out there and sort of influential, and I can't
imagine Elon really doing that.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
Yeah, yeah, I mean he's not going to be like
under secretary for Technology, I mean whatever. He's not going
to have some mid level government job. But remember, like
during the first Trump administration, this is exactly how they
tried to use him. And I think Elon was valuable
then for pretty much the same reasons he's valuable now,
except he's more famous, he's richer, and of course there
(30:32):
is I think more so than there was last time,
where Elon had this kind of centrist identity. There really
is a chance that he could be more partisan, either
in his statements or well, he's already being partisan in
his statements, but by writing a huge check.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
All right, But let's pretend indeed that Trump wins and
he gives Mosque a cabinet seat. All right, Mac, I
need you to tell me what cabinet seat is it
that Elon musk.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
So I would guess that they will create a new
cabinet position.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
What are cabinet secretaries? Are they?
Speaker 5 (31:09):
Secretaries may be Secretary of Romance, because Trump will come
around to the well, this is done serious Secretary of
Romantary of procreation, and there will be a you know,
the Elon is very worried about the population christ We've
seen as in other countries, we see, you know, Vladimir Putin,
when you know, other other world leaders have have become
(31:30):
concerned about, you know, not having enough babies. I could
see Trump coming around to that point of view and
Elon Musk it's one of his interests and you know
who better.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
All right, Uh, I don't know how you follow that.
But what post do you envision Musk getting in this scenario.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
I think that it would be, you know, some sort
of advisory role on technology or electric vehicles, not appropriation. Yeah,
I'm not I'm not going to touch that. I don't
I want no part of that.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Bloomberg was separately Max, Okay, I was joking.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
I don't think that's actually going to happen, And I
was hoping Nancy would also make it.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
Give a joke answer, But Nancy, Nancy is a serious journalist.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
I think more realistic is like the CEO Council's. Yeah,
I'll be on some some boring council.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
He won't be telling us all to have more babies.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Okay, all right, And so Nancy, you're sticking to the
advisory role.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
Kurt, what do you got for us?
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Is the is the head of Space Force a position?
Speaker 3 (32:39):
See that is good because that's simultaneously a little fun
and clever and also almost could be a thing.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
If you're like, don't you have to be a general
to be the Space Force? Is like a branch.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Unless you musk, unless you're Elon Musk, in which kill.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Trump will just give him like four or five stars.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
All right, here we go, because Kurt, Kurt, because you
passed that test with flying colors. The last question in
the segment, I'm going to start with you and try
to set an example for the others. Here I am
setting in again in this scenario in which he does
now he is now a cabinet member. I am setting
the over underline and how many days he stays in
that post between before he's either fired or quits at
(33:16):
sixty days? Do you take the over sixty or under sixty?
Speaker 4 (33:20):
I would take under.
Speaker 6 (33:21):
I would take under.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
That's like five mooches.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I guess it's like five max over under sixty. I think, God,
this is not a difficult question.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I'm can I take the line.
Speaker 6 (33:36):
I's cambling, I've never don it again.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Answer over over Nancy, under under it's.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Totally under by the way, Nancy's got that right.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
Nancy, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Thanks for having me. Good luck guys on that.
Speaker 6 (33:56):
Max Kurt, thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Rayhan Harmansi are senior editors. The idea for this very
show also came from Rayhan. Blake Maples handles engineering, and
we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott and Antonio Muffarech.
Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 6 (34:27):
The Elon Inc.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Theme has written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugira.
Brendon Francis Newman is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
is the head of Bloomberg Podcast.
Speaker 6 (34:38):
I'm David Papadopoulos.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 6 (34:45):
See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
it will be different. He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
There is a reason the US government is still reliant
on him. Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's
done nothing.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Welcome to elan Ing, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's June fourth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. This week,
with the US still reeling from Donald Trump's felony conviction,
we have politics on the brain, particularly the strange on again,
off again alliance that has been brewing between Musk and Trump.
