Max Chafkin
Appearances
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And, you know, American manufacturing and like when he's an Amtrak man, he's an Amtrak man. Exactly. And he actually he sensed like correctly to some extent that there was a backlash against these tech guys and Trump, too. Right. Like Trump was threatening to throw Mark Zuckerberg in prison. Yeah. Like just a few months ago on Google. Yeah. Biden was, you know, was was more skeptical about.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
of the tech people, including Elon Musk. And, you know, when Biden was promoting EVs, he made this very concerted effort to promote, you know, GM and Ford, the two big American companies. They have union labor. And that like really offended Elon Musk.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah, yeah. But certainly more than like the CEO.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
I think that was kind of the beginning of this version of Musk. And of course, there are other stories. Like, again, the story that you all talked about, about Musk's, you know, trans daughter and Musk's own, like, sort of his person. I think all that also applies. But in terms of if you're looking for like a political act, that was it. I mean, that was the moment.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And I do think all of those other personal things on also COVID restrictions, you know, Musk got really mad about the closure orders. It was affecting his bottom line. played into it. I do understand why Biden did not invite him. The thing Biden was trying to do was bring the rest of the auto industry into EVs. And in certain ways, that was what Musk was trying to do way back in the day.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
There was a version of Elon Musk 10 or 15 years ago, who would have looked at that and said, oh my God, that's great. I have achieved my goal.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
If you had asked me, yeah, like 10 years ago, that was his ideology to the extent that he had an ideology. It was bringing electric cars and bringing the industry along with him. And at times he had actually been kind of friendly with people at GM because GM, of course, had also done some electric cars. They actually released an electric car in the 90s and then killed it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
I think Biden was trying to – I mean and this is the account that the Biden people have given in explanation to sort of defend themselves from the argument that you're making, which is there are definitely a lot of people who – who agree with you, which is like, listen, this was about Detroit and everything.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah, there's an unprecedented wealth and kind of an unprecedented cultural impact and control. I mean, Musk, I used to talk about this with Mark Zuckerberg, you know, Facebook, you know, it's the biggest media company in history.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
You know, but that always felt a little bit hard because clearly Mark Zuckerberg wasn't like going through his mentions, like trying to suspend people who were mean to him. At least not as far as I could tell, whereas Musk definitely seems to be doing that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
of like power and control over our cultural lives and money.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
I mean, he's acknowledged his ketamine use as a treatment for, I believe, depression. I think he said he has a prescription. I don't have any special knowledge about his substance use. I've actually never taken ketamine, so it's sort of hard for me to know exactly. But I do think that... he is behaving erratically. And I, and... For him. No, but you get what I'm saying.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Do you think he's behaving erratically for him? That's a question. That's a question because he is, he's different. And so it's, it is a little bit hard to, to, to like parse like, well, how much of this is Elon in a dark place? And how much is this Elon... You know, how much of this is whatever substance Elon's taking and how much of it is just like he's a unusual guy.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And I'm not sure that anybody knows the exact answer to that question, even Elon Musk. I have to say, though, you know, the Walter Isaacson book that came out, what was it, like two years ago? There's a lot in there about his mental well-being. And admissions from himself and from his own – from people who are very close to him who have been concerned at various points.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
So I don't think it's totally wrong to ask because Musk talks about himself all the time. I mean he's somebody who is constantly talking about struggles with demons and darkness.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
To me – That makes him actually kind of relatable. I mean, that's like a lot of us, you know, everybody struggles and to some extent with demons and darkness or whatever. It's just unusual that he wears it. So on his sleeve, even more so for me than like the, the rumor drug use or whatever, or the actual drug use, like he did once smoke pot on a Joe Rogan broadcast or whatever.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
is just the hours he's keeping, right? Like he seems to be tweeting 24-7.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
We had the same concern. No, you did. I mean, to some extent, yeah. Or there were definitely people around it who wondered. But of course... You know, it's turned out it's worked out, like you said, like Elon Musk is everywhere right now. Even before he was, you know, involved with Donald Trump, we were making this argument like, no, you don't understand. He's this he's this big cultural figure.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Also, I mean, there is this like ideological thing that we haven't talked about, which is that these guys, you brought it up with Uber, but like, They have been in various ways – and Teal played a big part of this, but Elon has too – have made this argument that sort of breaking the rules, transgressing, it's not just acceptable. It's like a good thing. It's like a thing we need more of.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
That's their – that to some extent is – their ideology. And like, and so Uber was like breaking the taxi industry or breaking the rules. And it wasn't just, it wasn't just okay. I think a lot of people prior to this would agree that like, it's okay if a small business doesn't like fill out every single form or whatever, because they're a small business.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
