The “Elon Election”: What It Means For America and Musk

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Speaker 1 Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
It's Monday, November 4th.

Speaker 1 One more day to vote in this extremely fraught election. Do not not vote.
Get out there today if you haven't already.

Speaker 1 Today, instead of talking about the candidates directly, we're going to discuss someone who's not on the ballot but has become a central character of this election.

Speaker 1 I'm talking, of course, about Elon Musk, the man being touted as the October Surprise or or dark gothic MAGA, as this tech drama queen likes to call himself.

Speaker 1 I gotta say, I called it back in March when I said that Elon was as subtle as a brick about his support of Donald Trump. He was saying he was going to remain neutral.

Speaker 1 In fact, he's called Trump a bunch of pretty negative things over the years, but in the end, Elon's made it clear that this is an opportunity, mostly for him.

Speaker 1 And so he's gone old school oligarch using his money, his megaphone, and his contacts to megalomaniacs like Russian President Vladimir Putin to put his very heavy hand on the election scale.

Speaker 1 You'd kind of call him a puppet master, except he's doing it in plain sight. So today, my guests are experts in all things Musk.

Speaker 1 Wall Street Journal columnist Tim Higgins, author of the book Powerplay, Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century.

Speaker 1 Zoe Schiffer, the new director of business and industry at Wired, former managing editor of Platformer and also the author of Extremely Hardcore, Inside Elon Musk's Twitter, and Washington Post tech policy reporter Eva Doe, who has been writing about Starlink, Elon's satellite company.

Speaker 1 Her book on Huawei is coming out next year.

Speaker 1 They've been following this Musk moment closely, so we're going to talk about how Elon has been impacting the election, what he hopes to gain from it, and what that could mean for our country going forward.

Speaker 1 In many ways, This is the Elon election, and we thought it should be our final word on what's going to happen after tomorrow. Have a listen.

Speaker 1 Hi, Zoe. Eva or Tim, thanks for being on on.
I've got a rogues gallery here to talk about a rogue, which I'm very excited about. Welcome.

Speaker 5 Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1 So we're taping this on Thursday, October 31st. Our listeners are hearing this Monday, November 4th, the day before the election.

Speaker 1 People keep saying that this is the podcast election, but I think it's the Elon election. It's hard to keep track of all his stunts and various machinations.
So let's start out.

Speaker 1 What's the craziest thing you think Elon has said or done in the past few weeks? Briefly, let's start with you, Zoe, then Eva, and then Tim.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 So many to choose.

Speaker 2 Said, I don't know. That's really hard to choose.
I think the lottery was pretty wild to me. I think that was a really bold move.

Speaker 2 In case your listeners don't know, he basically created this possibly illegal scheme to randomly award a million dollars a day to someone in a swing state who signed a pro-Trump petition, and he's being investigated for that right now.

Speaker 2 That one, I would say, caught me off guard.

Speaker 1 Caught you off guard. All right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Eva?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'd have to agree with Zoe.

Speaker 5 Just this lottery is the kind of thing that I think

Speaker 5 was not the kind of thing we'd seen in elections before.

Speaker 5 Just sort of money playing such a naked role in the election.

Speaker 5 And of course,

Speaker 5 leads into all kinds of other interesting issues about him being the world's wealthiest man and sort of his financial stake in this election.

Speaker 1 Exactly. All right, Tim?

Speaker 4 The most interesting thing or surprising thing in the last hour or week or day?

Speaker 1 I mean, it's whenever, most recently.

Speaker 4 I mean, one of the things that I was a little bit surprised was his kind of apparent agreement just the other day with somebody on X suggesting that his plans for the Government Efficiency Commission would crash the government, or would crash the economy.

Speaker 4 The kind of just the

Speaker 4 naked

Speaker 4 honesty there at a time when you're in political season and people are saying, and he's been saying a lot of things that I think a lot of people want to hear, that kind of nuance or lack of nuance was just a little surprising to me.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, he's preparing everybody for the disaster to come. So let's talk about specifically what he's doing.
In the last months, he's become one of Donald Trump's top surrogates, I think the top one.

Speaker 1 He was on the MAGA stage at Madison Square Garden. He's been on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 Of course, he's been promoting him nonstop on Twitter, and we'll talk about that and money in a minute. But I first want to talk about how we got here.
Elon publicly endorsed Trump on X on July 13th.

Speaker 1 Of course, he'd been working behind the scenes for months, despite claiming he wasn't going to donate to any presidential campaigns.

Speaker 1 In March, I said he was as subtle as a brick about his support of Trump, which he pushed back on, which I feel vindicated, I guess, weirdly.

Speaker 1 Tim, you wrote in July that the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump flipped the switch for Elon. Explain what you meant by that.

Speaker 4 Well, you know, it's interesting, to your point,

Speaker 4 he kind of been playing both sides. Well, not playing both sides, but he publicly had wanted to be kind of appearing neutral, but in the background, clearly working to help the Trump campaign.

Speaker 4 But on that day, clearly something changed.

Speaker 4 The whole playbook was out, and he was taking that public stance, very public stance. And it wasn't just endorsing almost immediately after that failed assassination attempt.
It was then turning on.

Speaker 4 his influence campaign on X with just tweet after tweet about why Trump Trump was the way to go, why he was such a brave person, all of these things.

Speaker 4 And it has really just kind of escalated since then, right? And one of the...

Speaker 1 Do you think it has a personal thing? I think he thinks he is a Trump in a lot of ways,

Speaker 1 that people want to kill him.

