March 12, 2024 • 16 mins
This week on Elon, Inc., Businessweek senior reporter and editor Max Chafkin talks to Joshua Green, Businessweek’s political correspondent, about a recent meeting (or is it meetings?) of Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Elon has said that he won’t be donating to either US presidential candidate but — as recent X posts make clear — he is firmly in Trump’s political territory. Will Trump and Elon put aside past differences to somehow merge? We discuss.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Well, Elon Musk is
now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
He says.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
be different.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
There is a reason the US government is so reliant
on him.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing
of him anything he does, he's fascinating people. We built
the factory here in less time than it would have
taken to get THEE permits in California.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to Elon, Inc, Bloomberg's weekly show about all things
Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, March twelfth. I'm Max Chafkin in
for David Popadopolis. You just heard Elon Musk talking about
his newly adopted state, Texas. This podcast is headed there.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
We're going to.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Austin for the South by Southwest conference this week where
we're doing a live show about all things Musk in Texas.
So today we've got a really interesting shorter episode featuring
Josh Green, who's Business Week's politics writer. And then on
Thursday you can come right back to this feed and
get the full length Texas sized episode from Austin. Last week,
(01:32):
Elon took his jet to Florida, where he met with
Donald Trump to talk about, among other things, money. The
world's second richest man is of great interest to the
Republican presidential contender, as Trump's fundraising has struggled in comparison
to President Biden's and Elon of course has taken a
very strong, almost obsessive, you might say, interest in US
(01:54):
politics and seems very sympathetic to Trump's ideas and ideology
and politics. And we've the perfect guest to talk about this,
Josh Green, BusinessWeek's politics writer. He has a new book
that you should check out.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
The Rebels.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Josh also wrote pretty much the defining book about the
rise of Donald Trump. It's called Devil's Bargain. Josh is
here to talk about the complicated relationship between Elon Musk
and Trump. Josh, thanks for coming on, Elon.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Ink great to be with you.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
All Right, So what is.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
The status of the Elon Musk Donald Trump relationship?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Well, I mean they have a long and interesting relationship.
I mean Trump and Trump's White House has always been
fascinated by Elon. During the transition, right after Trump was
first elected in twenty sixteen, Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner
had him into Trump Tower and they wanted him to
be a kind of an avatar of the new Trump
administration because they were big into building things in America,
(02:47):
and Elon was a big automaker who built cool things
in the United States. And this was at a time
where like every reputable business didn't want to get within
one hundred yards of Donald Trump. So they brought in Elon,
and at one point he was set to chair a
new kind of committee of industrialists that Trump was putting together.
(03:08):
I actually had a source and reached out that was
going to leak this to us at Bloomberg News, and
then Trump did something awful and Elon kind of backed away.
I forget what exactly the controversy was. But back then
Elon still cared about kind of maintaining a good reputation
with kind of non right wing, non maga America. But
over the last for eight years, he's obviously traveled on
(03:30):
this pretty extraordinary political journey. Musk has and Trump has too.
He's back, He's going to be the GOP nominee, and
he now very badly needs one thing that Elon has
a lot of, and that is money. You know, Trump
has had an easy run through the Republican primaries, but
he has a big problem. He only has about thirty
(03:52):
million dollars. Four years ago at this time he had
abo one hundred million dollars, and I think he views
Elon as somebody who could easily fund his campaign, and
so he's had him down twice. Now I think tomorrow
lago to kind of sweet talk him and hopes that
Elon will jump on board the Trump train.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, and of course, I mean, unlike most people who
are near the top of the Bloomberg billionaire's list, Elon
Musk is not averse to these kind of far extreme
right wing politics. There's obviously like a close ideological connection
at this point. Just to go back to that, to
the history you're talking about, so, as I remember, there
(04:30):
were Tesla customers that were really mad about Donald Trump's
border policy, and I think back then he might have
been worried about what would the blowback be for customers,
But of course, as you point out now that there's
no risk of that for Elon Musk, right. He's on
Twitter every day essentially tweeting things that are pretty close
to white nationalism, lots of border panic, lots of concern
(04:50):
about minority groups.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
It's very much.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
The same thing that Donald Trumps saying from the campaign trail.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean I think two
things have happened to bring us to where we are now.
