An Elon Musk Report Card

Pushkin.

This is an iHeart podcast.

Some days, keeping up with your health feels difficult.

Between your family, your job, your to-do list, there's just not enough time.

That's why CVS Health offers more ways to get care.

Need help at 2 a.m.?

They've got 24-7 virtual care.

Struggle with a life challenge?

They offer offer mental health services too.

And with the CVS Health app, you can track prescriptions, book clinical visits, even get meds delivered, making it simpler to stay on top of your health.

They're your trusted pharmacy and so much more.

Learn more at cvshealth.com slash more.

In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

T-Mobile knows all about that.

They're now the best network according to the experts at OCLA Speed Test.

And they're using that network to to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

That's your business, Supercharged.

Learn more at supermobile.com.

Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

where you can see the sky.

Best network based on analysis by OCLA of SpeedTest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early.

Your business is on your mind 24-7.

So when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do.

That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs.

When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in.

LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place.

Here's how it works.

First, post your job.

LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights.

Second, either post your job for free or pay to promote it.

Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants.

Then, get qualified candidates.

At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of the candidates you attract.

And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best.

Then, data.

Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of SMBs using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates.

And last, share with your network.

You can let your network know you're hiring.

You can even add a hashtag hiring frame to your profile picture and get two times more qualified candidates.

Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today.

Find your next great hire on LinkedIn.

Post your job for free at linkedin.com/slash gladwell-fake.

That's linkedin.com/slash gladwell-fake to post your job for free.

Terms and conditions apply.

Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.

I'm Maria Konakova.

And I'm Nate Selver.

Today in the show, we're going to be talking about a certain man whose name rhymes with D-Lon Tusk.

You can probably guess who he is, who recently left the federal government.

We're going to give a grade for Elon Musk's tenure in office.

Did he help himself?

Did he even help Trump?

We'll discuss it all and what kind of decisions Elon made.

And then we're going to actually zoom out a little bit and address one of our listeners' questions about how we can change our current system of government to allow it to make better decisions.

So, let's talk about Elon Musk and his brief tenure at the top as President of the United States, as co-president of the United States.

Yeah, I mean, so

first of all, one thing we might ask is: who comes out looking better in this exchange, right?

Like Trump or Elon?

Trump got, what was it, $300 million contributed to his campaign in various ways.

Trump got to brand himself as a more interesting kind of forward-looking candidate.

Gets Elon to be one of the ringleaders of this faction of Silicon Valley and business leaders that gravitate toward Trump.

I think from day one in the White House that Elon was

not helpful to Trump, right?

Although Trump is not popular, his numbers aren't that bad, right?

Especially they recovered a little bit since, I mean, on any given day, you never know what is the truth about what tariffs will be in place, but

they've recovered since that, not Reparations Day.

What was it called?

Not Independence Day either.

Liberation Day.

Liberation Day.

There we go.

Yeah, Reparations Day would not be a Trump.

No, no.

I think if we had a Reparations Day, it would have been canceled under Trump.

But his numbers have recovered.

Elon's have not.

Let me look up how popular is Elon Musk on the Silver Bulletin.

So 40% favorable rating,

54% unfavorable rating.

At the start of Trump's term, he was a 42 and a 47, right?

So his unfavorables really went up.

People who were on the fence about Elon Musk now substantially disapprove of him.

And by the way, this affects his bottom line, too, right?

It's affected Tesla sales in Europe

quite profoundly, where Elon is not.

40, 55, but 2070, 2080 unfavorable in these surveys.

And then, you know, look, he does interfere in certain ways with Trump's policy in two or three areas, right?

One of which is skilled immigration

and one of which is tariffs.

So I think Trump exits a little worse for trying this post-election day, but

Elon probably helped him in the campaign.

And during the campaign, Elon was more neutral in terms of public image and so forth.

And like, if you're neutral, but you raise $300 million and allow you candidate to rebrand himself, then not such a bad deal.

So I think it's an interesting calculus, right?

Because Elon was definitely helpful in getting Trump elected.

But then at some point, he started being a liability because I think with Doge, even people who supported Elon, there were certain things where he was starting to get blowback, including from Trump, who was like, oh, well, we don't really want to be cutting all of these things, right?

We need to win elections and people cutting things isn't popular.

I think he said something along those lines.

So I think that that was hurting Trump.

And then we have actually the evidence of the campaign where Elon donated $20 million, right?

And it ended up with a huge Democratic victory because there was a backlash.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Yeah, exactly.

There was a huge backlash to the fact that he was perceived as kind of meddling a little bit too much.

And you also have these conflicting things, right, where a lot of the tariffs that Trump wants to pass hurt Tesla, right?

And Tesla currently is losing a lot of the, there's EV credits that are no longer part of the big beautiful bill.

So there are a lot of things happening that are hurting Tesla directly.