Speaker 4 If you listen to him in recent weeks, he clearly seems to be identifying with this idea that by speaking out,

Speaker 4 by advocating for his opinions, that he's at risk.

Speaker 4 There have been some episodes, according to him, where his life maybe had been in danger.

Speaker 4 But yes, he tends to kind of frame things as him against the world, him against these forces. And this just plays to this kind of idea that there are people in the shadows who are out to get him.

Speaker 4 And when he looks at Trump, that literally happened, and he seems to be identifying with this idea of Trump, you know, standing up immediately and pumping his fist to the air and chanting fight, fight, fight.

Speaker 4 You know, that really seems to excite Elon. And Elon has talked about that.
This kind of moment of strongman

Speaker 4 kind of bravado plays into something that Elon seems to be embracing in the last yeah, the hustle porn.

Speaker 1 I'm staying all night in the factory, et cetera, all this kind of ridiculous drama.

Speaker 1 To be clear, it wasn't a mystery whose team he was on. He's obviously had been supporting Ron DeSantis unusually and then Vivek Ramaswani for a minute and a half.

Speaker 1 And he's been using X to boost Republican voices for years. He really has.
And since he got there, he certainly has done that. And they've supported him.

Speaker 1 Zoe, you write about this in your book, Extremely Hardcore, this Republican slant, which had been happening for a while, but especially after he bought Twitter.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, this really was his project when he bought Twitter. It was to turn it into a political machine and make it much more of a, you know, what he would say is a free speech platform.

Speaker 2 But, I mean, it's not a mystery. And we can look in retrospect.
One of the first things he does is ask people, should I bring Trump back to the platform?

Speaker 2 He obviously been suspended permanently for his part in the january 6 riots um and then you know they brought them back i have this whole episode in my book where they're like frantically working behind the scenes because he'd fired so many people that they didn't actually have the infrastructure in place to bring him back without like major hitches but yeah i mean he has very clearly wanted to use twitter to support his increasingly conservative and right-wing ideologies and that's exactly what he's done pretty successfully one of the things that Mark Cuban told me right at the purchase was besides the narcissism, et cetera, one of the things he was saying, he's doing it for his business interests primarily.

Speaker 1 You know, he's around the world because when he shows up as the Tesla guy or the SpaceX guy, they like him. But when he's the Twitter guy, he has more impact around the world.

Speaker 1 But right now, what he's doing is he's throwing everything into this Trump campaign, a bit of a risk. His money, his megaphone on X, his personal brand.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about each of these. But first and word, I'd like, in a word, I'd like each of you to say what's having the most impact, money, megaphone, or the goth MAGA hat moments?

Speaker 1 Let's start with you, Eva.

Speaker 5 At this moment, maybe megaphone.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 5 Just in these last moments before the election, the impression that voters have,

Speaker 5 these flashes of impressions, they're going to make a difference and move the needle.

Speaker 1 What about you, Tim?

Speaker 4 I'm going to go with megaphone. You know, the money is nice, of course.

Speaker 4 It's not clear yet that it's having the kind of impact we'll see, but the megaphone is appealing to people out there who maybe wouldn't necessarily be as excited about the election.

Speaker 4 Young men who feel aggrieved, perhaps, the ones that I've talked to out on the campaign trail, they identify with him. They look up to Elon and they see him as kind of giving purpose.

Speaker 4 And that's something that's very powerful.

Speaker 1 What about you, Zoe?

Speaker 2 I want to say something different, but I agree that Megaphone is the one.

Speaker 2 I think Elon's reach is almost unmatched, and he is speaking to that core demographic that Republicans need and want, like Tim said. I also think money can only go so far.

Speaker 2 And we've actually seen in his ground campaign, in America PAC's ground campaign,

Speaker 2 that they have been pretty sloppy in how they've actually deployed the money.

Speaker 2 We had reports yesterday from WIRE that they're using really glitchy apps and suspect subcontractors and workers are being treated pretty poorly and threatened even.

Speaker 2 And it's not clear that they're doing kind of the best practices in terms of the canvassing that they should. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, that sounds like an Elon operation in that regard. Tim, you were out on the campaign trail with Trump.
Young white men were not a demographic that Trump was hurting in.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Elon's setting up

Speaker 1 this sister wives compound. He's denying it in Texas for his 11 kids and their moms.
He's been spreading lies about immigrants, even if he is one.

Speaker 1 Talk about what you saw on the campaign trail and whether this is actually helping Trump pull in voters. These were his voters to start with.

Speaker 4 You hit on this interesting, point.

Speaker 4 I was out in Pennsylvania following Elon around as he was doing his own stump speech, which was basically like 10 minutes of him talking and then it could be almost two hours worth of questions from people.

Speaker 4 And these were people, these were a lot of young men who were very excited at the opportunity to see Elon in person and ask him questions.

Speaker 4 A lot of them were already going to support Trump, as you point out. Some were undecided.

Speaker 4 Some told me that they were only there for Elon and now they were perhaps leaning towards Trump.

Speaker 4 But the common thing, there are a couple of common things that were coming out was this idea that Elon was

Speaker 4 this kind of inspiring hero, what he had done with

Speaker 4 things in business, whether it was Tesla or SpaceX or Twitter, turned X.