But, but these guys took it further to say, no, like disruption, breaking things, sticking in the eye of, of the establishment. Like that's how progress happens. Like that is, To the extent that any of these guys have really strongly held beliefs, that is the belief that kind of ties them all together.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Well, so he is – just to start, he is a famous investor. He was the – he started – co-founded PayPal, became kind of like the big tech investor in the 2000s and 2010s. Many of these – many of his friends and – Colleagues like Elon Musk but also Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, the guys who started YouTube, they all worked together at PayPal.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
They all kind of went out in the world and did business together. And Thiel, in addition to all of this, was a very conservative person. Somebody who had been essentially one of these, like, college conservatives really, like, before it became so cool.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
So he – and that was really, like, his first, like, entrepreneurial venture was this kind of right-wing newspaper at Stanford called the Stanford Review. And, you know, they would, like, rail against – it's basically wokeness, but, you know, back then they called it, like, political correctness.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And, you know, they would sort of, like – do something that is, like, right on the line of being racist or sexist or homophobic or maybe all three all at once, and then use that to, yeah, to their advantage. And Thiel kind of combined those two things, combined his, you know, conservative worldview with his business thing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And he's sort of bounced between the two and tried to use his political influence to benefit his companies, beginning with Palantir. And this is where some of these, like, puppet master theories start because Palantir, which is a, it's like a data-based company that does data mining for intelligence agencies and corporations.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And Thiel started the company in 2004 and it sort of grew in tandem with his political influence where they were able to, you know, get government contracts and so on as And of course, Palantir scares people because databases and data mining, there are ways in which you can kind of like surveil somebody without actually surveilling them. And like I said, he became really the first tech guy ever.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yes. He's a mega billionaire. He has more influence than maybe anyone on the planet. And then, of course, he became, you know, obviously very closely linked to Donald Trump, became his number one candidate.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah, I mean, that was the mystery that I started with, like, when I started writing about him seriously and wrote the book, was just, like, how does this, you know, he's, like, a gay immigrant tech guy.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Get behind, you know, he's born in Germany, spent some of his childhood in modern-day Namibia, I think a short time in South Africa as well. How does this guy, you know, embrace this, like, avowed Luddite? Remember Donald Trump, like, proudly didn't use email.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
campaign donor and de facto you know senior advisor or however you want to think of it it does feel yeah like we're ahead of something on the other hand i think even people who have been following this man for a really long time and i met him i think for the first time in like 2007 so i've been covering him for many many years um even so it's been very surprising to watch
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
You know, and it's talking about this vision of the country that has nothing to do with Silicon Valley. Yes. And I think about the miners.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And I think the answer was, well, there's like two things, one of which is this political correctness point. Like Teal really does believe left wing ideas and tolerance and diversity matters.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
were holding back America, that that was a significant problem with our country, and that all we needed to do was be able to say stuff that's maybe borderline racist and get away with it, and that would make things better because then we wouldn't have to hold back or something.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And I think the fact that Trump was doing that and getting up there and saying stuff that was edgy, that was a big part of the appeal. And the other thing is, these guys... want to destroy the old order and build their new order and build a technological, you know, techno future. And Trump, maybe he wasn't super focused on the future, but he was saying, we need to break a bunch of stuff.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah, that is. Silicon Valley. That slogan is, you know, super associated with Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has used it. And of course, Mark Zuckerberg was basically a mentee of Peter Thiel. Thiel's first big investment was an early bet on Facebook for like one of the best venture capital investments like of all time. And so and then I think the last thing is just these guys are opportunists.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And Thiel saw it's not that Thiel thought, oh, for sure, Trump is going to win. He thought he might win. And if he does win and I do believe
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
It's a high-risk, high-reward investment, which is exactly the kind of thing that these tech guys specialize in. But with Musk, I think it was the same thing. I don't think Musk knew for sure that Trump was going to win, but I think he thought, look, I've already – I've already been red-pilled or whatever. I'm already tweeting right-wing stuff every day.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Am I really going to harm my brand by putting a couple hundred million dollars behind Trump? Probably not. If he loses, what have I lost? And if he wins, then I become the right-hand man of the most powerful person in the world.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
the kind of transformation over the last couple of years and then what's happened over the last four or five months.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