And people at SpaceX have been complaining that, you know, they feel neglected, that productivity is down, that innovation is down, that people are not motivated, that the, you know, the work environment has been horrible because Elon has completely neglected his duties there.

And so I think he's definitely suffering on those grounds.

I'm very, very curious to see whether Trump is going to persist with the doge cuts and like double down or if he's going to now like slowly try to walk it back as part of separating himself from Elon.

What do you think, Nate?

Well, look, if you look at bond markets, they're worried that we're going to run budget deficits because we'll probably cut taxes on rich people like Republicans like to do

without cutting spending by enough, right?

And where we have cut spending are in things like foreign aid programs that probably from like an

expected value standpoint do a lot of good for the world

but aren't that large a fraction of the federal budget.

So it's almost like the, you know, that's like the canonical issue where if you poll people and say what percentage of the budget goes to foreign aid, they'll say 15% instead of 1% or whatever it is, right?

And so, you know, that's where you kind of get a lot of bang for your buck.

And that's where

there have been more cuts.

But like, yeah, look, I mean, Trump was never

a fiscal austerity guy, right?

And he differed from like the Romney Ryan generation of Republicans by doing less to target entitlement programs, right?

I mean, in principle, he has an isolationist streak, but I don't believe we're cutting defense spending or anything like that.

And, you know, with legitimate reason, I mean, you know, things as we, you know, you look at happening in Ukraine, right?

And like, how is our drone capabilities compared to China?

And it could become a very dangerous world.

But no, yeah, I mean,

what is Elon's legacy on the government?

I mean, I think it's like, you know, cutting PepVar and things like that.

And not a lot of other, you know, and maybe

restraining Trump a little bit on tariffs at the end.

Yeah, that remains to be seen, right?

But yeah, I'm looking at some numbers right now, and this is just one calculation that said that, you know, his,

at best, it seems like Doge has saved around $150 billion, but that's probably unlikely to stand.

And that the consequences of the cuts,

putting the federal workers on paid leave, rehiring mistakenly fired employees, and all of that is going to cost the government as much as $135 billion.

So net-net, it seems like very little has been accomplished, except for things that, you know, Elon is very big on innovation, right?

And

American brain power.

And he, you know, he's been tweeting about SpaceX and all of this stuff.

And one of the big things of his legacy is cutting all of the grants to, as we've talked about on the show multiple times, kind of creating this brain drain and this vacuum.

You know, where the fuck is his innovation going to come from if all scientists leave the United States?

And so I think that he

perversely, it's not, I don't think, the association with Trump.

I think he has cost himself a hell of a lot of money in that sense, because the pipeline is going to dry up and this is going to be much harder to undo than rehiring federal employees.

Yeah, look, I think he was coming from a paradigm where,

you know,

in the private sector, there's kind of a paradigm where like you accumulate fat in in a corporation, right?

It becomes

hard to fire people on a one-on-one basis for various reasons, right?

I mean, A, it's just kind of a challenging thing to let someone off of a job, right?

And there can be union stuff and there can be

legal stuff and wrongful termination stuff and all of that, right?

So, you know, so sometimes in a corporation be like, okay, we've been growing, maybe we're struggling a little bit now.

Let's just take a scalpel and shave 10% or whatever of our budget off, right?

It's like much harder to do in a U.S.

government sense where, like,

look, I'm sure there is lots of waste, fraud, and abuse in the government.

If you read the book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, it talks about some of that.

There's some in state governments, too, and seems to be worse in blue states than in red states, right?

But like, you have a whole bureaucracy and a whole legal framework for both appropriating funds to begin with and like, and for cutting them, right?

So, you know, Congress is supposed to control the power of the purse.

Trump has not performed very well in litigation so far in a number of areas.

And so, you know, so that paradigm doesn't carry forward.

And I think is like,

look, I mean, the basic critique that I find most compelling of Elon is not, oh, he's a Nazi.

It's that he's way in over his head and doesn't seem to have this ability to differentiate issues that he knows a lot about from ones where he doesn't.

Like if Trump had appointed him instead of like David Sachs to be like the part-time AIs are, I mean, Elon actually is

more cautious on AI, more concerned about AI risk than some other Silicon Valley leaders, right?

So like, Elon, we want you to like

do what you can to ensure AI leadership in an intelligent way and leadership against China and technological leadership.

And

now, you know, look, I think the chance that China wins, quote unquote, what do you want to call it, Cold War II,

has risen.

Gone up by a lot.

I think that you just absolutely like spot on nailed the issue here, Nate, which is the overconfidence that Elon Musk has exhibited, right?

The fact that he doesn't seem to grasp, like he is so

he is so enamored of his own intelligence that he doesn't seem to grasp that his deep knowledge of one sphere doesn't mean that he is qualified to be an expert and have deep knowledge of everything else.

And he's like, well, I can do the same thing to the government that I did to Twitter and look at Twitter now.