One is that Trump has been normalized to a large degree.
When he was elected in twenty sixteen, corporate America didn't
want to have anything to do with him at all,
and that was a real humiliation and embarrassment to Trump,
who wants nothing more than to be seen as important
(05:16):
and genuflected to, especially by kind of sexy business leaders
like the tech industry. There's a famous meeting Elon was
at it during the transition where Trump flew all these
people and he was really hoping they would get on board,
and they didn't. Now you see a lot more corporate
business types and tech especially tech types, CosIng up to Trump.
(05:38):
And at the same time, you have people like Elon
who have been fully red pilled and now kind of
spout a lot of the MAGA immigration great replacement conspiracy theories.
So they're really kind of Peas in a pod at
this point, that's something that Trump wants to take advantage of.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
So totally Peas and the pop politically, but maybe interpersonally,
not exactly the best relationship. We have some tape of
Donald Trump talking about his you know, potential new friend
and campaign savior, Elon Musk.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
No, he's got himself a mess, you know. He said
the other day. Oh, I've never voted for a Republican.
I said, I didn't know that. He told me voted
for me. So he's another post artist. But he's not
going to be buying it.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
He's not going to be buying it, although he might later,
who hell knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
He's got a pretty rotten contract. I looked at his contract,
not a good contract. But he's got sign up for
Truth and I mean separately.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
He went on Truth Social, which, of course as a
competitor to Elon Musk's social network. Said when Elon Musk
came to the White House asking me for help on
his many subsidized projects, whether it's electric cars that don't
drive long enough, for driverless cars that crash, or rocket ship,
said nowhere I could have said, drop to your knees
and bag and he would have done it.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I mean, it's like, really some harsh stuff here.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Elon, meanwhile, has also said some not so nice things
to Trump, although probably not quite as sharps is that
he said, I don't hate the man, but it's time
for Trump to hang up his hat and sail off
into the sunset.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
He also told Walter Isaacson that.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
That Trump was one of the best bullshters ever, which
I think coming from Musk, maybe both an insult and
a compliment, but needless to say, they don't get along
super well, no they don't.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And also look, I mean the thing that was noticed
by Trump was that Elon basically went out and supported
Ron DeSantis, his arch enemy in the primaries, and then
when DeSantis crashed and burned, flirted with Vivic Ramaswami. So
not a lot of love lost here. I think the
problem for both of them is that they both have
this burning need to be the center of attention, and
(07:40):
so it's almost like when you put two opposite magnets
against each other, like there's just this kind of natural pushback.
As Steve Bannon once told me, Donald Trump doesn't want
any co stars and I think the danger of bringing
Elon Musk in too closely is that, look, he's a
guy that generates a lot of attention, has a huge
social media file, and has the constant attention of the
(08:02):
news media. The problem for Trump, though, is he needs money.
He needs a sugar daddy, and he is looking at
Elon Musk to be that sugar daddy. There's a lot
that has gone wrong in Trump's world over the last
year or so. I mean, Number one, he has enormous
legal problems and that's really really expensive. And what's happened
is he's gotten the Republican National Committee in a super
(08:24):
pack basically to pay his legal bills. So donors don't
want to give money to Trump because they know it's
not going to elect Republicans, it's going to pay Trump's
legal bills. The donors wound up spending fifty million dollars
on Trump's legal bills last year. I just checked the numbers.
For January, they spent another five million. At the same time,
Trump has driven off the Republican Party's best fundraiser, former
(08:46):
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who's now gone. He also just
got rid of the head of the Republican National Committee,
Ronald McDaniel. And so there's like a real big problem
that Elon could if he wanted to solve for Republicans
by giving him a big chunk of money. And I
think if he were willing to do that, Trump would
overlook the slights, the support for destatus and so on.
