Hot Topix: MEGA - Make Elon Great Again

It’s time for yet another Hot Topix involving everyone’s favourite Billionaire nemesis, Elon Musk.

For those of you who have been living under a rock, Elon Musk is a South Africa-born, American tech entrepreneur who made his initial fortune co-founding and then selling the online payment platform PayPal. With his millions from PayPal, Musk embarked on a Howard Hughes like adventure, taking whacky ideas from the fringes, electric cars and colonising Mars and made them mainstream with Tesla and SpaceX. 

Like Hughes, Musk has amassed a ridiculous fortune from his crazy ideas and also like Hughes, the money and fame seems to have gone to his head. Howard Hughes made his fortune from Oil wells in Texas and decided to build the Spruce Goose, the largest airplane ever built that flew once for a grand total of 30 seconds before being turned into a museum. Elon turned his passion for snide commentary and provoking the government in rants to his 200 million Twitter followers into a $44 billion bid to take Twitter private, change the name to X and turn it into a free speech platform.

Howard Hughes ended up living in Las Vegas hotel penthouse refusing to cut his toenails and drinking his own Urine, Musk has become a big supporter of Donald Trump’s third bid to become President of the United States.

Just like Michael Corleone said in the Godfather part 3 "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!", the Decentralists are back talking about Elon Musk. Tune in to this episode of Hot Topix to find out why?

Transcript

01:15.31
Henry
um Well, he renamed it X, everybody knows that, but it still is making, are you ready for this? Zero revenue, zero nothing.

01:27.41
Henry
um Advertisers have have fled because it seems to have become his personal soapbox for saying whatever crazy thing he wants to say.

01:39.20
Henry
Well, not only that, but let's face it, we all know it's true. The future is going to be electric vehicles, but he was the first to make it happen. Um, but things are in the low right now because well, there's a lot of reasons, but his company is not releasing new vehicles or new designs and its revenue has plummeted as well. So he wants to make himself great again. How does he do that? Well, he's,

02:08.62
Henry
got together with Donald Trump. Yeah. um And that's pretty interesting. he's like a um Mike, I'm sure you saw it. have you seen Did you see the video? He's at one of those ah rallies with with Trump and he's like a a little school kid jumping up and down.

02:26.25
Mike
Yeah, doing doing what Donald can't. We might shake loose the the comb over or drop off some of the pixie dust or whatever it is he uses to make himself orange.

02:36.44
Henry
Exactly. But the fact fact is something's going on and it involves Elon. It involves Donald Trump. So Mike, why don't you bring us up to speed as to what do you think's happening?

02:50.20
Mike
Oh, geez, Henry, so many things to unpack there. um So first, you know, it's great to be talking about Elon again. um I think this is like our second, third, fourth, fifth, I can lose count how many times we've talked about Elon over the last, you know, three, four years.

03:05.42
Mike
Um, oh, and by the way, I want one of those mega hats. Um, it's probably got solar panels on the top of it or something like this, but you know, it's Elon Musk is kind of one of these weird, um, you know, like the enigma wrapped in a riddle, you know, that type of thing where.

03:22.38
Henry
even like Howard Hughes.

03:24.06
Mike
Yeah, I mean, you know, you look at the, like I draw, there's a lot of parallels between the two of them as far as I'm concerned. So for the people listening who don't know who Howard Hughes was, um look about maybe 10, 12 years ago, ah Leonardo DiCaprio played and played him in a movie.

03:39.84
Henry
Oh, yeah.

03:40.16
Mike
But, but essentially Howard Hughes was like kind of the Elon Musk of his time back in the kind of, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s type of thing. And, you know, he, he was an uber, uber rich guy. And at those times you didn't get rich on technology because there wasn't any, you got rich on oil.

03:58.50
Henry
Yeah.

03:59.21
Mike
And so his thing was Standard Oil. And so he made a boatload of cash, and then just you know kind of became a playboy, which is kind of what Elon was. you know he He did PayPal and and with his buddy Peter Thiel, who is a whole other episode. And um you know they made money. They sold it for a billion and a half. And then these guys went out and started investing in companies.

04:22.82
Mike
And all of a sudden you have um you know elon saying well i'm gonna take my money and i'm not just gonna do standard investing in tech companies i'm gonna do crazy things that nobody else will do.

04:34.94
Henry
who Yeah.

04:34.93
Mike
you know Electric cars are the future and so we start test. And way back in the days, you know they started with this kind of cool roadster. Elon blasted it into space a few years ago.