Ha ha, fuck you haters.

However, Twitter is not the government, right?

And you can also like argue that, you know, Twitter is worse off now.

We're not going to, I'm not making that argument, but you could.

However, even if you say, okay, Twitter's better off now, everything's great, you know.

He understands business in a way that he does not understand government, right?

He doesn't know what he's doing.

He doesn't know what he's cutting.

He lacks that basic knowledge.

And yet the confidence doesn't match up, right, with his knowledge.

He's not, the humility is altogether absent in the way he thinks about this.

And this is one of the biggest problems with people who are very intelligent.

It's actually in my dissertation for when I was in grad school, this is what I, this is what we discovered, right?

That this is the Achilles heel of high performers, this overconfidence bias where they succumb to thinking that they know much more and are much more in control than they actually are.

And especially in his case, if,

first of all, Silicon Valley is kind of a no-negging culture, right it's very self-dealing in the sense i don't mean in any corrupt way i mean like in a kind of literal way of like everyone's getting in on everyone else's different rounds of investment it's a very tight-knit community so you can't like it's considered uncouth to like criticize another vc or founder right you don't see a lot of that necessarily that's one part of it but also look he is on a pretty amazing winning streak.

I mean, you know, if you ask most investors at the time, is SpaceX going to work?

Is Tessa's going to work?

They'd They'd say no, right?

Probably not.

You know, I do think that like he deserves some credit for like,

you know, some of the dire predictions about Twitter were grossly exaggerated.

Now, its business model isn't much good, but like, it's remained an important part of the discourse.

You know, I think that like XAI is taken.

somewhat seriously.

It's not a category leader like OpenAI or Anthropic or maybe Google.

You know, it might be down in that third tier, but like still has a lot of interesting data to crunch from Twitter, data that is valuable.

They're hiring good people and like, it's not impossible that that could be a big player, right?

So like you have to give him credit for what he's done in business.

And look, there are different types of intelligence too.

I mean, the phrase I've used with Elon is spiky intelligence, which is just like,

very

excellent in some areas and very deficient in other other areas, where he's like below the average human being in some areas, like emotional IQ, probably, right?

And that's, but he's not like a calculating.

I mean, in my book, I talked about the river, right?

Which are at least very competitive, analytical people.

He's not like the calculating type.

He's impulsive.

He goes all in on things.

And yeah, you know, I was going to say, I was like a poker player that has a sunrun and wins like three big tournaments in a year.

There's like a little bit of that.

But then they're playing some other game that isn't poker and they bet on themselves really heavily.

And yeah.

Or even in poker, but the next year when their sun run is over, I'm thinking of someone in particular who's on the sun run of a lifetime right now, who's going to be coming down to earth at some point.

And we'll be right back after this break.

In today's super competitive competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

T-Mobile knows all about that.

They're now the best network, according to the experts at OOCLA Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

That's your business, supercharged.

Learn more at supermobile.com.

Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the US where you can see the sky.

Best network based on analysis by UCLA of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

So what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal?

Have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

Organic Valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

Learn more at OV.coop and taste the difference.

This is the story of the one.

As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on.

That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the HVAC is humming, and his facility shines.

With Granger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces, plus 24-7 customer support, his venue never misses a beat.

Call quickgranger.com or just stop by.

Granger, for the ones who get it done.

I think that spiky intelligence is a really important way to look at it because there are people who are generalists, right?

If you think about it, you know, if you think of the fox hedgehog type of thinking, have we talked about this on the show?

It should be a risky business core concept, but yeah, let's talk.

Let's remind people what that is.

Yeah, so you have two types of people:

the people who know, who have the broad intelligence, right, who know a little about a lot of things, and then the people who know a lot about one thing in particular.

And

so, those are kind of the two concepts.

And some perform better in some environments, some perform better in other environments.

Nate, I think you wrote about this in your book,

right?

And so these are kind of these two paradigms for

high performers.

And

both types of people, by the way, can be very high performing people.

So this isn't a ding on any one approach, right?

But it just depends on what the context is and what you're trying to accomplish.

Yeah.

A hedgehog knows one big thing.

A fox knows many little things, right?

And they're both types of intelligence for things like

poker or for things like making prediction, right then this fox

tendency to kind of calibrate and estimate and be pluralistic tends to be helpful i think right if you are a founder of a company then you might want someone who goes all in and is very spiky and divariance right you want you want that hedgehog But a fox is actually less likely to be overconfident than a hedgehog because the hedgehog is much more likely to fall for that bias because the hedgehog knows so much about that thing.

And if it's a successful hedgehog, the hedgehog has been very good, right, and has been rewarded for knowing a lot.

And so

that then creates this false sense that, oh, I'm just brilliant, right?

I'm like naturally good at knowing things.