(01:11):
There's been new reporting from US at Bloomberg and from
the Wall Street Journal about their meetings, plus news that
X will be hosting town hall events for Trump and
separately for RFK Junior. Before we dig into all that, though,
we'll do a rundown on some developments in Elon's seemingly
never ending legal troubles. To break down the latest on
a pair of X related lawsuits, were joined by BusinessWeek
(01:35):
senior writer and mister all around guy Clarksfield South High
School two thousand, Max.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Chafkins close, Thank you, great to be here, David, What
I get wrong?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Clarksfield, Clarkstown, Everyone knows that.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And Kurt Wagner, author of Battle for the Bird and
a reporter for US covering social platforms at Bloomberg.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Kurt, David, how are you?
Speaker 6 (02:01):
Thank you? Thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Later on, we're going to be joined by Bloomberg national
political correspondent Nancy Cook. But let's get right into this
suddenly seeming maze of lawsuits in legal troubles that Musk
is in again, Kurt, So bring us up to speed
a little bit here, because it's been coming on the
legal front fast and.
Speaker 6 (02:24):
Furious of late.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, there's probably a dozen or more legal disputes that
Elon and X are dealing with right now, but the
most prominent one is this SEC investigation into whether he
violated laws by purchasing the Twitter stock in the way
that he did back in early twenty twenty two. So
to remind folks.
Speaker 6 (02:45):
Prior to the takeover you meet.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
That's right before he actually acquired the company, he was
building a position in Twitter starting in late January of
twenty twenty two. The public didn't learn about that position,
that that stake that he'd acquired and to two months later,
and in those two months, Elon acquired more than nine
percent of Twitter stock without ever publicly disclosing this. Now,
(03:08):
the SEC's rules state that once you cross this five
percent ownership threshold, you're supposed to file paperwork. It then
becomes public everyone knows. Okay, Elon Musk is, you know,
a major shareholder in Twitter because he did not do that. Now,
the accusation is, did he keep the price of Twitter
stock artificially low so that he was able to buy
(03:28):
more of it at a lower price? Right because the
minute he says, hey, I'm buying Twitter stock, the price
just shoots up. So the longer he delays that, the
better deal he gets.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Just like when he says he's buying doge coin and
the price shoots up. Now, that's what the SEC is
looking into. And now there has also been a separate
lawsuit from investors more or less around the exact same issue.
Speaker 6 (03:53):
Is that right, it is the same issue.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Yeah, and this is the wrote down the Oklahoma Firefighter's
pension and retirement system them, So basically the pension fund
for firefighters in Oklahoma are saying, hey, wait a minute,
we own stock in Twitter. They actually, I believe sold
stock in Twitter during this period. And their complaint is
because they didn't know that Elon was buying these shares,
(04:15):
they sold that at a lower price than they could have. Right,
And so this lawsuit's really interesting. They just issued an
updated version of the lawsuit last week which had all
kinds of juicy details about Elon and his business manager,
Jared Birchall.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
And give us a couple of the best details.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
The biggest accusation in this lawsuit is that Elon was
ignoring advice from his bankers at Morgan Stanley to get
outside counsel as to when he should divulge these you know,
these sale or these purchases excuse me of Twitter stock. Right,
so Morgan Stanley's helping him out. We have all these
emails that are Morgan Stanley bankers saying, just want to
(04:53):
be sure we're approaching the five percent threshold. Okay, we
just crossed the five percent threshold, Like are you going
to disclose this? Are you getting outside legal advice on
what to do here? And Jared Birchall basically responds, yes, yes, yes,
we're you know, don't worry about it. We're getting advice
all this stuff. And the lawsuit claims that was all false,
that they were not speaking with outside counsel, they were
(05:14):
simply ignoring all of these warnings and essentially, you know,
blowing past the stop sign that the sec had put
up for them. And you know, it's a pretty damning
accusation in my opinion.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, I mean that's the interesting thing here to me, Max,
because going back a long long time in this country,
the rule is pretty simple, like if you go above
that threshold and stake in a company, thou shall declare
your position.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
I mean, there are few things that are sort of
fundamental to like Elon Musk's character. Like one is that
he really likes to be funny, he likes to crack jokes.