04:45.97
Mike
And you know what I mean? And they and so he he had the right idea. He started with something that was a cool little sports car that was electric. And so that made you know kind of a market. and And because he was connected with all the tech pros, they all bought them.

04:59.35
Mike
And next thing you know, everybody wants an electric car.

05:02.00
Henry
Right.

05:02.40
Mike
And you could argue that you know if it wasn't for Musk and Tesla, you you know you wouldn't be seeing electric cars and charging stations all over the place like they are now. right And all the other car companies announcing that, exactly.

05:12.54
Henry
the right. It's mainstream.

05:15.47
Mike
And they're all announcing, oh, we're going to like full electric. And now they're backpedaling a bit, but still. um And then the same thing happened with space. you know Except he starts with this idea of colonizing Mars.

05:27.23
Mike
And and in order to do that, you've got to get there. So he's like, the he's like well, the first thing we've got to do is build a rocket.

05:30.12
Henry
That's the toughest part.

05:34.46
Mike
And so he builds a rocket. and And you know, because he's got more money, he just keeps throwing it at this thing. and and And next thing you know, he's bidding on a contract for the US government to to be the private contractor to take the astronauts to the space station, which he's done.

05:48.13
Henry
which he actually is. um and No, right now.

05:50.74
Mike
And the guys who used to do this forever, Boeing, can't seem to get it up off the ground.

05:55.98
Henry
So he's actually he's actually built a ah true business with SpaceX and it is successful. So, so fine.

06:01.98
Mike
Absolutely.

06:03.23
Henry
Fair enough.

06:04.28
Mike
You know, and, and, and, you know, Howard Hughes started off by, cause he was a kind of a pilot, an amateur pilot as well as being a rich guy.

06:11.12
Henry
Yeah, he was.

06:12.75
Mike
He starts off by building an airplane to break the, you know, kind of airplane speed record. And then he gets into the spruce goose, which is, for those of you who've ever been to Long Beach, California, it's a museum now, it is this huge, is it gone?

06:21.06
Henry
Yeah.

06:26.94
Henry
It's not there anymore. It's actually in ah Oregon and I've been there to the Evergreen Aviation Center and I've been inside it and sat in the actual seat that he sat in.

06:30.86
Mike
It's gone.

06:35.23
Mike
Yeah, so did I. So did I. And it's totally crazy. I mean, this guy spent untold, probably like hundreds of millions at the time worth of today's money, building a big, you know, amphibious water landing plane out of spruce wood.

06:43.37
Henry
Yeah.

06:50.43
Mike
And he flew it once for 30 seconds.

06:53.94
Henry
Right.

06:54.80
Mike
and And so, you know, you you kind of see this parallel where if you're crazy money, you so it starts to make you crazy, I think.

07:03.39
Henry
Yeah, you can do crazy things. You feel that you're invincible.

07:04.56
Mike
Because, you know, this is it. And Elon's kind of going this way and he's been going this way for a while. um But, you know, just all of these, you know, these typical concerns of regular garden variety humans don't matter when you are ultra super uber rich.

07:23.88
Henry
right.

07:24.57
Mike
You know what I mean? You can have 12 kids with six different wives and you don't have to worry about the alimony payments breaking you. You know what I mean? Like, this is this is kind of the thing. So so, you know, i I mean, I had I think it probably I bet you if you went back to the, you know, kind of the late 40s, 50s and you asked people who kind of were the same vintage that kind of grew up with Howard Hughes, they'd probably have the same um thoughts. They'd be like, I remember I used to admire that guy who was doing, you know, he made a lot of money and he did a lot of cool things like, you know, the the the speed and the planes and the blah, blah, blah. And then he went nuts.

07:58.80
Henry
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, ah Mike and Geoff. Here's the question that I want to take us into the, I guess, the the the actual nucleus of the issue here, and that is, as late as 2022, early 2023, Musk was a Democrat. He was a supporter of, in fact, he didn't have anything kind to say in the media about Trump, but something has changed. He's giddy and jumping around with his best bud now. so

08:31.12
Henry
ah What's it all about, guys? Who wants to take it?

08:33.84
Geoff
So i i think that I think that people want to attribute a lot of complexity and do a lot of analysis about something that in the end is not very complicated.

08:48.20
Geoff
And that is that Elon, above all else, craves attention.

08:48.22
Henry
Okay.