Whereas the fox, because the fox kind of knows about so many different things and might not be like, if the fox squared off against the hedgehog in the hedgehog's area of expertise, the fox would lose.

But the fox kind of knows enough about the world that I think the fox is more likely to be humble.

It's a little, you know, it's a little strange to think of a humble fox, but that's why the fox is able to evade traps, right?

If the fox became overconfident, it would be very easy to catch the fox because you'd be like, haha, I know that the fox thinks that it's,

you know, the best in the world.

And so I'm going to be able to catch it.

Yeah.

And

Elon also lacks a certain type of worldliness, right?

You know, look, say what you want about like Mark and Breesen or Peter Thiel, but they can write interesting essays about kind of world affairs and political philosophy and things like that, right?

You do get some founders, you know, Vitalik Buterin is the founder of Ethereum.

And when I talked to him for my book, he's like, yeah, I thought there was a 90% chance that I'd fail, but I thought that the expected value was positive at this stage in my life, right?

That's a very risky business/slash fox way to think about things.

Whereas Elon would just be like, I'm going to fucking do it.

I'm going to fucking do it.

I don't even want to think about the odds.

I'm going to fucking do it, right?

So, he's particularly, you know, he lacks that roundedness, I think, and

the self-reflectiveness.

And also, he is has a lot of distractions.

I mean, look, in terms of the number of things he gets done, I mean, he's sort of

in a half-assed way, but maybe not completely, you know, he is running like a half dozen companies and being the special advisor to the president and like fathering all these children and traveling around the world.

I love how you just threw that in there and fathering all these children and in lawsuits about all of the children he's fathering.

So that's actually a very,

it's an important point because that does kind of get his attention.

And, you know, look, we all know,

okay, let me put this carefully.

We all know high-achieving

defective

people.

I don't mean defective entirely pejoratively, right?

But like people who have flaws that they're able to overcome because they have crafted a life to work around them and or because they have strengths that outweigh them and or because they have enough like power, privilege, authority to not get called on the problems, right?

You know, my experience with those people is that when you add

other elements, that careful balance can get out of whack, right?

And with Elon, you're adding two, you're not just adding the government stuff, you're adding, according to a lot of credible reporting,

maybe quite a bit of drug use and not just weed, but

ketamine in particular seems to have been a thing that he was doing, right?

And when you have these reports, there's one recently in the New York Times, there was one in the Wall Street Journal.

I mean, so the reporting on that, I'd gather, is very deep.

And like, you know, Elon's life has taken, I think, kind of a turn for the worse in this period, right?

He was at one point one of the most admired men or women for that matter on earth.

Tesla had a very good brand.

I mean, there are a ton of Teslas on the road, right?

But like, you know, part of the problem is like this time he kind of spends neglecting Tesla is a time when Chinese electric vehicles begin to gain a lot of market share, right?

Where other American companies like Rivian begin to have more prestige, especially in the blue areas where Elon used to be more popular.

By the way, using oftentimes like the charging network that like Tesla built, right?

Yeah.

You know, you see a few cyber trucks on the road.

I think that is largely not seen as a tremendous success in

driverless cars.

Waymo is the category leader in the United States, right?

So all of a sudden, Tesla is like

second best at a bunch of things.

Its profit margins are down.

Its stock did bounce back after Elon

downsized himself from the government or was or was downsized.

But Elon might have concerns that you're playing catch up in various ways in this market now and you kind of established the whole category by yourself.

Yeah, no, I think that

he is playing catch up.

And by the way, Nate, I've started noticing, I don't know if you have bumper stickers on a lot of Teslas that apologize for driving a Tesla.

So people are, you know, people are saying things like, I wish I didn't, you know, but I can't afford a new car.

And I bet that the secondary, like the resale market for Teslas is going to fall, which has traditionally been actually incredibly strong, right?

In the past, if you try to buy an old Tesla, like the prices were ridiculously high.

And I wouldn't be at all surprised if that secondary market also kind of absolutely caved in.

And so you need to think think not just right now, but ahead.

And then you've got the lack of EV subsidies and kind of all of those credits that are going away.

And so all of these things are sobering if you're an Elon Musk and Tesla is kind of your, your baby.

Yeah, look, people are pretty rational about car purchases, right?

They're often pretty good gauges for overall optimism about the economy in the near term, right?

According to Google, Gemini AI, you know, always caveats about this, but there's been a 10% decline in resale values approximately so far and it's at a time when in theory because of tariffs you should have people moving into

used cars right um if new cars get more expensive um

yeah and it's like no longer like uh flash used to be cool thing you had a friend who would ride a tesla it was like a little bit of like a friend who had a crypto pump

right hey you wanna you wanna you wanna ride my tesla to the poker tournament it's like okay sure yeah and and they've lost that category leadership i think yeah Yeah,

I think that's absolutely right.

I do wonder whether something else will step in.