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What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
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What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
I would add Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and then I would throw in some other investors. Mark Andreessen, probably a name that is less familiar to people, but the founder of Netscape, who's now a major venture capitalist, also advising Trump right now. And then there's this kind of larger universe of guys who are connected to Thiel who are involved in politics at the moment.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And we will use the extra money left over to make another car. We sell that ahead of time. He sells all his cars ahead of time when there isn't one. He's been basically selling products that don't exist for his entire career. And then hopefully most of the time eventually delivering them. And as long as people believe that something is that it's coming, that there is going to be this next thing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
it kind of works. And I do feel like we're in this moment where we're going to learn basically how far that goes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
when you look at him and you look at all the ways he's failed to live up to these promises, there are ways that he has succeeded. Yeah, that's true. And again, what's so weird and kind of maddening if you've followed him for a very long time is he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Like he, he wanted to have a mainstream electric car. He wanted to make electric cars, have them everywhere.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And now, and he has it. And like, like if you get an Uber now, like it's probably going to be a Tesla.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
It's like, it's like a Corolla or something, but it's not enough, right? Maybe the thing that, that allowed him to get to where he is now, it's like he can't stop it or something. And he just has to keep, you know, now we're, you know, now we're doing the cyber cab or something. And at some point you have to think he's going to, you know, write a check with his mouth that he can't cash.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And, and that is sort of like what every Elon person who's skeptical of him, every critic has been waiting for.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
David Sachs, who's like running Trump's AI and crypto initiatives. And it's sort of a list of venture capitalists and so on. What actually made this kind of helpful in investigating it is that Thiel and his cohort, you know, call themselves the PayPal mafia. They, they actually like, they gave us an identify. Yeah. As an influence network.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
What are the other things that we don't know? I think you might be onto something, honestly. We're seeing this... And I feel like this is something that the media was a little bit slow to pick up on. Musk has been saying, there are these protests going on in front of Tesla dealerships and so on. And Musk is saying, oh, it's ActBlue, it's George Soros. We don't totally know what's driving it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And I do think that... The video game thing, both like you're saying, is this kind of like naked deception.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And one that was maybe particularly offensive to his universe of fans. Yeah. To the young men who like – I'm with you. And I think like Musk is becoming this symbol partly because of Trump and maybe partly for other reasons having to do with his extreme wealth and so on.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And the fact that he did this thing that looked like a Nazi salute to many people, he's become a symbol of something very bad for a lot of people. And I do kind of wonder, maybe the video game thing was the turning point of it. You're not the first person who said, well, that's going to be the thing that cooks him.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And, uh, Elon Musk, he started a company in the.com during the.com bubble and then started a company that merged with PayPal effectively and became like a co-founder of PayPal. So he was in that PayPal mafia, although he and Thiel were kind of like rivals, sort of friends, frenemies over a number of years. Thiel invested in his companies. Musk invested in Thiel's hedge fund.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
You know, I don't feel like an expert in the politics of like the modern day Afrikaner movement. Like and I don't I'm not sure that Elon even is like I kind of think some of what's going on is he's just like drinking in the far right, you know, social media stream. And like there's some far right people talking about, you know, white racism in South Africa.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
But what you're saying, though, I mean, there has to be some part of the South African-ness that is informing this. And I thought about this a lot with Thiel. He was born in Germany, family moved to the United States, and then he spent a couple of years, as I said, first in South Africa and then in modern day Namibia. His father worked at a uranium mine.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
If you're working at a uranium mine in Namibia, which at the time was like basically a colony, a client state of South Africa, an apartheid state, You are like as complicit in the apartheid system as you could possibly be.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
You are making – you are producing – you're not only like dealing with a labor structure that is benefiting from apartheid, but you're trying to produce nuclear weapons so that you can defend that system from the world that is trying to shut you down. And like all these guys who had family connections in South Africa –
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And they went to American college campuses. And in Thiel's case, it's the 1980s. Apartheid was like the cause on the left. And I think what I think was a political statement by the anti-apartheid activists, you know, at Stanford in the 80s. But you process it as a personal attack. Yeah. My family.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And I did some reporting talking to people who went to college with him and where he would get into these arguments. He's he's denied, I should say. supporting apartheid or expressing pro-apartheid views, but there are certainly classmates of his who remember him doing so.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