Another is like he really cares about sustainable transportation. And
like the third I'd say is that he does not
respect securities laws. He has a long history of kind
of make of sort of ignoring or sidestepping or skirting
(06:01):
the line ever so carefully around basic SEC laws, rules
and norms, which has led to essentially like a long
running dispute with the SEC.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
And he does that because he just find he finds
them absurd, not where not worth his time.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
I think, though, yeah, I think it's those two things
his whole attitude. Obviously it's not his fundamental nature, but
he does really believe that like you should reduce these
rules that like that the way you get to it
comes up over and over again in that Isaacson book.
You know anything, anything that's not physics is a suggestion,
not a requirement, right, And I think for him, you know,
all these SEC rules are just like these like ticki
(06:40):
tac bs, things that he views as more or less optional,
and that has that has led to a you know,
a year's long dispute with the SEC where we're honestly
like Musk, although he's settled at various times and he's
lost some judge, you know, he's basically gotten the better
of the SEC. He's he's more or less continued to
behave the way he has always behaved, which is to
(07:02):
you know, basically ignore many many securities laws, or at
least seem to ignore many securities laws. I should say
Elon Musk has in all of these cases denied wrongdoing.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
He constantly trash talks them.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
No.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Absolutely, Now the he's gonna have to give a deposition
in front of the SEC for five hours. They set
a five pretty precise five hours. Why five hours, Max?
Everyone gets hungry after that out.
Speaker 6 (07:26):
Of the.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
I mean, I assume they just ask for a big
chunk of time and five hours, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
It's like, sounds like a full day right now. Max.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
While all this Twitter stuff in these Twitter lawsuits and
the SEC deposition were come up, another totally unrelated to Twitter,
another lawsuit dropped out of the blue.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
Tell us about this one.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Yeah, so this is a lawsuit from investors in Tesla.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
The accusation here.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
If you look back in twenty twenty two, Tesla's stock
price fell a lot during that year, and the company
went from having a very positive outlook with Elon Musk
in October of twenty twenty two is saying essentially there's
demand as far as I can see, you know, no
demand issues. And then at the very end of the
year or sorry, early January, Tesla has this very bad
(08:14):
quarter the stock drops. You know, that was essentially a
low point for Elon Musk. He sold a bunch of stock,
I think a little over seven billion dollars worth of
Tesla's stock in December. And the allegation is from this
from these investors, that he had knowledge of how bad
the quarter was going to be and that he was
trading on that knowledge. Now, this kind of case happens
(08:37):
a lot when you have big swings in the stock price.
And also we should say Musk was selling a lot
because he was buying Twitter. I mean, the acquisition had
already closed at that point, but a lot of the
share sales earlier in the year were I think related
to like getting some cash for the Twitter acquisition. I
don't think Musk has responded to this. Must said he
(08:58):
needed dry powder, you know, he needed cash. That said, Like,
over the course of that year, Musk made several statements
that were like I'm done selling stock. He kept sort
of promising that he was done selling stock and then
selling some more stock. So you can sort of understand
why investors are upset about it and why they might
(09:19):
have a case. Now again, like these cases I think
tend to be hard to prove so we'll see, Kurt.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
There is just in general, though, a long litany of
lawsuits backed up going you know, going back months and
months against Twitter since he took over.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Now a huge list. Yeah, you know, we talked about
the two.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
Do you have an Do we have a number more
or less? Let's see.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I tried to write them down. I would say over
a dozen that I'm aware of. We talked about the
two related to his stock purchases. I briefly mentioned this
arbitration case to actually is like thousands of arbitration cases.
I believe there's more than two thousand employees that are
sort of signed up with this one lawyer for a
mass arbitration. But I think they may have to do
(10:03):
them all individually, which means you know, thousands of those.