Speaker 4 A lot of people talking about how they were really impressed with his leadership of that company, whether it was,

Speaker 4 in their words, promoting free speech and turning free speech back on. And the other ideas,

Speaker 4 in their minds, the way that he cut costs there, they were very impressed by that, even though I think some in the tech industry have kind of rolled their eyes at what's left of the company.

Speaker 4 These folks were very excited about that and wanted to see him bring those cost-cutting ways to the federal government if Trump wins and Elon has some sort of role in that administration.

Speaker 4 So a lot about his business success, a lot about him as being an inspiration, and a lot about the idea of him being a cost-cutter.

Speaker 1 Right. What about, was anyone repelled by it? I'm thinking of my own sons who are big Elon fans and then are not, like in a way that's, I had nothing to do with.
They don't listen to anything I do.

Speaker 1 It was interesting.

Speaker 4 After one of the events in suburban Philadelphia at a high school, and it had gone long, it had gone late.

Speaker 4 And I ran into a couple of young guys who had graduated from the high school, and one of them had been unemployed since graduating. And he told me he was really excited.

Speaker 4 And there was a young woman with them. And I turned to her and I said, well, what did you think? And she says, well, you know, she was impressed with Elon.

Speaker 4 And I I said, well, this is going to get you to vote for Trump. And while the boyfriend and the buddy were, yes, go Trump, she just kind of smiled politely.
And I pushed her.

Speaker 4 And she, she said, I don't know, you know, and it was, no, you know, it was her polite way of saying no, you know, and it was.

Speaker 4 You know, she was along for the ride and I met a lot of young women who were clearly being dragged to these events, who were

Speaker 4 playing the dutiful wife or girlfriend. And when I would try to ask them, engage them, the boyfriends would say, yeah, we're not talking to the media.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what I have a lot of Trump relatives and all the wives are voting for Kamala Harris. It's really interesting quietly, which is interesting.

Speaker 1 Eva, there's a recent Washington Post analysis show the accounts of Republican politicians have gotten billions of more views in recent months and a spike in followers.

Speaker 1 They couldn't tell if X is directly manipulating this or not. Probably they are.
Eva, you wrote about how X suspended white dudes for Harris back in July.

Speaker 1 Talk about what happened there and the use of the platform to pick and choose choose among the white dudes. They want to have influence there.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. This is something that some of my colleagues, as you mentioned, have tried to quantify, just what this impact has been on amplifying

Speaker 5 Trump space, their voice on X,

Speaker 5 and the opposite for Harris's. And, you know, it's not transparent, but, you know, we see enough data points.
And you can see very visibly that,

Speaker 5 you know, Elon himself, his personal reach is broader than even Trump himself,

Speaker 5 more than any of the presidents.

Speaker 5 He has one of the largest personal platforms and then also people who are supportive of Trump.

Speaker 5 You just see them getting a far larger reach than supporters of Kamalo Harris.

Speaker 2 And we know that he has put his thumb on the scales behind that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I want to ask you about that.

Speaker 1 There's reports of X using Grok to boost election conspiracy and trendy topics. Elon has become the biggest spreader of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories on X, according to Bloomberg.

Speaker 1 False and misleading claims by him have been viewed more than a billion times. Talk about what he did there.
You talked about it in your book. He changed it.

Speaker 1 So we were, it was like the clockwork orange. We had to look at him.
I'm not on X anymore, but talk about that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, so we know that, I mean, this was a very like silly anecdote, but I think quite telling that after the Super Bowl in 2023,

Speaker 2 Elon was quite upset that Biden's tweet was getting more traction than his was. They both tweeted in support of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Speaker 2 Of course, Musk thinks he's a much better tweeter than Biden. And so he had the engineering team at Twitter come into the office late at night, stay all night tweaking the algorithm.

Speaker 2 And the next day we all woke up and what did we see? An entire feed of Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 But I actually dug into that reporting a little bit more and saw that there were lists of what they called VIP users that they were artificially boosting on the platform.

Speaker 2 And we also know on the other side of things, he has artificially suppressed certain accounts, accounts that were tracking his jet, for example, even though he said very clearly, I'm so committed to free speech, I would never do exactly that.

Speaker 2 And so I think we don't exactly know what's going on behind the scenes at this point, but we do know in the past he's been willing to put his thumb on the scales and change things so that the speech that he likes and he wants to see is augmented.

Speaker 1 which is certainly within his rights, except for complaining about shadow banning.

Speaker 1 He's saying don't shadow ban and then does exactly.

Speaker 2 Consistency has never been his structure.

Speaker 1 No, I always feel every accusation he makes is a confession of something he's done. Tim, we talked about the million-dollar checks.
Another thing that is on the edge, I want to get into some of that.

Speaker 1 He's one of the top donors to President Trump. He's given about at least $118 million through his Super PAC,

Speaker 1 America PAC. Talk about that money, the flow of money into it.
It's obviously, to me, it's an investment, as far as I can see.

Speaker 1 What prompted him and how is he doing it?

Speaker 4 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, it's interesting because he really didn't start to see the money with his name on it flow publicly until after

Speaker 4 there was another contentious issue being decided. And that was in his role as CEO of Tesla, his enormous pay package,

Speaker 4 trying to get shareholders to reapprove that. And so

Speaker 4 he may have been in the background. He He may have been parroting Republican talking points, but he was trying to kind of talk about how he wasn't supporting Trump.
But then,

Speaker 4 you know, after that, and then we get into July,

Speaker 4 then it's very public, and that money's been going in in a large part for Republican ground games, you know, playing kind of an unusual role for a PAC,

Speaker 4 trying to turn out the vote. And we've seen

Speaker 4 Elon really kind of hit on these two very important ideas for a candidate, candidate, which is you got to register to vote and you got to turn out to vote.