(09:07):
But Trump is Trump, and he can't bring himself to
beg maybe not even to ask Elon.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Also, after the New York Times reported and then I
think Bloomberg and some other outlets have also reported on
this this meeting, Elon tweeted that he's not going to
donate to either candidate. So, in other words, essentially it
seemed trying to deny these reports or to play them
down at the least.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Should we look at that as the last word?
Speaker 1 (09:32):
I mean, there are other avenues that he could.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Donate, Yeah, exactly. No, that's not really the issue here.
I mean, you're limited by law to donating I think
it's three three hundred dollars to candidates. That's not really
what Trump is looking for. What he's looking for is
for Elon to give fifty million or one hundred million,
or why not a billion dollars to his superpack to
one of these places where there is no limits, that
(09:56):
can then go pay off his lawyers help him with
all his legal problems. Judge in New York Is just
forced them to put up three or four hundred million
dollars in bonds. And also, Republicans need to hold on
to Congress if they win the White House and want
to get anything done. So the RNC needs money, the
Senate needs money, the House needs money. All of these
Republicans running need money. Traditionally, the great fundraiser for a
(10:20):
party is its presidential candidate. But Trump just doesn't seem
to be able to do that because nobody nobody trusted
with money anymore. They don't trust that he's not going
to turn around and hand it to his lawyers.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
So are there already, like people within the sort of
magaverse trying to figure out which super pack he might
donate to, or like, are Republican operatives already salvating I
mean you start saying like tens of millions or hundreds
of millions or even a billion dollars, I mean that
could be a huge windfall for lots of people, right
it could.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I mean there are a couple of you know, sort
of Trump endorsed super packs. They're supposed to be separate.
But the way it works in politics is you kind
of like wink wink and say, boy, I'm really impressed
with the Save America pack, and then everybody knows, okay,
that's the pack that has Trump's blessing, like we're going
to give money there. The problem is a Save America
pack sluiced fifty million dollars in its donations to pay
(11:15):
Trump's legal bills last year. So really all it is
is like a slush fund for Trump's lawyers. And look,
that's obviously that's just a hard sell for MAGA donors.
Nobody wants to think that they're basically just paying Trump's lawyers,
even like kind of hardcore MAGA fans.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, and we you talked about some of the sort
of similarities between Musk and Trump, Right, they both like
being center retention, they're both very provocative. They're also both
cheap and Trump, of course sort of historically, you know,
doesn't like to pay his bills, right Elon Musk kind
of similar you know, his one of his big things
at Tesla and SpaceX is essentially trying to squeeze suppliers
(11:52):
at you know, talking to somebody who who wants to
sell them a rocket part for one hundred dollars in
saying hey, how about I pay twenty five? So my
question is what would Elon get out of this, Like,
what is the argument that Trump could make or what
is the threat he could make?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I guess well, look, I think the argument Trump could
make is, hey, I follow your tweets and you are
obviously like you've gone full maga. We have to keep
Joe Biden and the evil liberals out of the White House.
Come support my candidacy and things will be great for you.
The other threat he could make is to say, hey, Elon,
look at the polls. I'm going to be the next president,
(12:26):
and if you don't give me money, I'm going to
cancel all your government contracts and make life hell for you.
But I think there's a more creative answer to that question. Max. Look,
Elon Musk has a dying property in Twitter or ex
or whatever you want to call it these days, like
nobody's on there. Remember when Elon took over, he reinstated
Donald Trump's account, and Trump hasn't used that. So, if
(12:48):
you're Elon and you need engagement and you need people
getting on there. Maybe he goes to mar A Lago
and says, the price of my financial support is you
Donald Trump getting back on Twitter and tweeting like a
madman the way you did back in twenty sixteen. That
will drive all kinds of eyeballs and attention to Twitter.