08:54.10
Mike
yeah Absolutely.

08:54.39
Geoff
He needs attention.

08:54.35
Henry
Yeah.

08:55.51
Geoff
He needs to be in the spotlight. I'm sitting in front of a Windows computer. My phone is Android. i'm I'm not a big Apple fanboy. But if you look at someone like Tim Cook, who is the CEO of Apple, right a company, I don't know if their market cap's a trillion, but you know

09:12.82
Henry
Oh, it is.

09:12.91
Geoff
company that yeah A company that is hugely successful. He's a billionaire many times over. ah Steve Jobs, you know everyone idolizes, but really Tim Cook has taken Apple places that Steve Jobs could could never have done.

09:29.44
Geoff
right But Tim Cook is not obsessed with attention. He doesn't you know it it he just he just kind of lives his life.

09:34.63
Mike
Right.

09:38.12
Henry
Yeah.

09:38.41
Geoff
um He's gay, but nobody cares. And I don't think we've ever met you know, his partner or his partners, nobody cares.

09:44.52
Henry
I had no idea, actually.

09:46.07
Geoff
So, you know, that's because he's a private person, right?

09:48.78
Henry
Yeah, and just like...

09:49.14
Geoff
And he's just, he's just quietly going.

09:49.78
Henry
um No.

09:51.60
Geoff
It doesn't mean he's not strong willed. It doesn't mean, but he's, he's going about his business, right? And, and

09:57.05
Henry
Like Microsoft, I mean, private.

10:00.00
Geoff
Yeah, the similar, right? The CEO of Saturn, I could get his name wrong, Saturn Nadella, you know, he is again, he's just doing his thing. He's not, he's not obsessed with attention and Musk is obsessed with attention. Musk has gathered these tens of millions of fanboys online who salivate over him, his board of directors they of Tesla, they're just a collection of sycophants that salivate over him.

10:30.35
Geoff
It is it is it is all about it is all about attention and really his political leanings

10:30.35
Henry
right

10:37.33
Geoff
you know they They just blow in the wind in terms of where he's going to get the most attention. and the you know the he's He lived in California. He built electric cars. you know It would only make sense that he would align with you know with blue state principles, for for lack of a better term.

10:54.15
Henry
Right. Mhm.

10:57.52
Geoff
But he sort of discovers and and discovered that he he doesn't he doesn't get the attention that he that he needs from that. He doesn't get the praise that he needs from that.

11:09.71
Geoff
um so When he has a look at at the other side of the house, ah suddenly he realizes, oh people are going to you know people are going to like me, people are going to give me a ah lot of attention over them on that side.

11:24.52
Geoff
ah and And he when we when we did our podcast and we talked about Twitter, um we talked a little bit about this um this bubble that that people on, I'm hesitant on the term right wing because really the Republican Party in the United States doesn't really meet the definition of right wing or left wing. or they're they're just They're just this own they just this own entity that that that blurs all across these lines.

11:49.61
Henry
Weird.

11:52.24
Geoff
But but basically the Republican movement, or MAGA, operated under this opinion that there was this huge this massive group of people that all shared their opinions that um weren't speaking their minds because of great mass censorship that was going on, censorship on Twitter and censorship on Facebook. And if you created these um environments, that were so you know these platforms that were allegedly free of censorship, then you know that then all of this would thrive. And of course,

12:26.47
Geoff
That's not the case. There was very little to no censorship on on Twitter or anywhere else.

12:30.95
Henry
yeah yeah

12:31.92
Geoff
There was a little bit of, hey, this this COVID stuff is a bit crazy. Could you please stop saying that? But not you know not not mass censorship. But there was there was a a couple of things that occurred um that caused Musk to be you know what they refer to as red pill, right?

12:50.54
Geoff
So this is from The Matrix. Take the red pill or the blue pill.

12:52.33
Mike
Right.

12:53.38
Henry
Yeah,

12:53.77
Geoff
If you take the red pill, you continue to live in this you know in this world where you're not informed about what's truly going on.

12:58.12
Henry
yeah.

13:02.20
Geoff
Take the red pill and and suddenly you're the scales fall from your eyes and you you know um yeah yeah the truth is revealed to you, right? Well, the truth is all nonsense, but but Musk became red-pilled.