Speaker 4 And it puts him in this kind of interesting position as a surrogate. You know, in my previous life, I was a political reporter and I've seen a lot of surrogates on the campaign trail.

Speaker 4 You know, you get a lot of high-profile people and that's good. You know, it gets energy around a campaign and gets people excited at those rallies.

Speaker 4 But I think back to the early days, and this maybe dates me, following around Howard Dean in Iowa before the Iowa caucuses. And there were all sorts of excitement for him.

Speaker 4 They were like rock concerts. But at the end of the day, he didn't have enough people turn out to caucus for him and he didn't win.

Speaker 4 And one of the things you see here is Elon is trying to turn out the vote. So it's not just about getting attention.

Speaker 4 It's about getting those people who maybe wouldn't necessarily be voting to kind of plug in and go to the ballot box and cast it for Trump. So it's an interesting strategy here that isn't traditional.

Speaker 4 You know, the history of the U.S. is full of very rich people giving a lot of money and influence behind the scenes, but it's him out there using that megaphone power to do more.

Speaker 1 Well, it's akin to Henry Ford. I think.
I think that's the last time it's been so explicit in terms of owning media properties or using them in that way.

Speaker 1 We'll be back in a minute.

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Speaker 1 Let's talk about what Elon can get out of this. Musk recently said he was, quote, praying for victory for Trump.
He does not pray, but whatever. So he could begin working in the administration.

Speaker 1 Here's what Trump said about Elon in an interview with Maria Bartaroma last month.

Speaker 7 He's a great business guy, and he's a great cost cutter. You've seen that.
And he said, I could cut costs without affecting anybody.

Speaker 1 So he will be in the cabinet?

Speaker 7 Not in the cabinet. He doesn't want to be in the cabinet.
He just wants to be in charge of cost cutting. We'll have a new position, Secretary of Cost Cutting.

Speaker 1 Secretary of Cost Cutting. Okay.

Speaker 1 Sure. Why not?

Speaker 1 Voters have asked Mutts about cutting spending while you were with him on the trail. Tim, and also, Zoe, you've written about his management techniques at the companies.

Speaker 1 Let's start with you, Zoe, on this.

Speaker 1 And then Tim and Eva, I'd love you to talk about what position in the Trump administration and what it would be.

Speaker 1 But so he sort of lay us out his approach to cost cutting at Twitter and what happened there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, he comes in the door at Twitter. His stance is very much...

Speaker 1 For people to understand, let that sink in.

Speaker 2 Exactly. He's carrying a kitchen sink.
His stance with the company and all of the employees is very much, you guys are all lazy idiots, and I want to get rid of as many of you as possible.

Speaker 2 He is not sitting down to hear what people think, what worked in the past, what didn't. And in fact, he asks his deputies to get rid of as many of them as possible.

Speaker 2 He doesn't want to pay out their vested stock and he wants them out the door. And there's kind of a back and forth on how quickly they can cut people.

Speaker 2 But basically, within a week of him taking over the company, half the employee base is gone. And we see almost instantly that core parts of the infrastructure start to break down.

Speaker 2 And the team is having to, his team is having to call people and beg them to come back. And this is whole whole back and forth.

Speaker 2 From Elon's perspective, he's like, Look, I got rid of all these people, I save all these costs, and the platform is still relatively functional.

Speaker 2 But it's one thing to have a relatively functional Twitter or X. It's another to have a semi-functional government.
And I think him deploying these same techniques in the U.S.

Speaker 2 government is a much scarier prospect.

Speaker 1 Right, absolutely. Talk about also that you noted that he didn't pay people.

Speaker 1 He doesn't pay bills, very similar to Trump.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.
I mean, exactly. He,

Speaker 2 this kind of gets into his feelings on the regulatory system and interactions, you know, with the U.S. government.
But Elon very much operates with the rules don't apply to me.

Speaker 2 I shouldn't have to pay people. If they signed a contract with someone else, but it wasn't me, I shouldn't have to honor that contract.
Like it would be.

Speaker 2 up to high-ranking employees at the company to say like, this is going to get you in really hot water. You have to listen to us.
You have to pay people at least the minimum.

Speaker 2 Otherwise, Otherwise, you're going to be embroiled in all these lawsuits. But we largely see him ignore their advice and just move forward the way he wants to.
Consequences be damned.

Speaker 2 And unfortunately, given the scope of his power and influence, there are very few consequences on his behavior when he refuses to play by the rules.

Speaker 1 Well, refuses to pay. It's a similar Trump thing.
I'm not paying vendors, so I'm just not going to. Sue me, sue me, sue me.
So, Evo, what position in the Trump administration would that be?

Speaker 1 Do you think he would actually take a position? And what would it be?

Speaker 5 Well, I think the way both Trump and he are couching this, it sounds like a flexible and informal position, which in a way gives him a lot of leeway to sort of push for his own interests.

Speaker 5 So keep in mind the background is we're coming from the Biden administration, which has had this

Speaker 5 populist campaign against big tech to increase regulatory enforcement.

Speaker 5 So we talk about cost cutting, when we talk about cutting red tape, part of that means the opposite of what the Biden administration has done, which is

Speaker 5 more regulation on big tech companies,

Speaker 5 pumping the brakes on them, expanding their empires even more,

Speaker 5 being cautious in rolling out billions of dollars in federal subsidies to them.