I'm very curious to see what the next five to 10 years in the U.S.

will look like in terms of EVs,

whether someone else is going to step in, whether Tesla is going to rebound as Trump, you know.

leaves office and Elon is further distanced from it, or whether we're going to see just a fall, a continuous fall in the share of EVs.

In which case, I think it would be a lasting harm for a lot of goals that Elon even has stated that he has in the past.

No, look, I don't think we will.

I think that will, that will rebound, right?

You know, look, now every manufacturer, and if you look at like what are car and driver's best electric cars, Tesla's Model 3 is still number one, but you have Hyundai's and you have Nissans and you have

BMWs and American-made versions and things like that.

And like, I think the market demand for these cars has proven and obviously Trump's probably going to roll back

fuel efficiency standards in some places.

But like, and by the way, I don't think, I don't think Elon's position as a public figure is unrecoverable.

I think it might have become unrecoverable if he had remained in office.

I guess he wasn't in office.

He was officially.

He was never in office.

For much longer.

But people have like, people have like short.

memories.

People have, oh my God.

Yes.

Can we just like talk about that for a second?

People's memory is non-existent.

Like people,

especially these days, like I feel like the attention span is so incredibly short that like next week, if something else happens, you know, you will kind of go back to your priors and

this will be kind of water under the bridge, even though this.

kind of the circumstances might not have changed that drastically, the repercussions might still be felt.

I'm always shocked at just how short people's memories actually are.

Look, I mean, if he, I I mean, part of the problem is like Elon, I think, does not believe in surrounding himself with like, he has some PR.

People have tried to work with him before, but like, not, not many relative to a person of his stature, but like a good PR campaign.

You know, you do the right interviews.

You make sure you're not on ketamine or something when you're doing the interviews.

And like, and like, and you can say, I tried to stop Trump from,

I don't know, man.

I tried to stop Trump from these horrible terrorists and X and Y and Z.

I mean, mean, he has expressed.

So when we put up at Silver Bulletin, the Elon Musk popularity tracker, he actually

replied to me on Twitter and said, it's because the government's or the news media is biased against me.

I'm paraphrasing.

But also, ha ha ha, I have kind of fucked up some shit, right?

It was like surprisingly humble.

I think it did register to him at some point that like you've earned a lot of credibility, buddy, with

a large mass of the American public that once hold you in high regard, including friends.

And yeah, I mean,

I hope he has

people in his life that can point him

in the right direction.

He has founded a bunch of amazing companies and I'd rather have good Elon than evil Elon, I guess, right?

Without wanting to precisely define what good and evil are, but he is like a world historically important.

figure and it would probably be better if for the world if he were making

more

i don't mean sober in a literal sense but like more better, making better decisions more to use a tag letter to the show.

Yes, absolutely.

So, okay, so summing up, Nate, if we were to give him a grade on his decision-making, I don't know, do you want to give him a letter grade or a number grade?

But let's give him a grade.

Let's do a number, yeah.

Okay, let's do zero to ten with zero being absolute disaster, ten being, you know, brilliant, best decision maker in the world.

And when's this start out?

It starts out

we're talking just the Trump tenure from the moment he's appointed.

And

as he has.

From a pure EV's play, you can give him credit for

investing in the Trump campaign, right?

Let's give him two grades.

Let's give him the grade from his decision to kind of pivot to Trump.

Let's call it that.

And let's give him a grade for his tenure in the non-his unofficial tenure in the Trump administration.

So two grades.

To pivot to Trump in the first place, and I'm going to ignore what my my political preferences are personally.

I'm looking at this from like kind of Elon's.

Look, I give him a, it's hard not to be results oriented, right?

I give him a five, which is a boring grade.

I mean, look,

on the one hand, he did recognize that like Trump is the rising ship in this election, right?

I can have access to like a lot of power and a lot of influence.

I mean, it's like tactically, it's kind of smart, right?

Strategically, in terms of what it means for

his life and his brand, I mean, he has a very high opportunity cost, right?

He has really cool jobs as it is, right?

And, you know, aspires of extending human lifespans and traveling to Mars or building super intelligent AI and all these things, right?

And so like, you know,

initially, Tesla gained a lot of value in the stock market when Trump won.

And then Elam was brought in, right?

And then lost all of that back, basically, and now has rebounded some again, right?

So like,

yeah, I don't know.

I, I, you can't give him a high grade because, like,

I think you have to be a little bit results-oriented, right?

He was not able to do it in a way that avoided massive backlash toward him and his products, right?

And was not able to do it in a way that was sustainable, really.

Um, but they did win an election, he was one of the key figures in winning a vital election at a vital time in world history, and so you can't go too low either.

Yep.

And what about during the administration?

I'll give him a

two and a half, which is rounding up.

I'll give him one point for

one point for pushing back on skilled immigration, one point for pushing back on tariffs, and I'll give him a 2.3.