It will get Elon Musk more the attention that he wants,
(13:10):
and it will also be beneficial to Donald Trump because
not only will he have some money in his war
chest to pay off the lawyers, but it'll also have,
you know, be back to having all the attention he
did from cable news, from the media back in the
sort of golden era of twenty sixteen when he first
took over Twitter by storm.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
I love this sery.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I've thought about Trump runs this competing platform. I'm not
sure the market is big enough for two trolling right
wing social networks. You know, Elon Musk is eventually going
to need to take Twitter public to give his investors
some sort of exit truth social has this spack? Why
why stop at just having Donald Trump tweet?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Absolutely? Look, these are two distressed assets in Donald Trump
and Elon Musk, and maybe what they need to do
is perform a merger that each can convince will be
good for themselves and we will probably turn out to
be a disaster for America, but certainly something to talk about.
And and I know Trump wants it to happen, so
I think the balls and Elon's court and will have
to wait.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
To So okay, so let's we'll start to wrap up.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
But just just looking ahead, I'm kind of curious, So
how big a deal politically would an Elon Musk endorsement
or a big.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Check like like will he have?
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Does he become an important surrogate or somebody who Trump
you know will okay, yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
No, not all.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Anybody.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Anybody who is an Elon Musk fanboy, if they even vote,
is by definition I think a maga voter. Maybe on
the margins. If Elon launched a register to vote campaign,
maybe you could move the numbers on the margins. But
Elon Musk is not going to persuade independence and soft
Democrats to vote for Donald Trump. I think his only
(14:46):
real contribution, at least the Trump world views it this way,
is money, and the fact that he has a lot
of it makes him a tantalizing target. And I think
that's why he keeps getting invited back tomorrow longer.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Okay, great, well let's leave it there again.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
We're gonna keep following this.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Hopefully we'll have Josh back on to discuss, you know,
any any possible Elon Musk Donald Trump deals, and also
just to talk about the state of the race because
of course X is gonna play a role here. Elon
could potentially play a role and I think there's there's
gonna be a lot to pay attention to, So Josh,
thank you very.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Much, Gonna be with it.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Rayhan Harmasi are senior editors.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
The idea for this.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Very show also came from Rayhn Blake Maple's Handles Engineering,
and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott. Our
supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson and thanks a bunch to
Joel Weber. The Elon ing theme is written and performed
by Taku Yasuzawa and Alex Sagierra. Our executive producer is
Brendan Francis Newman. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
(15:57):
I'm Max Chafkin. If you have a minute right view
our show. We'll let other listeners find us.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
And we will appreciate it. See you on Thursday.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Well, Elon Musk is
now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
He says.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
be different.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
There is a reason the US government is so reliant
on him.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing
of him anything he does, he's fascinating people. We built
the factory here in less time than it would have
taken to get THEE permits in California.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to Elon, Inc, Bloomberg's weekly show about all things
Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, March twelfth. I'm Max Chafkin in
for David Popadopolis. You just heard Elon Musk talking about
his newly adopted state, Texas. This podcast is headed there.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
We're going to.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Austin for the South by Southwest conference this week where
we're doing a live show about all things Musk in Texas.
So today we've got a really interesting shorter episode featuring
Josh Green, who's Business Week's politics writer. And then on
Thursday you can come right back to this feed and
get the full length Texas sized episode from Austin. Last week,
(01:32):
Elon took his jet to Florida, where he met with
Donald Trump to talk about, among other things, money. The
world's second richest man is of great interest to the
Republican presidential contender, as Trump's fundraising has struggled in comparison
to President Biden's and Elon of course has taken a
very strong, almost obsessive, you might say, interest in US
(01:54):
politics and seems very sympathetic to Trump's ideas and ideology
and politics. And we've the perfect guest to talk about this,
Josh Green, BusinessWeek's politics writer. He has a new book
that you should check out.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
The Rebels.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Josh also wrote pretty much the defining book about the
rise of Donald Trump. It's called Devil's Bargain. Josh is
here to talk about the complicated relationship between Elon Musk
and Trump. Josh, thanks for coming on, Elon.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Ink great to be with you.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
All Right, So what is.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
The status of the Elon Musk Donald Trump relationship?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Well, I mean they have a long and interesting relationship.