Speaker 5 So what I think he'd like to see for his own businesses is, you know,

Speaker 5 faster checks being sent out of federal subsidies for his companies like Starlink,

Speaker 5 less regulatory scrutiny for his companies like Tesla, less red tape for SpaceX and Starlink.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 I'm curious what's less than zero. But Tim, you've written about how Elon wants to be this chief red tape cutter, which Eva was just referencing.
What does that mean from your perspective?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's interesting because in the recent days, it's been a lot about hearing him talk about cutting costs in the government or cutting spending. He wants to cut $2 trillion, which

Speaker 4 is like a third of the federal government

Speaker 4 spent in the last fiscal year. But really, what seems to excite him is this idea of being able to slash regulations, in particular regulations that he doesn't like.

Speaker 4 And he has been for years kind of complaining about what he calls the little strings that are holding down the giant and that are just in the way.

Speaker 4 And so when he points to his own businesses, whether it's SpaceX or elsewhere, he complains about EPA issues or issues with the wildlife agencies. And he just sees these things as slowing him down.

Speaker 4 And he feels

Speaker 4 COVID, exactly the same thing. And so this idea of being able to get in there and kind of get rid of things that he feels are not necessary.

Speaker 4 And then the other, you know, he'll preface it as saying, well, we can't get rid of all regulations. We need safety.
If we go too far, we'll just put them back. That sort of thing.

Speaker 4 But, you know, he's not the first CEO to complain about regulations.

Speaker 1 He did yesterday.

Speaker 4 And, you know, but the the power and the potential there. And the other thing is, one of the great things that Elon has the ability to do is to brand things.
And so he has branded this.

Speaker 4 People are at his rallies chanting the idea of him of cutting costs because he's called it Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. There is no Department of Government Efficiency.

Speaker 4 What Trump originally was talking about sounded like a task force, which is the classic thing in Washington. You set up a task force.

Speaker 1 A grace commission, for example.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And

Speaker 4 what happens? They don't really have any power. They can put attention on things.
Well, Elon can put a lot of attention on things.

Speaker 4 And so this idea that he'll go in and start cutting these regulatory issues that are in the way of business gets him very excited.

Speaker 1 So, Zoe, in that regard, Musk is not used to working for someone else ever, I would imagine. Talk about the two of them.

Speaker 1 I am waiting for that ugly fallout. It's going to happen because you saw Trump's face at the rally when he was jumping.
Right. And he was like, what's he doing?

Speaker 2 Yeah, These are two men with enormous egos who are very sensitive to being threatened by someone equally powerful to themselves. And right now, they're in a very transactional relationship.

Speaker 2 And it's kind of clear what each one is getting out of that relationship.

Speaker 2 But I think with Trump in particular, what we know from those close to him is he's incredibly sensitive to looking like a puppet. And he's been that way even with his own family members.

Speaker 2 As soon as someone looks like they're pulling the strings, he, no, they have to get out. And I think Elon is in this position where he himself cannot run for president.

Speaker 2 And so here's an opportunity for people who don't know.

Speaker 1 He's an, he's an immigrant,

Speaker 1 legal for a short amount of time, apparently, but he's an immigrant. And so he can't be president.

Speaker 2 Exactly. But this is an opportunity for him to be kind of a shadow president and

Speaker 2 have a ton of influence.

Speaker 2 in a way that he hasn't so far, although how does that link with Trump?

Speaker 1 Because I don't know. I feel like it's, I'm looking at the title.

Speaker 2 That's what I'm saying, though. Like, as soon as he starts to really, you know, rule from behind the scenes, I think we might see some real fallout.

Speaker 2 And if Trump, you know, is elected and he no longer has the use for Elon that he had on the campaign trail, I think their relationship could devolve very quickly.

Speaker 1 Tim, weigh in on this.

Speaker 4 You know, clearly there could be some rough patches ahead for the two. But one of the things that Elon is doing is giving voice to some classic conservative values that excite the party.

Speaker 4 I mean, when he talks about cost cutting, when he talks about getting the government out of your pocket, these are core things.

Speaker 4 And in a lot of ways, that messaging and that building that excitement helps Trump. It helps, it potentially helps Trump in the second administration with Congress to enact

Speaker 4 some of his policies and to get things through there.

Speaker 4 So there could be some benefits with just the way that Elon can excite people for these ideas that, as he kind of calls them, common sense, which, you know,

Speaker 4 as time has shown, can be very difficult to actually enact. Cutting government spending, cutting regulations is very difficult.

Speaker 1 But what about their interpersonal relationship?

Speaker 4 Absolutely. That clearly could be an issue, as it has been in the past.

Speaker 4 You know, you think about that Truth Social post that Donald Trump did, kind of suggesting that Elon was on his knees asking for things during the first administration when they had

Speaker 4 they're too volatile people. The question is, how pragmatic can Elon be?

Speaker 4 Because, you know, he's going to need things. And ultimately, having a friend in the White House is very valuable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. But I'm a Highlander girl.
There can be only one, and that's where they're going to end up fighting. I'm certain of it.
I'm almost certain of it.

Speaker 1 But obviously, having a direct line to the White House would be great for his business, Elon's businesses.

Speaker 1 Let's go through two scenarios, what he could stand to gain in the Trump presidency, and what impact a vice president Harris presidency could have. Let's start with SpaceX and Starlink.