There's a National Labor Relations Board case where they fired
an employee at X who's now suing him. You may
recall that the C suite at Twitter was due more
than one hundred million dollars in golden parachutes when Elon
took over and fired them, which he withheld. So the
(10:24):
C suite at Twitter's suing him. And then lastly, tons
of vendors, right, so a private Jet Company Law, a
law firm that did work for him. A lot of
the places where they just stopped paying rent at Twitter's offices,
those people are all coming to collect as well. So
it's been a steady stream. The line to sue Elon
(10:44):
is out the door and around the block.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
At this point.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Trump has a track record allegedly of not paying people,
so similar pattern here for Musk.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Yeah, I think it's very similar, and I mean it's
there are a lot of aggressive business people who kind
of do this in one way or another, and I
do think it's part of why, you know, we saw
after Trump was convicted in New York, Musk, you know,
sent out a flurry of replies essentially in support of
Donald Trump. And I think part of that is just,
(11:15):
you know, general he's now basically an anti Biden. The
fact of Trump support. A part of this is just
kind of political signaling. But I think part of it
is like he genuinely believes that it is dangerous and
he may worry in fact personally because he, like President
Trump formed. President Trump has tangled with with the government
and there are DOJ investigations and so on. And when
(11:37):
you see, you know, a successful business person being prosecuted.
I think that affects people, and it can affet people
on an emotional level.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
All right, now we're gonna bring in our national political correspondent,
Nancy Cook to talk about the on again, off again
Trump and Musk relationship.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Nancy, Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Okay, Nancy, So, if the on again, off again relationship
is on again, what exactly does on look like?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
So on looks like at this point, Well, it looks
pretty on, I have to be honest. You know, Trump
and Elon sort of had this relationship where they would
fight with each other. But really the Trump campaign for
the last several months has been on the hunt for donors.
They really want to close the fundraising gap between the
former president and President Biden, and so he has been
(12:34):
having a lot of meetings and breakfasts with rich people.
That's just the easiest way to put it. And so
in March in Palm Beach, he had a meeting with
a bunch of wealthy people at this donor's house in
Palm Beach and Trump went there. It was a brunch
and Elon Musk was there, and that's when they first
sort of started to speak again. I would say, behind
(12:56):
the scenes, which was what was happening during then, is
that Vivic Ramas, who as you remember, ran for president
in the Republican primary, had really started to broker this
truce between.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
The two of them.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Why why vivec Well, so Vivic is really auditioning to
be a vice president if Trump wins, or a cabinet member.
He is sucking up to Trump twenty four to seven.
He's going on TV, he's going to campaign events with Trump,
and so one key way to curry favor with the
Trump people at this point is to bring them rich
people who are donors. And so Vivic really brokeer this
(13:29):
cold war truce.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Between these because he knows Elon as well.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
He does know Elon as well. You know, Elon had
expressed admiration and some support for Vivic during the Republican primary.
They had their own relationship, and so Vivic tried to
sort of then steer that support around to Trump.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Okay, so they find themselves in this same launch and
they spoke directly then, and they begun speaking more frequently since, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
They were at this donor breakfast with a bunch of
donors or a handful of them, and then after that
they really started talking directly more to one another. And
so Trump loves to just call people on the phone.
He is, you know, old school that way. He likes
to you know, likes to pick up the phone. He's
never liked to email or text. He doesn't like to
leave a paper trail. So he has this whole informal
(14:21):
kitchen cabinet of people who he calls on the phone,
you know, rich people, economic people, TV hosts, Fox News people,
and he'll ask them their opinion on who he should
pick for vice president, or what they think of inflation
or you know, did they see that hit on CNN
last night? And so Elon has sort of joined this
list of people who Trump calls now and my reporting
(14:43):
shows that they do speak to one another directly with
some frequency now.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Now, Nancy apparently among other things they've been talking about,
Donald and Elon are our crypto that Elon has been
giving Trump advice on crypto.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
Tell us a little about that.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So the term campaign has started to think more about
crypto policy. I think in a bid to appeal to
younger voters, particularly young male voters, they're really going after
that demographic, and so they have really turned to you know,
silicon Valley and tech people much more for advice on this,
and so they have asked Elon about it. Also, they've
(15:22):
asked just a bunch of Silicon Valley people who with
ties to Elon about it as well. And so it's
sort of this like little orbit where they're not just
reaching out to him about it, but they're also reaching
out to a bunch of his friends. And then his
friends are like, oh, you should talk to Elon about it.