13:16.27
Geoff
And there were really two things that happened. The first thing was during the ah COVID pandemic, when he was building cars in California, the the California government passed laws that basically required him to, for all intents and purposes, shut down his car factories, right? Because you had to have social distancing, um you had to have rules that people were sick, they had to stay home, so on and so forth. And he just sort of said, let me build my cars and

13:48.10
Geoff
You can debate till the cows come home whether these restrictions were too big or too small or not enough or too much or whatever. um But he pushed back very strongly about this and wanted to keep keep building his cars.

13:59.12
Henry
Mm hmm.

14:01.36
Geoff
um And then the second thing that happened was Mike made reference to all these children that he has. Well, one of his children is trans. And he got very upset about his his his child being trans.

14:17.49
Geoff
And he became obsessed with this term that he uses, the woke mind virus, where he believes that somehow this great, yeah yeah instead of instead of his kid just transitioning, which it's happened, remember my family that's transitioned, it

14:21.73
Mike
Right.

14:36.65
Geoff
it yeah um in my larger family um has transitioned. I mean, it just happens. ah he you know He somehow believes that she was sort of infected with some woke mind virus and and that's what you know that's what caused her to to transition.

14:53.07
Mike
You gotta be kidding me.

14:53.36
Geoff
um And so he became you know he became very angry about that. And when he attacked back, his trans child just rebutted him. And they basically said they disowned him. and and so And whether you can disown a parent when the parent's not really around, and whether the parent can complain about being disowned when they're not really around in the first place is debatable.

15:18.83
Geoff
But these were you know these were the the things that that sort of um sort of triggered him. And there's a political kind political commentator, columnist, podcaster.

15:26.11
Henry
Yeah.

15:31.89
Geoff
She covers a lot of tech. Kara Swisher, I'm sure you've heard of her. you know she is She's often, when she's talking about Musk, she basically says, fundamentally, the problem is that his dad didn't hug him enough.

15:43.77
Geoff
um so you know So once he starts talking about the great replacement theory, once he starts circulating anti-Semitic tropes, i think you know I think it all you know it all just sort starts to flow out of control.

15:43.73
Henry
Ah!

15:55.49
Henry
yeah

16:02.17
Geoff
the um you know And and the the people that are center, center left, so on, they sort of start to reject him and say, you're you're talking nonsense. um And the people on, I use this term, air quotes on the right, start to agree with him.

16:17.06
Henry
Yeah.

16:17.33
Geoff
He craves that attention desperately.

16:18.44
Henry
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

16:20.02
Geoff
And it just becomes this snowball that, you know, that is or an app that turns into an avalanche that just kind of

16:26.34
Henry
sure.

16:27.79
Geoff
you know just kind of ah flows on down.

16:31.16
Henry
Yeah.

16:31.88
Geoff
so i think it's you know i think Sure, you can argue those are all complicated things. His dad didn't hug him, red pilled, all that. But really, it comes down to his desperate need for attention above all else, in in my opinion.

16:47.89
Geoff
and and everything flows from there. And the fact that his board of directors are a collection of s sick fans, he has all of these fans online, those only just help fuel all of that all of that stuff.

16:51.21
Henry
Okay.

17:00.58
Henry
Yeah, exactly. Well, Mike, um

17:05.58
Henry
tell me a little bit about, are there political reasons that he and Trump have seemed to align? But then again, we have no idea if that will last because you know how mercurial Trump is and Elon, but but what are your thoughts on that?

17:22.47
Mike
Well, okay. So, so my first comment is birds of a feather stick together, right? Um, you know, Elon up until, what was it?

17:33.80
Mike
2022, um, blue pill Democrat, right?

17:34.75
Henry
yeah yeah

17:38.62
Mike
California boy, the whole nine yards. Um, Donald Trump was a Democrat. until, you know, like 2014, 2015, like probably, you know, somewhere around when you had to throw your hat in the ring.

17:45.46
Henry
Yeah, he was actually a long time ago.

17:55.33
Mike
You know, to run for president and, and, you know, Elon, when, um, as you recall about the, you know, he, he was under a lot of pressure. Remember he, he did this, he did this deal where he said, I'm not going to take any salary as Tesla CEO. I'm only going to take stock and I'm going to deliver 500,000 cars a year. So you can imagine why he starts going wiggity.

18:18.19
Mike
when the government of California for, you know, for at that time, scientific reasons said, you got to have social distancing and all this other stuff at your factory. He's not going to hit his 500,000 quota.