Speaker 1 Elon's got massive government contracts, many millions of dollars. SpaceX is already the dominant player in the space industry, working with NASA.

Speaker 1 There was a story in the Times about how SpaceX has been building military and spy satellites for use by the Pentagon. Eva, you've written about Starlink as a boom as a business if Trump wins.

Speaker 1 Talk about that.

Speaker 1 Are we going to see NASA pivot to Mars?

Speaker 1 And then alternately, if Harris wins, is he in danger of losing those contracts or at the very least losing his national security, which I've heard from a number of intelligence people.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 I think what is kind of remarkable is that Starlink is actually mentioned in Trump's election platform, where he mentions the term near-earth orbit, which pretty much refers to Starlink at this point.

Speaker 5 It's a field overwhelmingly dominated by Starlink and no one else at this moment. So saying you're going to increase investment in near-earth orbit in

Speaker 5 near terms means a promise of business for Starlink. On the flip side, side, for Harris administration, I think

Speaker 5 one challenge that Elon Musk faces with either administration is a concern of vendor lock, of SpaceX being the only vendor, and the risk that brings to the government.

Speaker 5 And so there's a judgment call of how much of orders do you give to the number two player and the number three player?

Speaker 5 Under either administration, SpaceX is probably going to be number one in its field in the near-a future, but is that 80%? Is that 60%?

Speaker 5 That's like billions of dollars, maybe tens of billions of dollars that we're talking based on that judgment call. And

Speaker 5 I think it's clear if Trump has a closer relationship with Elon Musk, that could make a difference in just how trustworthy

Speaker 1 they see him. And with Harris, not so much.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. And under the Biden administration, sort of the talking point from the Pentagon consistently has been diversification.
When you mention space, they say they want to diversify.

Speaker 5 And that means...

Speaker 1 And yet they've given Starlink all the business, which is really interesting.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, they really have.

Speaker 5 Well, if you look carefully at the contracts, yes, to date, they're the only player in town. So to have to,

Speaker 5 it's like when the iPhone came out, it's the only thing in the market.

Speaker 5 But if you look closely, like the most recent contracts, they picked 19 satellite vendors, which is kind of a staggering number for a market that's overwhelmingly dominated by SpaceX.

Speaker 5 And it means they want other players.

Speaker 1 They want other players there. Yeah.
So, Zoe, what happens at Twitter? Musk famously reinstated users that were previously banned, including the former president himself.

Speaker 1 It's become a megaphone for misinformation and inciting violence. And again, I shall repeat what I call it, a Nazi porn bar.

Speaker 1 Trump railed insurrectionists on January 6th using Twitter. What happens to X if he wins and if Harris wins and the future of the platform itself.

Speaker 1 Harris has previously advocated for increased regulation on social media platforms.

Speaker 1 Musk is now saying she will shut it down and arrest him, which is a little bit drama queen level, but that's clearly not true. But talk about Twitter or X under each administration.

Speaker 2 Honestly, I don't see a whole lot happening either way. I mean, he's done so much already to turn it into a right-wing echo chamber, which you called very early.
This was his entire intent.

Speaker 2 This was the project of Elon buying Twitter in the first place, and he's been successful in that regard.

Speaker 2 And, you know, we've seen the FTC try and investigate, the SEC get involved at different times, but ultimately, given Elon's power, like, what's really going to happen?

Speaker 2 He's going to have to pay a little fine.

Speaker 2 I think as

Speaker 2 X, previously Twitter becomes more and more of a crucial platform for conservative ideas and conservative politicians, Elon's going to become more invested in seeing it be successful.

Speaker 2 And so while previously he might have said, eh, the platform's hemorrhaging money, I'm not going to pour more of my personal wealth into it, I could see him now if regulation comes down, he has to pay a fine, just, you know, ponying up and paying that fine in order to keep the platform going.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think he's going to keep it. No question.
It's, you know, it's like, why not? He's rich. Everyone's always like, oh, now he's, I'm like, why? He's so rich.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we don't. He's getting richer.

Speaker 1 Like, what the hell doesn't care?

Speaker 1 So, Tim, what about Tesla? Trump had previously threatened to repeal some of the pro-EV policies that Biden put into place. It doesn't seem like Elon's afraid of that, though.

Speaker 1 He recently claimed that he was going to grow Tesla 20 to 30 percent in 2025, which led to a rally on Wall Street. But I and other analysts are very skeptical of him actually doing that.

Speaker 1 I think they're just words. What do you think the impact of a Trump partner on Tesla would be? Trump has been weirdly negative about EVs, et cetera.

Speaker 1 And you've written about the impact of Trump win on Tesla's special relationship with China. Does that change the calculation at all? And same thing in a Harris administration.

Speaker 4 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yes, this is an interesting thing. Whereas in a Trump administration, SpaceX has probably helped.
In a Harris administration, Tesla is probably beneficial. Very much so.

Speaker 4 And, you know, Elon would like to say he doesn't want subsidies. He doesn't want government help for Tesla, but Tesla has benefited greatly from governments wanting an EV industry.

Speaker 4 And so kind of a détente has kind of formed between Trump and Elon in this regard, and that essentially Elon kind of supports this idea of not wanting mandates.

Speaker 4 The Trump administration talks about forcing people to buy EVs, which is not really what's going on. It's pushing people towards EVs.
It's pushing automakers towards EVs for emission issues.

Speaker 4 But still, it sounds good in the soundbite, the idea that they're going to take your gasoline car from you, right?