He's smart, and so I feel like I was told
that just sort of keeps reinforcing his influence.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Now now Max, I think Mosk has denied having discussed it.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Yeah, we should also say, like there's the possibility of
like a crypto voter demographic. But I think another possible explanation,
and one that I would credit a little bit more,
is the idea that there's a lot of money in
crypto to spend the election. You know, there's this massive
political Action committee, you know, more than one hundred million dollars.
(16:05):
You have a bunch of big name venture capitalists pouring
money into politics right now because of they want to
influence crypto regulations. You also have a bunch of you know,
kind of prominent crypto figures who have like suddenly become
like big time maga people. So it feels like part
of what's happening anyways, like the Trump campaign has figured
(16:25):
out that crypto is a way to appeal to Silicon
Valley types, and not just Elon Musk, but you know,
David Sachs and a lot of these other guys, like
a lot of big name vcs have crypto investments.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Okay, And when we spoke about politics some last week,
the sense was from mister Chafkin and others was that
must still hadn't cut Trump a check. Does that remain
the case as we understand it.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
As far as I know, we have not seen the
Federal Election Commission report filing yet, which is what the
Trump campaign has file with the federal government, which is
basically like a verified list of donations. But I do
think that if he did cut a check, the Trump
people would be so excited that we would know about
it at this point. And you have to remember that
the DeSantis campaign also were very confident that they would
(17:15):
get a check edit that never arrived. And so I'm
not really holding my breath as to whether or not
Elon becomes a donor but even if he is a
supporter and sort of in the Trump orbit and giving advice,
I think that's a pretty significant political development.
Speaker 5 (17:30):
Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, remember a
lot of people talk about Peter Teel and Trump. Teal
actually gave that his million dollar check pretty late in
the cycle and spoke at the Republican National Convention in
twenty sixteen, you know, before he donated any money or
any significant money.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
You can imagine the same thing happening here, right.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
Like Elon Musk, for all all the ways he's like controversial,
he is a famous, rich and successful businessman, and Donald
Trump respects. Donald Trump supporters respect that like he brings
even in his extremely red pilled ship posting persona, he
brings a level of respectability to you know, the Trump
(18:12):
campaign that is very valuable. Not only that, but he
has the potential to bring in other donors. You know,
the there are all these other rich guys who really
care about Elon Musk. Just one thing I'm keeping an
eye on later this week. You know, David Sachs I
mentioned him earlier. He's a good friend of Elon Musk.
I think he's probably the person in Silicon Valley, who
has Elon's ear in the most sustained way, is having
(18:34):
a big fundraiser, you know, up to five hundred thousand
dollars per couple. That's the highest tier in San Francisco.
We don't know who's going to be there, but it
is possible that Elon Musk will show up and so
like this, you know, by the end of the week,
we may have some serious developments.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
He also may just post about it, which seems you know,
i'd say a.
Speaker 6 (18:54):
New Sun and Kurt.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
The way Musk has X tacking it's it's public posture
has to be also has to square a bit with
and get them more aligned with the Trump camp.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Now I think so, I mean, I think donation aside
what Elon's doing with X and the opportunities that he's
providing Trump, you know, with this upcoming town hall that
they're going to do with everything that Elon usually says
about Biden and pushing back on Biden's agenda, like that's
more valuable, I would imagine, honestly than you know, some
(19:28):
check that he's going to write to him anyway, because
Elon's out here the setting the stage for Donald Trump
and this town hall is going to be a huge
moment only because it'll be you know, one, Elon's going
to make sure that everybody on the service, you know,
basically sees it. And two, it's kind of a return
of sorts for Donald Trump to this platform that he
(19:48):
really rode for four years as president. And so that
moment is going to be so, in my opinion, so
big for President Trump that you know, I don't think
the donation. I think that's a secondary thing, to be
honest with.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
You, Curtin, Yeah, tell us a little bit more about
those planned X town halls.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yeah, so X is going to broadcast essentially a live
town hall, one with Donald Trump and one with Robert F.
Kennedy Junior. And these are separate town halls, but you
know they'll be part of this new X video strategy
that they're trying to lean into this idea of like
live newsy video, and they're partnering with News Nation, which
(20:29):
is a TV network, to do this. But you know,
I think the big thing here is, and I kind
of alluded to this, this would be a return of
sorts for Donald Trump to X. Right, he was so
prevalent on what was then Twitter for years. He got banned.