I mean Trump and Trump's White House has always been
fascinated by Elon. During the transition, right after Trump was
first elected in twenty sixteen, Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner
had him into Trump Tower and they wanted him to
be a kind of an avatar of the new Trump
administration because they were big into building things in America,
(02:47):
and Elon was a big automaker who built cool things
in the United States. And this was at a time
where like every reputable business didn't want to get within
one hundred yards of Donald Trump. So they brought in Elon,
and at one point he was set to chair a
new kind of committee of industrialists that Trump was putting together.
(03:08):
I actually had a source and reached out that was
going to leak this to us at Bloomberg News, and
then Trump did something awful and Elon kind of backed away.
I forget what exactly the controversy was. But back then
Elon still cared about kind of maintaining a good reputation
with kind of non right wing, non maga America. But
over the last for eight years, he's obviously traveled on
(03:30):
this pretty extraordinary political journey. Musk has and Trump has too.
He's back, He's going to be the GOP nominee, and
he now very badly needs one thing that Elon has
a lot of, and that is money. You know, Trump
has had an easy run through the Republican primaries, but
he has a big problem. He only has about thirty
(03:52):
million dollars. Four years ago at this time he had
abo one hundred million dollars, and I think he views
Elon as somebody who could easily fund his campaign, and
so he's had him down twice. Now I think tomorrow
lago to kind of sweet talk him and hopes that
Elon will jump on board the Trump train.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, and of course, I mean, unlike most people who
are near the top of the Bloomberg billionaire's list, Elon
Musk is not averse to these kind of far extreme
right wing politics. There's obviously like a close ideological connection
at this point. Just to go back to that, to
the history you're talking about, so, as I remember, there
(04:30):
were Tesla customers that were really mad about Donald Trump's
border policy, and I think back then he might have
been worried about what would the blowback be for customers,
But of course, as you point out now that there's
no risk of that for Elon Musk, right. He's on
Twitter every day essentially tweeting things that are pretty close
to white nationalism, lots of border panic, lots of concern
(04:50):
about minority groups.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
It's very much.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
The same thing that Donald Trumps saying from the campaign trail.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean I think two
things have happened to bring us to where we are now.
One is that Trump has been normalized to a large degree.
When he was elected in twenty sixteen, corporate America didn't
want to have anything to do with him at all,
and that was a real humiliation and embarrassment to Trump,
who wants nothing more than to be seen as important
(05:16):
and genuflected to, especially by kind of sexy business leaders
like the tech industry. There's a famous meeting Elon was
at it during the transition where Trump flew all these
people and he was really hoping they would get on board,
and they didn't. Now you see a lot more corporate
business types and tech especially tech types, CosIng up to Trump.
(05:38):
And at the same time, you have people like Elon
who have been fully red pilled and now kind of
spout a lot of the MAGA immigration great replacement conspiracy theories.
So they're really kind of Peas in a pod at
this point, that's something that Trump wants to take advantage of.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
So totally Peas and the pop politically, but maybe interpersonally,
not exactly the best relationship. We have some tape of
Donald Trump talking about his you know, potential new friend
and campaign savior, Elon Musk.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
No, he's got himself a mess, you know. He said
the other day. Oh, I've never voted for a Republican.
I said, I didn't know that. He told me voted
for me. So he's another post artist. But he's not
going to be buying it.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
He's not going to be buying it, although he might later,
who hell knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
He's got a pretty rotten contract. I looked at his contract,
not a good contract. But he's got sign up for
Truth and I mean separately.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
He went on Truth Social, which, of course as a
competitor to Elon Musk's social network. Said when Elon Musk
came to the White House asking me for help on
his many subsidized projects, whether it's electric cars that don't
drive long enough, for driverless cars that crash, or rocket ship,
said nowhere I could have said, drop to your knees
and bag and he would have done it.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I mean, it's like, really some harsh stuff here.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Elon, meanwhile, has also said some not so nice things
to Trump, although probably not quite as sharps is that
he said, I don't hate the man, but it's time
for Trump to hang up his hat and sail off
into the sunset.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
He also told Walter Isaacson that.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
That Trump was one of the best bullshters ever, which
I think coming from Musk, maybe both an insult and
a compliment, but needless to say, they don't get along
super well, no they don't.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And also look, I mean the thing that was noticed
by Trump was that Elon basically went out and supported
Ron DeSantis, his arch enemy in the primaries, and then
when DeSantis crashed and burned, flirted with Vivic Ramaswami. So
not a lot of love lost here. I think the
problem for both of them is that they both have
this burning need to be the center of attention, and
(07:40):
so it's almost like when you put two opposite magnets
against each other, like there's just this kind of natural pushback.