Speaker 4 Harris administration, probably better for Tesla, and you hear from Tesla investors. It's interesting about the China situation.

Speaker 4 You know, it wasn't until until Tesla was able to open its factory in China that you really started to see the real growth. And at this point,

Speaker 4 if not half, close to half of the vehicles are made in China. That is the engine in a lot of ways of its business.

Speaker 4 And they were able to open that factory in China without having a joint venture, which was unprecedented.

Speaker 4 And that is in part because of the special relationship that Elon developed with that government, a government that was wanting to build out its own EV industry

Speaker 1 and is building out.

Speaker 4 And is, and very successfully, and now to the point where local players are really rivals and are really scaring the rest of the industry.

Speaker 1 Oh, they're killing, they're killing Tesla in China for sure.

Speaker 4 And this is kind of the classic kind of issue in China is building up the locals and then kind of turning on perhaps the foreign companies that have come in. So there is this real risk.

Speaker 4 The idea that a Trump administration might kind of escalate a trade war is on people's minds. If the U.S.
and China

Speaker 4 get more complicated, Elon is already in the middle of it. He's seen perhaps as a proxy for the Trump administration.

Speaker 4 Here's a guy who's been on stage with Trump, who talks about being part of the administration.

Speaker 4 And there's a real thinking among those kinds of folks who study these things that Elon will be kind of put in the middle of that. And if he can't deliver, that could really harm him.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. So very quickly, Elon's putting a lot of money into XAI and Grok.
He's raising money for investors at a $40 billion valuation.

Speaker 1 I think it's probably not in the front row of AI companies. I think most people can agree.
But any of you, Neuralink, XAI, come into play with these political ambitions?

Speaker 1 Zoe?

Speaker 2 It's not clear that there's going to be a huge difference between a Trump and a Harris administration in terms of AI regulation in particular.

Speaker 2 I think either way, Elon is interested in being a dominant player in that space. But as you said, he isn't right now.
XAI certainly is is not.

Speaker 2 And, you know, we're seeing him be kind of hilariously distracted by trying to elect President Trump.

Speaker 2 He's running six different companies and yet he's putting all this time in Philadelphia campaigning.

Speaker 1 It's a good investment of his time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. And I think he thinks it'll pay off.

Speaker 1 I think he knows that Harris won't really go after him because she's a normal person.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I think AI, like right now, these AI initiatives take an enormous amount of focus and investment.

Speaker 2 And I think it's really an open question whether he he is going to be able to provide that or whether he's going to get distracted by other shiny objects.

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Speaker 1 So, Tim, you and your colleagues at the Wall Street Journal published a story recently at Elon's close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 1 You wrote back in February that people were calling him a hashtag Moscow Musk.

Speaker 1 He's tried to woo other right-wing world leaders like Argentina Javier Malay and India's Narendra Modi to push his business interests. We talk about his interest in China, obviously.

Speaker 1 How concerned should you be getting more power and influence under Trump? Talk a a little bit about the Putin relationship and then Zoe and Eva, what are your concerns in that regard?

Speaker 4 Well, it's worrisome to folks who follow these things. My colleagues reporting that Musk and Putin have had regular contact,

Speaker 4 which is, you know, counters what Elon has said.

Speaker 4 A few years ago, he said he talked to him just once.

Speaker 4 And the idea that they're in regular contact really worries folks, given the fact that he's so vital to the space program, as we've talked about, but also his powers with Starlink and his contracts with the Pentagon.

Speaker 4 Here's a man who he even talks about how he's got top secret clearance. He's got his fingers in very important parts of the U.S.
government in a way that is not typical.

Speaker 4 And you don't see Pentagon contractors

Speaker 4 on a regular basis talking about supporting Putin, which is this interesting kind of relationship.

Speaker 1 Well, the head of NASA was worried about it too,

Speaker 1 an unusual statement. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 And so it's not just that situation. If you think about kind of the totality of what we've seen over the year, there's been a lot of like Russia, Russia, Russia, right? Whether it was

Speaker 4 Dr. Carlson going to Russia and coming back with his interview with Putin and filling the X platform with those videos about how great the grocery stores are there

Speaker 4 and Putin talking about his admiration for Musk or

Speaker 4 Musk earlier this year trying to get his supporters on X to lobby against money going to the Ukraine or, you know, the reports of Starlink being used by Russian forces in Ukraine.

Speaker 4 You know, you're also seeing kind of on X kind of a surge of Russian state-backed activity, according to researchers.

Speaker 4 It's just a lot of Russia, Russia, Russia at a time when Russia is the U.S.'s chief adversary. And

Speaker 4 you see Elon on stage with Trump and what kind of influence he's going to have. It raises a lot of questions.

Speaker 1 And it always was an issue with the Trump administration. Eva and then Zoe.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so one thing that's not necessarily talked about too openly is the telecommunications industry is deeply intertwined with intelligence operations in every country.

Speaker 5 Because if you think about it, if you're going to spy, what tools do you use to spy? You're going to either tap or officially use. some sort of telecommunications tool.
And so

Speaker 5 yeah, that's exactly why Elon Musk is not just a car maker. Like, if you look at the kind of people he's meeting with, he's meeting with Putin.

Speaker 5 You know, Nedan Yahoo takes time in the middle of a war to meet with him.

Speaker 5 Like, that's why he has this elevated position where he's impossible to ignore for the president, whoever the president is, and also an enormous security risk, because he isn't a traditional contract federal contractor.