There's a lot of sort of backscratching or whatever going on in this world. And the way I see it, Thiel was a prominent backer of Donald Trump in 2016. He was kind of the first tech guy to back Trump, to say like, yeah, this is the guy. He spoke at the RNC, the Republican National Convention. He donated a little more than a million dollars in October of 2016.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah. What's weird though is when I first started talking to Elon, he made apartheid part of the reason he wanted to come to North America. He said, I left South Africa because I was so against apartheid. And, and like he, and he's always very careful.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
He was like 17 or something.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
That's the story he told. And of course, you know, he's, the story has, has shifted a little bit. I mean, his, you know, now he's very concerned as, you know, as you're saying about the, you know, the property rights of the white farmers.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And, and so, so I don't know like what, what the truth of, what the truth of it is there. But I do think there might've been a sense of like feeling attacked and then reacting. in a sort of extreme way.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
That was after the Access Hollywood thing. Wow. And then joined the Trump administration, or joined the transition anyway, with this idea of attacking the quote-unquote administrative state, which is really similar to what Elon Musk is trying to do right now.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah. I think you're right. I think there's always an angle with him and often a business angle. I don't think he's ever – I mean he does obviously have some ideology. But like you said about the apartheid system and this idea of like – becoming sort of a client of the government or something like that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Like he has been so freaking good at getting the government to give him money and finding, like you said, finding these levers. Um, and those levers can be, they can be like reaching regular people and saying like, here's this awesome product, but they also are often and have often been like political levers in like, I, I agree. I don't fully understand the,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
the the dynamics of german politics and what exactly he's doing with the afd uh which is the far-right party in germany but it definitely everything i know about elon tells me there's an angle there and whether it's uh something having to do the auto industry you know he has union issues in germany or perhaps you know europeans have a space uh agency they compete with spacex maybe looking for more contracts there or whatever but he's he's trying to find
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
an in and, and it's just there, you know, there's obviously there's collateral damage sometimes when, when you're, when that's your, when that's your modus operandi.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
With Thiel, there is a more calculating approach. He has not gone all in with Trump. And there were a lot of people around him and in the kind of right-wing Silicon Valley world saying, like, oh, what a huge mistake. I mean, he was the earliest Trump supporter. Like, why is he not supporting Trump? But I think, like, we are living, as you said, in that moment.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah, exactly. When I wrote that book on Thiel, he had kind of all these secret connections with various like right-wingers. And Thiel was operating kind of behind the scenes and you're looking at like, oh, did he consort with this extremist or that extremist? And he was sort of playing footsie with the far right. Musk is just supercharging it, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And there has been, you know, as we're talking, like this kind of, high of, of Trump's support and Trump's power. And that won't last.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And, and I think Teal has set himself well, set himself up well in case it doesn't last because he has a, he has a very close relationship with JD Vance, who's Trump's, um, you know, Trump's vice president and, and who Teal basically helped him start his political career was his, his main donor to Vance's Senate campaign.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
So if Vance becomes the Republican candidate in 2028, as I think he's probably the favorite to do, Thiel has an in. Musk, I think, is somebody who needs this kind of endless a sort of endless series of, I don't know, like games or something. What he wants, his endgame, is he sells all the cars, he sells all the rocket launches, he's worth way more money.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
He's even said this, you know, he thinks Tesla, his car company, should be worth, you know, $30 trillion or something. And if it's worth $30 trillion, Elon is going to be worth, you know, like, I don't know, like $6 trillion, $7 trillion, more probably. So for him, it's just like... way more dominance, uh, being able to sort of essentially run the world.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
God King. That's what it sounds like to me. I don't think that is the most likely scenario, but, but I do think that is the, that's like what he is pushing for. Um, and I, and I think to some extent, you know, it's up to voters and democracy to, to try to restrain him.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
So it's just this kind of like dramatic acceleration of what these tech guys have been up to for a very long time.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
I mean, so just at the most basic level, he is, I mean, he's either the world, depending on the day, right? He's now far and away the world's richest person, but at various times he's been like top two, top three. He's one of the wealthiest people on the planet. He owns...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Two very important companies, Tesla Motors, he's a significant shareholder and Tesla Motors CEO, effectively controls the company. Tesla is the most valuable car company. It is the leading player in electric cars in certain ways. the leading player for the future of cars.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
He also owns this gigantic defense contractor, SpaceX, which is the leading provider of rocket launch services to satellite players and to the US government. And he's got a bunch of other little companies. And then he has this, as I said earlier, this cultural impact. It's not just that Musk is rich and controls a lot of people's livelihoods. People are really into him.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