You'll remember in the days after the January sixth, right,
and he's only tweeted one time, one time since then,
(20:50):
and that was his mugshot when he was booked in
I believe, Georgia several months ago. And so you know,
this would be a chance for him to come back.
He has like eighty plus million followers there. He's obviously
known to be a Twitter person. So for me, this
would be a homecoming of sorts, and I wonder if
it would be the beginning of him starting to tweet
(21:13):
and use that platform in that audience more regularly. I
wouldn't be shocked.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
But the risk there for him is he's got his
own social platform that is at a very lofty valuation.
The only scenario in which it makes even an iota
of sense that valuation is if Trump sticks on true
Social never goes back to any other platform. He wins
the presidency, and suddenly a whole bunch of people are
forced onto truth social because he's the president.
Speaker 6 (21:39):
You have to follow his post. If he's suddenly back.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
On Twitter or X, I should say, well, then even
that far fetched idea dies.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
You're right, But also, like the evaluation of truth Social,
I mean, to my eye, is just based on the
fact that a lot of people like Donald Trump, they
think he's going to be pre you know, like it's sort.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Of vibe based.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
So you could imagine situation where he came back to
Twitter in some way. Like the thing that I've been
thinking about is, you know, he has supposedly has this
deal where he's supposed to, you know, have his tweets
on truth Social rather than Twitter. Now, what about spaces,
right these these audio calls, maybe that is a loophole.
You know, audio is much bigger on Twitter. Elon Musk
(22:20):
loves spaces. You know, you could imagine a situation where
like Kurt's kind of hinting at you know, this News
Nation X town Hall, which feels like a TV thing
that's going to be broadcast, could lead to sort of
more what what we more think of as like native
Twitter content and you know, spaces audio getting on X
you know a couple of times a month with Elon,
(22:42):
which you know you could totally see Trump doing.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
So, Nancy, So Trump goes to X spaces and Musk
potentially goes to the Republican Convention and speaks there.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, there is some discussion about having him speak at
their Republic invention. I mean, my reporting shows that that's
not totally nailed down yet, but I think that there
is interest from the Trump campaign and potentially having him
speak there.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
They should look for a video of Elon Musk speaking anywhere,
because like he never does, like I like, honestly, one
thing they'll have to figure out is like, I don't
think Elon Musk has ever I don't know, I mean.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
When he when he did SNL, I mean presumably there
was a right, there.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
Was SNL, but normally it's it's in the context of
an interview, like he almost always is interviewed. He doesn't
give these kind of speeches, and so they would have
to figure out a way. I guess that, you know,
they'll study the SNL.
Speaker 6 (23:36):
Tape, right.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
And the other thing I'll just say is, uh, Teal
wasn't much of a public speaker before he spoke at
the at the convention back in sixteen, right, I.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Mean, Teal had given some talks.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
He's not a very I don't think he's you would
anyone call him like a polished public speaker. But it's
a little bit different than Elon, who I say, even
as unpolished if Peter teel as Elon is even more
off the cup. You know, a lot of these appearances
in recent months have been like on zoom, He's like
holding the phone, Like you could imagine a universe of
(24:09):
this where Elon says like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll speak
of the Republican Convention and then it turns out he's
going to be like facetiming in from it would be
a real letdown.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
The reporting that I do have about the convention so far,
the convention planning, is that they are thinking about it
in a different way, do you know what I mean?
Just because conventions have always sort of been handled a
certain way doesn't mean that the Trump campaign has to
do it that way. And we saw that when Trump
was president, like he blew up that last State of
the Union and did it totally differently. He gave Rush
(24:39):
Limbau the Medal of Freedom like in the middle of
the State of the Union, Like it was like really
kind of highly a high TV production, lots of surprises,
surprise guests, people popping up. I mean, I could see
them doing the same with the convention. And so rather
than having Elon come and just talk at a podium
for like thirty minutes, which I agree might be weird.
