What Now? with Trevor Noah
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin [VIDEO]
Thu, 10 Apr 2025
Author and journalist Max Chafkin, co-host of the podcast Elon, Inc., joins Trevor and Christiana to discuss one of today’s most fascinating and controversial figures: Elon Musk. The three talk about how Elon came to be the world’s richest person, whether he’s a brilliant entrepreneur, scam artist, or both, and whether he and the rest of the “Paypal Mafia” have helped the world or helped ruin it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why is Elon Musk considered a controversial figure?
Fancy welfare.
It's the craziest thing ever. Like, listen, literally listen to what you said to me.
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.
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.
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.
I mean, they also have data that we can't dream of, right? Yeah.
Yeah, it's true. Although I'm always skeptical, like how good the data actually is.
Really?
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.
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