As Steve Bannon once told me, Donald Trump doesn't want
any co stars and I think the danger of bringing
Elon Musk in too closely is that, look, he's a
guy that generates a lot of attention, has a huge
social media file, and has the constant attention of the
(08:02):
news media. The problem for Trump, though, is he needs money.
He needs a sugar daddy, and he is looking at
Elon Musk to be that sugar daddy. There's a lot
that has gone wrong in Trump's world over the last
year or so. I mean, Number one, he has enormous
legal problems and that's really really expensive. And what's happened
is he's gotten the Republican National Committee in a super
(08:24):
pack basically to pay his legal bills. So donors don't
want to give money to Trump because they know it's
not going to elect Republicans, it's going to pay Trump's
legal bills. The donors wound up spending fifty million dollars
on Trump's legal bills last year. I just checked the numbers.
For January, they spent another five million. At the same time,
Trump has driven off the Republican Party's best fundraiser, former
(08:46):
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who's now gone. He also just
got rid of the head of the Republican National Committee,
Ronald McDaniel. And so there's like a real big problem
that Elon could if he wanted to solve for Republicans
by giving him a big chunk of money. And I
think if he were willing to do that, Trump would
overlook the slights, the support for destatus and so on.
(09:07):
But Trump is Trump, and he can't bring himself to
beg maybe not even to ask Elon.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Also, after the New York Times reported and then I
think Bloomberg and some other outlets have also reported on
this this meeting, Elon tweeted that he's not going to
donate to either candidate. So, in other words, essentially it
seemed trying to deny these reports or to play them
down at the least.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Should we look at that as the last word?
Speaker 1 (09:32):
I mean, there are other avenues that he could.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Donate, Yeah, exactly. No, that's not really the issue here.
I mean, you're limited by law to donating I think
it's three three hundred dollars to candidates. That's not really
what Trump is looking for. What he's looking for is
for Elon to give fifty million or one hundred million,
or why not a billion dollars to his superpack to
one of these places where there is no limits, that
(09:56):
can then go pay off his lawyers help him with
all his legal problems. Judge in New York Is just
forced them to put up three or four hundred million
dollars in bonds. And also, Republicans need to hold on
to Congress if they win the White House and want
to get anything done. So the RNC needs money, the
Senate needs money, the House needs money. All of these
Republicans running need money. Traditionally, the great fundraiser for a
(10:20):
party is its presidential candidate. But Trump just doesn't seem
to be able to do that because nobody nobody trusted
with money anymore. They don't trust that he's not going
to turn around and hand it to his lawyers.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
So are there already, like people within the sort of
magaverse trying to figure out which super pack he might
donate to, or like, are Republican operatives already salvating I
mean you start saying like tens of millions or hundreds
of millions or even a billion dollars, I mean that
could be a huge windfall for lots of people, right
it could.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I mean there are a couple of you know, sort
of Trump endorsed super packs. They're supposed to be separate.
But the way it works in politics is you kind
of like wink wink and say, boy, I'm really impressed
with the Save America pack, and then everybody knows, okay,
that's the pack that has Trump's blessing, like we're going
to give money there. The problem is a Save America
pack sluiced fifty million dollars in its donations to pay
(11:15):
Trump's legal bills last year. So really all it is
is like a slush fund for Trump's lawyers. And look,
that's obviously that's just a hard sell for MAGA donors.