18:28.38
Henry
okay

18:29.14
Mike
Okay. And, and when you're talking about the, you know, when you're sitting there and you're an average multi-billionaire and somebody says, you don't hit this number. You're going to you know lose 50 billion.

18:41.60
Mike
That's a lot of money. Okay. So what do you do? You flip, you flop. Um, I think that there's a large amount of Elon is absolutely an attention craver, just like Donald, right? He talks about his crowd sizes all the time, you know, things like this. Um, you know, the idea is, is, is, you know, you, the, maybe you could say that the, the one thing that money may not buy you is attention and fame.

19:14.30
Mike
Right.

19:15.16
Henry
Right.

19:15.21
Mike
So buddy but to go to go back to your question, Henry, I mean, there's there's there are, you know, there's a kind of a weird spider web of interconnectivity between all these tech bro entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley.

19:28.13
Mike
Right. You know, oddly enough, Elon's original company was an online banking company called X.

19:36.08
Henry
Oh.

19:36.18
Mike
That he that he merged with ah PayPal. that was one of the founders was a gentleman named Peter Thiel, who I mentioned earlier.

19:46.05
Henry
Of course, yeah.

19:47.97
Mike
And um these guys went ahead and took PayPal and sold it off and Peter Thiel went kind of into the sordid dark underbelly of the of kind of the tech scene with Palantir and all of these companies that he built to basically create this surveillance capitalist society that we've talked about many times in the past.

20:07.12
Henry
Yup.

20:10.26
Mike
And when you get into that world right where now you're starting to build technologies that are used to um analyze and and basically create these algorithms that influence what you see in your social feed.

20:28.10
Mike
right

20:28.79
Henry
Mhm.

20:29.18
Mike
So you you got Palantir to figure out what's happening. Then you've got the technologies that are being created through things like Twitter to influence it. And you could argue that Twitter was was kind of the tool that that they used in Brexit.

20:42.36
Mike
And, you know, I mean, Facebook was a, was a big, was the big kind of, um, you know, guilty party, but Twitter was a platform that was used by Donald Trump and by the, you know, the UK party in the UK to do Brexit and for him to win the last election.

20:55.43
Henry
Mhm.

20:57.42
Mike
And, you know, back at the time when Teal and Trump were, are and and um Musk were around, there's a, there was a Russian oligarch that moved to the Silicon Valley and started investing in companies, Oleg Deripaska.

20:57.53
Henry
Mhm.

21:10.12
Mike
And, you know, you start to think, okay, wait a second, maybe he's invested in some of these companies.

21:15.89
Henry
Right.

21:17.14
Mike
And, you know, okay. And and it just kind of happens that, you know, Elon, who's got 200 million followers on Twitter, which I bet you is pretty much everybody on Twitter right now, or sorry, X, um you know, any, why does he need to buy it?

21:30.82
Henry
Yeah.

21:34.11
Henry
Yeah.

21:36.35
Mike
Like why did he need to do that? I mean he kind of, he's done stuff before. he He'd made comments that got him in trouble with the SEC. You know, he'd been on Joe Rogan and smoked weed. He's done all of these weird things.

21:47.11
Henry
ah Because he wants to influence everything and he wants to help his buddy Trump.

21:50.48
Mike
or Or is he being told?

21:53.91
Henry
Ah.

21:55.47
Mike
to let's, why don't you go ahead and, you know, we helped you out.

21:55.82
Henry
Okay.

22:00.89
Mike
Remember 20 years ago when you were, you know, receding hairline, slack jawed, you know, nerd entrepreneur who did PayPal and X. And all of a sudden, you remember when Elon bought, when he announced he was going to buy it and then he kind of backpedaled because he didn't have $45 billion and then all of a sudden he got $45 billion.

22:16.44
Henry
Yes.

22:19.93
Henry
Yeah. Yeah. Where'd it come from?

22:21.11
Mike
You start to wonder where this stuff comes from.

22:24.79
Henry
yeah

22:24.91
Mike
right where Where does this money come from? And so you know and it's and and frankly, you know the far left and the far right, which I still to myself believe are fringes in any country,

22:33.99
Henry
Yeah. Of course.

22:38.26
Mike
Um, but they are, um, ripe for the picking and they are loud and sensationalist and we'll just do whatever they can to establish some kind of acute community.

22:51.46
Henry
for attention.

22:53.60
Mike
And there's the attention you crave.

22:56.11
Henry
Okay, now, okay, Mike um and Geoff, I have a question, a legitimate question that I am puzzled about and I need you to help me clarify.