I mean, he has a story that has captivated, to some extent, the world, right? There's like a lot of young people who look up to him and want to be him. And then you layer on top of that, of course, his penchant for being weird. He has crazy beliefs. He has this complicated, very complicated and involved personal and romantic life or whatever as a father of, you know, 14 children that we know of.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Maybe, you know, who knows?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And he's always been... you know, right at the edge of doing what is reasonable. People who are coming to it fresh are like, well, what happened to Elon Musk? And people who have been covering Elon Musk for a long time are like, well, like, let me tell you, like when he like fake acquired, like did a fake private offer and had a huge fight with the SEC.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And then, you know, sort of kind of told the SEC to suck Elon's cock. And like, you can kind of go back. Like he's always been this incredibly...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah. And I think that's part of why... I mean, there are all sorts of reasons like why he became successful, but... I think like Donald Trump, he has a knack for like authenticity and for and for being willing to sort of say things that seem transgressive and then using that to his advantage. Just like Trump.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
I mean, he rails against the media all the time, but he got incredible media coverage because during those years, like if you were a reporter. he would, you know, he talked to everybody and he would say crazy stuff. He would attack his enemies. He would now, now back then his enemies weren't like George Soros.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
They were just like, it was like BYD or no, it was like the cars columnist for the wall street journal. Um, but so it'd just be like somebody, you know, some random blogger or whatever he'd be mad at. And, and so he was always, you know, he's always saying provocative stuff. And, and I think that, you know, contributed to his rise.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Um, it's both. So going back to the beginning of the industry, Silicon Valley, people talk about the military industrial complex, that, that phrase, like that is Silicon Valley. That's what Silicon Valley was. It was a bunch of companies that were making technology to help the United States win the cold war. And like, so, so you, you know, you rewind the clock like way back.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And this was like a conservative place. This was not a place full of progressives. It was a place that, in a lot of ways, was kind of like pro-military and so on. And I think that strain has always been there. The kind of conservative or even kind of borderline reactionary strain has always been in this part of California.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
But of course, there's also the counterculture, and those two things sort of swirl together. There was a moment during the 2000s when, like you're saying, Silicon Valley... seemed very closely allied with the Democratic Party, and in particular, Barack Obama.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
You know, I listened to your podcast about Elon from September, and Trevor, you said, and I think you were kidding, like, Obama did this to us. I think you're right, although not exactly... I would tell a different story, which is that Obama, I'd say more than any politician, maybe more than any cultural figure, is the one who gave us that story about Elon Musk in particular. Oh, so... So, like...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Obama, this vision of kind of a centrist, forward-looking progressivism that embraces tech in the future, he really embraced Elon Musk. He embraced clean technology. Tesla nearly went bankrupt during the financial crisis. Elon Musk got a big loan from the Department of Energy, effectively was saved from bankruptcy by Elon Musk's own admission by Barack Obama, by the Obama administration.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
There's more. I mean, SpaceX, his rocket company, I mean, basically all of its money early on came from the government. And SpaceX, like their big breakthrough was signing this contract with NASA to provide launch services to the International Space Station. Also an Obama era thing. You know, when you add up the amount of money that they've taken from the government over the years, it's enormous.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
But it wasn't just that. I mean, Obama put Musk kind of at the center of like what, of like his idea for what the future should look like. And I also think, Silicon Valley, these venture capitalists, these guys who are thinking about the future, they're really good at picking up the vibes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
And so, like, they saw that a lot of people were excited about Barack Obama, that he was filling up stadiums, that young people were excited. Like, that's their game. And they said, oh, you know, let's move there. And I think something kind of similar happened this summer with Donald Trump where they sort of sensed that this is where the vibe was headed.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah, it's true. Although I'm always skeptical, like how good the data actually is.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Yeah. I mean, they definitely, they're definitely people who are driven by data, but I think these guys make decisions pretty much the same way the rest of us do. Although when they like turn back and tell the story, they maybe use a little more data. Okay.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
So, yeah, and, you know, after the election, after this last election, you know, and we had the inauguration and, like, all these tech guys had better seats than, like, the governor of Florida. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, 2024, we're at the 2008 inauguration.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
They hated Biden, and I think- Why? And I think to some extent the feeling maybe was mutual. I mean, Biden, unlike George W. Bush, Obama, and even Donald Trump, did not embrace Silicon Valley. I mean, he did because he's a politician, and they have the most money in the world. But his politics was the politics of organized labor-