Nobody wants to think that they're basically just paying Trump's lawyers,
even like kind of hardcore MAGA fans.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, and we you talked about some of the sort
of similarities between Musk and Trump, Right, they both like
being center retention, they're both very provocative. They're also both
cheap and Trump, of course sort of historically, you know,
doesn't like to pay his bills, right Elon Musk kind
of similar you know, his one of his big things
at Tesla and SpaceX is essentially trying to squeeze suppliers
(11:52):
at you know, talking to somebody who who wants to
sell them a rocket part for one hundred dollars in
saying hey, how about I pay twenty five? So my
question is what would Elon get out of this, Like,
what is the argument that Trump could make or what
is the threat he could make?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I guess well, look, I think the argument Trump could
make is, hey, I follow your tweets and you are
obviously like you've gone full maga. We have to keep
Joe Biden and the evil liberals out of the White House.
Come support my candidacy and things will be great for you.
The other threat he could make is to say, hey, Elon,
look at the polls. I'm going to be the next president,
(12:26):
and if you don't give me money, I'm going to
cancel all your government contracts and make life hell for you.
But I think there's a more creative answer to that question. Max. Look,
Elon Musk has a dying property in Twitter or ex
or whatever you want to call it these days, like
nobody's on there. Remember when Elon took over, he reinstated
Donald Trump's account, and Trump hasn't used that. So, if
(12:48):
you're Elon and you need engagement and you need people
getting on there. Maybe he goes to mar A Lago
and says, the price of my financial support is you
Donald Trump getting back on Twitter and tweeting like a
madman the way you did back in twenty sixteen. That
will drive all kinds of eyeballs and attention to Twitter.
It will get Elon Musk more the attention that he wants,
(13:10):
and it will also be beneficial to Donald Trump because
not only will he have some money in his war
chest to pay off the lawyers, but it'll also have,
you know, be back to having all the attention he
did from cable news, from the media back in the
sort of golden era of twenty sixteen when he first
took over Twitter by storm.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
I love this sery.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I've thought about Trump runs this competing platform. I'm not
sure the market is big enough for two trolling right
wing social networks. You know, Elon Musk is eventually going
to need to take Twitter public to give his investors
some sort of exit truth social has this spack? Why
why stop at just having Donald Trump tweet?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Absolutely? Look, these are two distressed assets in Donald Trump
and Elon Musk, and maybe what they need to do
is perform a merger that each can convince will be
good for themselves and we will probably turn out to
be a disaster for America, but certainly something to talk about.
And and I know Trump wants it to happen, so
I think the balls and Elon's court and will have
to wait.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
To So okay, so let's we'll start to wrap up.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
But just just looking ahead, I'm kind of curious, So
how big a deal politically would an Elon Musk endorsement
or a big.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Check like like will he have?
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Does he become an important surrogate or somebody who Trump
you know will okay, yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
No, not all.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Anybody.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Anybody who is an Elon Musk fanboy, if they even vote,
is by definition I think a maga voter. Maybe on
the margins. If Elon launched a register to vote campaign,
maybe you could move the numbers on the margins. But
Elon Musk is not going to persuade independence and soft
Democrats to vote for Donald Trump. I think his only
(14:46):
real contribution, at least the Trump world views it this way,
is money, and the fact that he has a lot
of it makes him a tantalizing target. And I think
that's why he keeps getting invited back tomorrow longer.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Okay, great, well let's leave it there again.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
We're gonna keep following this.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Hopefully we'll have Josh back on to discuss, you know,
any any possible Elon Musk Donald Trump deals, and also
just to talk about the state of the race because
of course X is gonna play a role here. Elon
could potentially play a role and I think there's there's
gonna be a lot to pay attention to, So Josh,
thank you very.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Much, Gonna be with it.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Rayhan Harmasi are senior editors.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
The idea for this.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Very show also came from Rayhn Blake Maple's Handles Engineering,
and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott. Our
supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson and thanks a bunch to
Joel Weber. The Elon ing theme is written and performed
by Taku Yasuzawa and Alex Sagierra. Our executive producer is
Brendan Francis Newman. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
(15:57):
I'm Max Chafkin. If you have a minute right view
our show. We'll let other listeners find us.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
And we will appreciate it. See you on Thursday.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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