And

three-tenths of a point for leaving when he did.

The reason three-tenths is because I think it was probably at least 70% Trump's decision.

What were your scores?

So I was actually

going back and forth between lower and higher than a five on his pivot to Trump.

And so I think I'll end up at a five, which is quite boring, but I'll explain what my thinking was.

So originally, I was going to say lower because he was one of the reasons that

Trump ended up winning.

I think like that support actually helped Trump at the beginning and that money helped Trump at the beginning.

And I don't know, obviously, this is speculation.

But had he thrown that support towards the Democrats,

I think we might have seen a different election result.

I don't know, right?

This is

a lot of maybes.

But so on that sense, like it's very hard to disambiguate cause and effect here and figure out like, was it actually a good decision, right?

Would he have been better served if Kamala Harris had come to power and like he was able to align himself closely with that government, which was not

a shit show in the way that Trump 2.0 has been, that might have actually been strategically smarter.

And once again, it's really, really hard hard to deal with counterfactuals.

So I don't know, but that's kind of, it's pulling me in different directions.

The other thing I was thinking about was he reminds me of the Russian oligarchs who threw in behind Putin, right?

Who helped get Putin in power and were like,

this is what's going to really help my business.

And they, you know, that was brilliant.

They made billions of dollars until a lot of them started getting killed.

And so

at the end of the day, like that wasn't nearly as brilliant.

So at first, when I was thinking through it, I was like, oh, well, that can actually be strategically smart.

So higher than a five, but most of them died.

And so

that's actually not a very good trade-off.

And that was the other kind of part of what I was thinking about.

So I ended up at a five, actually, maybe even lower than a five, given that both of these end up net negative.

So I would give him a four on that.

Honestly, I'm going to give him a one.

I don't think that in his time in the administration, he has accomplished enough to warrant more than a one because even the things that he pushed back on, like tariffs, I think that that wasn't him pushing back.

I think that was popularity ratings and everyone else and Trump just going like back and forth.

And

I think that we would be in largely the same place we are right now, even without Elon.

So I'm not going to give him that much credit for that.

And I'm going to give him a lot of grief for the chaos that he's caused and the brain drain that he's caused and the downstream effects that he's causing for the country.

So I think his decision making in this particular moment is like,

I feel like I'm being very positive not to give him a zero.

All right, F plus.

Exactly.

We're not failing him, but pretty damn close.

All right, Mr.

Musk, that's our report card for you.

Let's take a break and talk about government in general.

In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

T-Mobile knows all about that.

They're now the best network, according to the experts at OOCLA Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan.

to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

With Super Mobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

That's your business, supercharged.

Learn more at supermobile.com.

Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

where you can see the sky.

Best network based on analysis by OOCLA of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

So, what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an Organic Valley farm.

Organic Valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

Learn more at OV.co-op and taste the difference.

This is the story of the one.

As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on.

That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the HVAC is humming, and his facility shines.

With Granger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces, plus 24-7 customer support, his venue never misses a beat.

Call quickgranger.com or just stop by.

Granger, for the ones who get it done.

So we have a question this week from a listener whose name is Tyler, and he writes, how can we change our current current system of government to allow it to make better decisions?

Now, he wasn't coming at it from quite the angle that I thought he would, but it is a thought-provoking angle.

So, this is what he writes: He says, One thing I've been thinking about recently is the benefits of autocracy.

I look at Putin and Xi, and I'm jealous of their ability to do real long-term planning.

And so, you know, this is something that has caused Tyler to think: is there something that America can do to kind of go past short-term gains and have more of a long-term strategic mindset?

I'm a big believer in democracy.

Yeah, look, but this is a question.

I mean, China can clearly...

China can do things we can't do.

Yeah, they can build, I mean, they're way ahead on drones, right?

They're ahead or catching up on electric vehicles.

They're behind on AI.

They're way ahead on robotics.

You know, for a long time, people thought when you have a whole country become middle class, invariably you also have democracy go along with it.

And China's like, no, I mean, you, you know, you are getting closer and closer to free entrepreneurship in China.

You are not able to talk about Taneman Square without getting in a lot of trouble.

And they're, and they're managing these issues in like very weird ways.

They're getting more progressive on like gay rights, but you're, you're not going to, you're not going to have a democracy.

And like, you know, that's not a compromise that I'm willing to make necessarily, right?

Yes, I completely agree with you.

But I do want to kind of acknowledge that the question, where Tyler's question is coming from, is a question that people have been asking for centuries.

So if we go back to Plato, right, and the Republic, you have the idea of the philosopher king.

So Plato ended up, you know, when he tried to interrogate which system of government is best and, you know, rule by the few, the many, all of these different things.

He comes to the conclusion that we should have basically one person in power who's a philosopher, who has all of these different

qualities that make him wise and that basically make him the best paternalistic ruler.

He knows what's best for everyone.