Maybe they do do an interview, maybe they video, maybe
(25:01):
they record him talking ahead of time and then play
it and it's only ten minutes. I mean, I think
they would love to have him, and so I could
see them really being like, hey, you know, Trump did
the Apprentice. Surely we can figure out like a kind
of cool TV way to do this for Elin.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
It would be pretty cool if if they put Elin
in a rocket ship and then they they blasted off
and they had him do it from like you know,
orbiting Earth or something that would it's there.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
It seemed like there are a lot of cool options.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Okay, now, Max, you're our feud guy here, mister feud.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
Uh weren't these two feuding? Uh?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
They had? I mean they had one of my favorite feuds.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And in fact, you know, Donald Trump, do I have
a ranking on it?
Speaker 5 (25:40):
I mean, it never rose to the top five because,
as Nancy says, there was kind of always a little
bit of a question of.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Like how you know, how real is?
Speaker 5 (25:50):
But I have to say, you know, Trump obviously master
of kind of a put down, and he had I
think one of the best all time you know, insults
Elon Musk, he called him a yes artist. In twenty
twenty two, around the time that that Elon Musk was,
you know, trying to buy Twitter, and of course, you know,
Trump has had a competing service, so there there was
(26:10):
a little bit of that. And then there was this
like lengthy tweet with very colorful like he was begging
on his knees.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I guess, well, that's.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
One of Trump's favorite lines. So and so came to
me begging on their knees, asking for forgiveness or this
or that thing.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yeah, but it kind of cut it did It did.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
Cut to certain things about Elon Musk because of course
he has been incredibly effective at getting you know, money
from from government and the form of subsidies or attacks,
incentives and so on, and of course that's part of
what's going on here right Elon Musk is you know,
no doubt he's had some sort of political evolution. He's
he's much more conservative or far right or whatever than
(26:47):
he was previously. But he is also making a calculation,
making a I think what is like a self conscious
bet on the person who he thinks is going to
be president. And that you know, matters to Tesla and
space and really to.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
About all his companies.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
So I think there's a there's definitely like a self
interest component here, and he has almost like backed himself
into the corner a little bit where he's become so
anti Biden and so you know, so opposed to the
Democrats and so unwilling. It seems anyway that bridge has
been burned that you know, he almost has no choice.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Max is right. Elon really understands something about Trump that
like a raft of lobbyists in DC are are sort
of missing where you don't if you want to get
to Trump and influence him, you don't like hire a
bunch of lobbyists who have been in DC forever who
work at law firms. What you do is like, if
you're a business person and you want to influence him,
you want to have his cell phone number and you
(27:42):
just want to reach out to him directly. And that
is basically what Elon is setting up in case Trump wins,
and it could mean a lot for his business interests.
You know, if Trump wins, you know the White House
wants to do something in space. Elon can call Trump directly,
same thing with electric vehicles. He will call Trump directly.
Trump does not like all these intermediaries and lobbyists and
(28:04):
lawyers and advisors and chiefs of staff. He just wants
to deal with the CEO directly. And that's what Elon
has set up.
Speaker 6 (28:10):
Nancy.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Is there's no sort of explicit quid pro quo here
in the dealings between Musk and Trump.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
Is there no?
Speaker 1 (28:19):
But I think that Trump is trying to position himself,
particularly after the trial, as someone who is scooping up support,
you know, among these different sort of donor groups. So
you know, he has made a big play with oil executives,
sort of trying to say, oh, look, they're all supporting me.
And I think he's trying to make that same play
with Silicon Valley. You know, Wall Street hasn't totally come
around him yet, although it seems like they're you know,
(28:41):
more people are real way little and so I think
he's using Elon as sort of a proxy to help
to get to more tech people and they want to
be able to say, oh, look, all these influential and
rich different sectors of the economy are starting to support me,
and Elon is part of that.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Now, does or do these conversations in this growing dialogue
do they lead to an actual cabinet post. I've heard
and seen some reporting to that fact, or what exactly
are we talking about here? And if Trump is indeed
the next president of this country.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
So Trump is really superstitious and does not like to
think about who will fill government posts before he wins.