Speaker 5 He doesn't play by those rules. No.

Speaker 1 So do you see a moment where you would lose his national security credentials? Obviously, the journal's written about his drug use, you know, this Putin stories.

Speaker 1 It all feels like a Bond movie at this point.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it really does. But again, I think the U.S.
government is so dependent on Musk at this point that it's very hard to see how they'll be able to hold him accountable.

Speaker 2 But I think the Russia example is so telling because when we look at oligarchs in Russia who stood up to Putin, those people are no longer oligarchs and they're no longer billionaires.

Speaker 2 It's really, they have become become his cronies and part of his political operation rather than his political rivals. And I think that while business leaders in the U.S.

Speaker 2 might think they can have this transactional relationship with Trump, and then if he's elected and things do become more authoritarian, they'll be able to kind of hold the line on some of the areas where they disagree with him.

Speaker 2 I think the history of authoritarianism says otherwise.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So I'm going to end on that before we go.

Speaker 1 I was talking this week with historian Tim Snyder about the rise of digital oligarchs. He's specifically concerned about Elon, as we laid out.

Speaker 1 He's got a lot of power, more money than anyone on the planet, more influence than many world leaders. He's already impacting the outcome of wars.

Speaker 1 He owns spy satellites and he doesn't play well with others for too long. I think he has issues around drugs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It just goes on and on and on.

Speaker 1 And quite a healthy ego, I would say. He told me many years ago he thinks we are living in a computer simulation.
I think he thinks he's player one in that simulation.

Speaker 1 Based on what each of you know about him, where is ready player one in a year or two into each administration? Tim, let's start with you, then Eva, and then Zoe, you can finish.

Speaker 4 Well, I hate to make predictions, but it seems likely that no matter what happens, he's going to be in the center of more chaos, right? That's where he wants to be.

Speaker 4 That's what he kind of thrives off of. And he's got so many companies and so many balls in the air that there's always something going on, right?

Speaker 4 So it's continuing to push his priorities and the needs for those companies and for kind of his business interests.

Speaker 4 That's what he does.

Speaker 4 He's pushing forward for those things. So he's continuing to kind of swirl around and try to advocate for those things.

Speaker 1 Okay. And in a Harris administration?

Speaker 4 I think it's the same way.

Speaker 4 It's still fighting either way. He's so influential that it's not like he can go.
It's not like he's going to go away, right?

Speaker 4 He might become the chief antagonist for a Harris administration, given his platforms.

Speaker 4 But he's still going to have to play with the government and figure out ways to do it. He might have more investigations against him.

Speaker 4 One of the real benefits, we've talked about how, you know, in a Trump administration, he wants to cut regulations and spending, and that will be very hard.

Speaker 4 One of the real benefits he might have is the chilling effect on those regulators who oversee him, who maybe don't want to get into that limelight and have the big fight with him and just kind of make things easy for him.

Speaker 1 Okay. Eva?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 we know one of his long-term goals is to go to Mars within his lifetime. Yeah, can't wait.
Which

Speaker 5 so I think under the Trump administration, we'd see him sort of with roadblocks cleared moving rapidly in that direction.

Speaker 5 Under a Harris administration, there's probably going to be more scrutiny and concern about him. And the question will be, is there an alternative?

Speaker 5 And right now, for a lot of these lines of business, the answer is no. Amazon's a potential competitor.
Jeff Bezos's businesses, but maybe not.

Speaker 5 And without a viable alternative, it's not even a question on the table. Can we cancel his national security clearance? Can we stop using his businesses?

Speaker 1 Well, they could cancel it and let Gwen Schottwell run it.

Speaker 2 He doesn't have to have it. He doesn't have to do it.
Potentially.

Speaker 5 Potentially.

Speaker 5 But it wouldn't be the same, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think they're not going to go out of their way to get in a fight with him.
Why would they?

Speaker 2 it's good it focuses takes focus away from her administration and then it's that for the whole four years i think she won't actually she's quite a sensible person in that regard zoe finish up yeah i think under a trump administration we see musk's political power codified we see him be in a position to regulate regulators that have been looking into his companies and being able to push his political agenda of small government and we'll see him become even more wealthy and powerful than he is today so that's a pretty intense prospect and seems quite likely.

Speaker 2 I think under a Harris administration, we see more of the same.

Speaker 2 And what I mean by that is prior to this current campaign cycle, we saw Musk, you know, involved in politics, but also running all of his other companies. He had a lot of different goals.

Speaker 2 And now we've seen him kind of single-mindedly focused on electing Trump. If Harris is elected, I see a small reprieve from that.
political project. I think that he'll go back, he'll focus on Tesla.

Speaker 2 Like Tim and Eva said before, he actually stands to benefit with that company in particular under a Harris administration.

Speaker 2 And then I think perhaps before the next election cycle, maybe he'll ramp up again and try and get a Republican, a conservative politician in the White House.

Speaker 1 Who would it be?

Speaker 2 God, that's a prediction that I don't want to make.

Speaker 1 Probably. I don't know.
That's interesting. Vance, I would guess.
I guess he would push Vance and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of kismet between those two.

Speaker 1 Yeah, kismet. That's an interesting way to put it.

Speaker 1 Anyway, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks.

Speaker 1 And we'll see what happens as we move forward.

Speaker 1 On with Carraswisher is produced by Christian Castro-Rousselle, Kateri Yoakum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

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