And it's kind of, it's a scary thought if you actually try to think through the implications, but this is where Plato came out as well.

And that was one of the things that I thought about when I was thinking about Tyler's question.

But yeah, I think that there is lots wrong with the U.S.

government, but not being an autocracy is not one of them.

I have always believed that we need to cut the two-party system, right?

That we would actually be much better served if we had a more pluralistic system with more viable third-party options and healthier debate, less polarization, right?

Where people actually were able to represent more points of view, which is kind of more of the parliamentary system that you see in a lot of European countries.

Well, see, look, our system was designed in a world where

you don't have terribly strong parties, what most of the founders assumed.

Because if you didn't, then like,

then we'd have much more checks and balances with Trump in the name of Congress in particular.

The court, I think, largely has played the role that the founders envisioned for it, believe it or not, right?

But like, but Congress, you know, a lot of things Trump was doing, again, Congress has power to restrict Trump on tariffs, which is both directly unpopular and indirectly hurting the economy, which will hurt all of their jobs, right?

And they're not able to do it because there are Republican primaries where

they face far more threat.

Most Republican members face more threat from losing a GOP primary challenge than from losing

a general election, right?

I mean, I'm a little bit unclear kind of what we're allowed to fee out or what we're not.

I will say sometimes you walk around New York, you know, nice spring day or whatever, you're like, I'm in all these buildings and parks.

And you're like, I'm amazed we haven't just all killed each other by now, right?

Human beings have a long history of violence.

They're able to get together.

And,

you know, countries have great epics and eras.

Maybe the United States is out of its great era in some ways.

The fact that we can't build things as fast as we used to is

frustrating, I think.

But, you know, look, the checks and balances that the framers design

isn't a bad system, but it's like deliberately a hard system to

change, right?

The threshold for amending the constitution is high.

And

if you get into a lock-in where you have extreme partisanship on the one hand, which makes it impossible to

achieve super majorities on

most things, right?

Then that creates lots of problems.

You know, I'm starting to sound like one of these middle-aged guys who's more worried about like a debt crisis in the long term, right?

Markets are, and I tend to trust markets on that.

You know, that's one problem that we face.

I think the cuts that people are making to the

to long-term research and development and scientific programs, right?

The deterrent to the most talented people coming to the United States.

I mean, you know, all of these things I think are going to have long-term consequences that reduce our leadership a bit.

And America gets away with a lot because we have the world's most powerful military, or at least top two and a half, right?

We have a world's leading currency, right?

And we had a huge head start.

I mean, everyone else kind of, you know, Europe has had problems.

China is starting from a very low baseline.

So we had a big head start and a lot of advantages.

We have, you know, we're protected from

foreign invasions to a degree that you aren't if you're in Eurasia, right?

Our natural resources are very rich.

If we had to become self-sufficient, then we absolutely could, right?

We have a lot of soft power based on our creativity and our capitalism and our brands and things like that, right?

And, you know, it'd be kind of a shame if we fucked it up, right?

But

well, we're on our way, right?

As you just said, we're on our way to fucking it up because a lot of those things that give us our power are under threat right now.

And that is not going to help government.

And having a Putin in charge is certainly not going to

help that situation because if in some ways, you know, know what Trump is trying to do right now is not dissimilar from what happens in autocracies right with all of the executive orders trying to circumvent the checks and balances trying to circumvent Congress it hasn't worked as well because we do you know we're not in an autocracy yet but I'm saying that's what he's kind of if you look at what he's trying to do

that is kind of the the approach is let me just executive order my way through this I mean FDR got struck down a lot by the courts right I don't know if yeah I think some people probably would say he had autocratic

Oh, absolutely.

FDR was a disaster in that respect.

I mean, he was, he's the reason that we have term limits on the presidency.

He's the only one who did not bow to president.

Everyone else willingly left after two terms, and there was no need for a constitutional amendment.

And it was because of FDR that we have that constitutional amendment.

So yeah, Trump is not the first.

So all I mean is that, you know, if you're looking admiringly at that sort of approach, you can see that there are a lot of issues with it.

And by the way, you certainly do not want to be living in Russia, right, where right now that is not a good standard of living and that is not a good society to live in.

So you see kind of what ends up happening.

And a lot of the things that we take for granted are kind of consequences of the fact that we live in a democratic society.

But yeah, would we be better off if we had a more robust democratic institutions, right?

If kind of we were able to revive the critical thinking that I think has largely fallen by the wayside as people have become incredibly polarized, you know, we've talked before about how both parties are quite broken in different ways.

And I think that if we're trying to have a better long-term government strategy, we need to look to that and try to figure out, you know, how do we create a system that doesn't reward polarization?

Because one of the things you're you're talking about, Nate, is that, you know, people want to win their elections, right?

They're, they're afraid to lose.

They're afraid to kind of do things that will potentially make them lose.