There are people around him that are thinking about like who,
you know, sort of spitballing ideas of like who could
fill the top economic jobs. But it is not at
the level where like he is picking people because remember,
he just got out of many weeks of a trial
in New York. You know, he hasn't even sort of
(29:38):
focused on the VP stuff yet. What I was told
in my reporting was that there has been some discussion about,
you know, Elon playing some advisory role if Trump wins
the White House. So that could be on one of
these like you know, CEO advisory boards, or they could
make a special role for Elon. But again, like an
advisory role, it wouldn't be a cabinet post where he
(30:00):
would have to give up his stakes and his companies
because I don't think that. I think Trump Blake's having
him out there and sort of influential, and I can't
imagine Elon really doing that.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
Yeah, yeah, I mean he's not going to be like
under secretary for Technology, I mean whatever. He's not going
to have some mid level government job. But remember, like
during the first Trump administration, this is exactly how they
tried to use him. And I think Elon was valuable
then for pretty much the same reasons he's valuable now,
except he's more famous, he's richer, and of course there
(30:32):
is I think more so than there was last time,
where Elon had this kind of centrist identity. There really
is a chance that he could be more partisan, either
in his statements or well, he's already being partisan in
his statements, but by writing a huge check.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
All right, But let's pretend indeed that Trump wins and
he gives Mosque a cabinet seat. All right, Mac, I
need you to tell me what cabinet seat is it
that Elon musk.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
So I would guess that they will create a new
cabinet position.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
What are cabinet secretaries? Are they?
Speaker 5 (31:09):
Secretaries may be Secretary of Romance, because Trump will come
around to the well, this is done serious Secretary of
Romantary of procreation, and there will be a you know,
the Elon is very worried about the population christ We've
seen as in other countries, we see, you know, Vladimir Putin,
when you know, other other world leaders have have become
(31:30):
concerned about, you know, not having enough babies. I could
see Trump coming around to that point of view and
Elon Musk it's one of his interests and you know
who better.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
All right, Uh, I don't know how you follow that.
But what post do you envision Musk getting in this scenario.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
I think that it would be, you know, some sort
of advisory role on technology or electric vehicles, not appropriation. Yeah,
I'm not I'm not going to touch that. I don't
I want no part of that.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Bloomberg was separately Max, Okay, I was joking.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
I don't think that's actually going to happen, And I
was hoping Nancy would also make it.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
Give a joke answer, But Nancy, Nancy is a serious journalist.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
I think more realistic is like the CEO Council's. Yeah,
I'll be on some some boring council.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
He won't be telling us all to have more babies.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Okay, all right, And so Nancy, you're sticking to the
advisory role.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
Kurt, what do you got for us?
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Is the is the head of Space Force a position?
Speaker 3 (32:39):
See that is good because that's simultaneously a little fun
and clever and also almost could be a thing.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
If you're like, don't you have to be a general
to be the Space Force? Is like a branch.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Unless you musk, unless you're Elon Musk, in which kill.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Trump will just give him like four or five stars.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
All right, here we go, because Kurt, Kurt, because you
passed that test with flying colors. The last question in
the segment, I'm going to start with you and try
to set an example for the others. Here I am
setting in again in this scenario in which he does
now he is now a cabinet member. I am setting
the over underline and how many days he stays in
that post between before he's either fired or quits at
(33:16):
sixty days? Do you take the over sixty or under sixty?
Speaker 4 (33:20):
I would take under.
Speaker 6 (33:21):
I would take under.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
That's like five mooches.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I guess it's like five max over under sixty. I think, God,
this is not a difficult question.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I'm can I take the line.
Speaker 6 (33:36):
I's cambling, I've never don it again.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Answer over over Nancy, under under it's.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Totally under by the way, Nancy's got that right.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
Nancy, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Thanks for having me. Good luck guys on that.
Speaker 6 (33:56):
Max Kurt, thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Rayhan Harmansi are senior editors. The idea for this very
show also came from Rayhan. Blake Maples handles engineering, and
we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott and Antonio Muffarech.
Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 6 (34:27):
The Elon Inc.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Theme has written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugira.
Brendon Francis Newman is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
is the head of Bloomberg Podcast.
Speaker 6 (34:38):
I'm David Papadopoulos.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 6 (34:45):
See you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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