And it's a vicious cycle.

So how do we break that, right?

Like, how do we actually give them, and this, this happens, it's funny, this happens in businesses too.

I just recently was talking to.

some business leaders who kind of asked how they can have kind of better innovation in their businesses.

And I was like, well, you need to actually not just say that you reward creativity, but not punish people when they fail, right?

If someone who takes a risk and it doesn't work out, you fire them, then that tells everyone all they need to know about how you value risk-taking and creative thinking.

And here we're kind of seeing the same thing where people are afraid of saying something, doing something, and then not getting re-elected.

They're afraid to speak up.

They're kind of afraid of that sort of environment.

And that is not a good state of affairs.

I think that's something that we should work towards fixing.

Yeah, look, let me say a couple of things, right?

Like, you know, one answer is maybe we need a consensus that we want to devolve more power to state and local governments, which seem to be more functional and are often less partisan, right?

That used to be seen as like

Democrats didn't like that.

They liked, you know, they thought that states would take rights away, that were constitutionally protected, et cetera.

But like, maybe that's just kind of the equilibrium that would best serve everyone involved.

I mean, look, I do want to put the brakes on.

You know, we still don't know about like the long-term future of China or the United States, right?

You have countries that are quite harmonious and they're going through this middle class stage and then reach like South Korea, right?

And now South Korea is at a more mature stage where they have a GDP per capita that's higher than Japan, for example, and they're having impeachment and political turmoil and people are unhappy there.

So we don't know where China ends up and we don't know where the U.S.

ends up.

I mean, you have seen some shifts in

coalitions, right?

Like, I think there are certain ways in which

the response to Democrats has been a healthy response, right?

Where Democrats have been complacent and lazy about a lot of things, right?

Renominating Biden and lying to people about it was really pathetic, right?

They have taken for granted certain types of voters, like African Americans and younger voters and everything else, right?

And men, right?

You know, they're losing ground among men.

And like,

so they kind of deserve it, but maybe, maybe there'll be some

decline from partisanship eventually.

I mean, all trends reverse themselves over some window.

Maybe AI will radically

remake the political coalitions in different ways.

I mean, it certainly feels like a dynamic time, and dynamic means high variance, and high variance includes good outcomes.

But I don't know.

Not feeling great.

Yeah.

I think, yeah, Tyler, this was a really interesting question.

We don't have an easy answer, right?

Yeah, we don't really have like

look, people with the good government will say, oh, you can have like more non-partisan

primaries and ranked choice voting.

I actually think that stuff probably does help.

I mean, you know, and if we're going to do like a New York mayoral episode, ranked choice voting is a factor in the mayor's race here.

You know, but like, it's kind of because the Constitution is hard to change, then you kind of have to change political culture.

And that's, and that's difficult.

Ranked choice voting, Nate, I think is a good example of things that could on the margin help.

And as we know as poker players, on the margin is actually important, right?

Elections can be won or lost on the margin.

Yeah, and the margin matters more

when things are approximately 50-50, right?

You know,

two Senate seats versus three next year for Democrats makes a huge difference as far as their ability to win a trifecta in 2028, right?

I mean, it often comes down to just like one seat.

Yep.

Yep.

So I think that this is all really important to remember.

Thanks for the question, Tyler.

We wish we had an easier answer, but this was a really interesting discussion.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content for you.

That's coming up right after the credits.

And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for just $6.99 a month.

What a nice price.

You get access to all that premium content and ad-free listing across Pushkin's entire network of shows.

Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Konakova, and by me, Nate Silver.

The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.

This episode was produced by Isabel Carter.

Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit.

Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

Today, we're exploring deep in the North American wilderness among nature's wildest plants, animals, and

cows.

Uh, you're actually on an Organic Valley dairy farm, where nutritious, delicious organic food gets its start.

But there's so much nature.

Exactly.

Organic Valley's small family farms protect the land and the plants and animals that call it home.

Extraordinary.

Sure is.

Organic Valley, protecting where your food comes from.

Learn more about their delicious dairy at ov.coop.

Life's messy.

We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.

But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again.

At washablesofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine-washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.

Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more more peace of mind.

Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.

Need flexibility?

Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.

Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.

Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.

Upgrade your space today.

Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.

That's washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

This is Jana Kramer from Windown with Jana Kramer.

Parents, can we talk diapers?

Honest, new, and improved clean, conscious diapers totally change the game for us.

We haven't had leaks or irritation and way less stress.

They offer up to 100% leak protection with comfort dry technology.

Plus, they're hypoallergenic and fragrance-free.

These diapers are designed to protect delicate skin and the comfort next level.

We're talking super stretchy, sides, cloud soft feel, and adorable prints.

Trust me, once you try honest, there's no going back.

You can find honest diapers at Walmart, Target, and Amazon.

This ad brought to you by Honest.

This is an iHeart podcast.