22:56.64
Mike
You know, that's what happens. Yes, sir.

23:09.91
Henry
it Oh, maybe a couple of months ago, Trump was quoted, it was all over the news ah video as well, saying that if you vote for Trump and he wins,

23:21.62
Henry
You'll never have to vote again. Now, hold on, hold on. My understanding was he was going to change the constitution. He was just going to be a dictator, um but I'm not so sure you can let me know. But then just two days ago, I saw Elon with Musk on the stage saying, if the Democrats win, you'll never have another vote because there won't be any democracy. Are they not saying two different things or the same thing? What is it?

23:51.24
Henry
Geoff?

23:51.47
Geoff
It is just, it is just throwing chum into the ocean, constantly throwing chum into the ocean, right?

23:56.47
Henry
No, something against the wall even sticks?

23:59.42
Geoff
Because but because the,

24:00.17
Mike
Absolutely.

24:03.60
Geoff
you know, Kamala Harris, Mike Walls are coming out and saying, these are our 10 policies for this, and this is why I've fed kids in school, and this is our 11 policies here. and You might disagree with them all. You might say, that's driving the deficit up too high. I don't support this policy. um you know i don't you might You might disagree with all those policies, but or agree with them, or say there's not enough, or she's too, whatever. but But they are they are kind of putting a policy platform out there The news media is providing reporting and analysis and Trump Trump is just saying they're eating cats and dogs and we're gonna put a hundred percent tariffs and We're gonna he's just he's just putting out.

24:37.22
Henry
That's the way it works.

24:48.09
Geoff
He's just putting out a lot of nonsense so he has to that they have to keep

24:49.00
Henry
Bizarre.

24:54.88
Geoff
the distraction engine running. and The way they keep that distraction engine running is they just keep saying um crazy stuff and there and and suddenly the whole front page of CNN and NPR and so and CBS News is all about you know this latest chum in the ocean. and you know what Kamala and what the Democrats are saying is pushed to the bottom of the page. And and that is all it is. And and when you when you add um Elon's attention seeking and the fact that there is no consequences for saying any of this stuff, there's no there's there's no consequences,

25:38.78
Geoff
ah that they just keep doing it and doing it and doing it, right? so i

25:43.98
Henry
What do you think, Mike? Would you agree?

25:45.97
Mike
Well, I mean, you know, in a normal in a normal kind of democracy and democratic election kind of circumstance, I would say ah you're nuts. for talking about Haitian immigrants or refugees eating cats and dogs.

25:59.99
Henry
Of course you're not!

26:01.56
Mike
What was it five years ago? Democrats running pizza parlors in Baltimore and and, you know, selling pepperoni pizzas made out of kid pepperoni?

26:06.05
Henry
i know

26:09.71
Mike
Like, what the hell is going on? You know, and you would think you would think that, like, honestly, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm showing my age here, gentlemen. But I mean, it wasn't that long ago where, you know, politicians, you could look at them and you would basically, you would generally go, oh man, you know, they're all just kind of smiley teeth guys, trying to, guys and girls trying to make themselves popular so they can get some pension.

26:30.72
Henry
I know.

26:32.35
Mike
And you know, it's all bureaucracy and all this stuff. I mean, are you serious? The stuff that's happening nowadays. And so, you know, I, I think that this, this, this sensationalist, um,

26:46.38
Mike
Stuff is just it's over the top and and it's and Geoff is exactly right. It's the thing that drives me nuts.

26:57.57
Mike
is that the the news people, right, like you go on CNN, even on the like the legitimate ones, CNN and they see all these other kinds of things, CBC in Canada, BBC in the UK, and all they talk about is is is the cats and dogs thing.

27:17.37
Henry
yeah

27:17.85
Mike
And they call him on it, right? They did the fact check right in the middle of the debate and said, that's that's bullshit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

27:22.40
Henry
Yeah.

27:23.49
Mike
It's not true. and And what does he do? He says it again. And then a week later, he says, when I become president, I'm going to be, I'm going to kick all Haitian people out of Springfield, Ohio.

27:35.77
Henry
Yeah, he's going to he's going to send trust.

27:37.00
Mike
like so So remember, this is not a this is this is ridiculous the ridiculous part of this is right is is that there is no such thing as a national opinion poll anymore in the United States.

27:49.41
Mike
They're useless, right? Because they say reality is 70,000 votes in like three kind of of these electoral districts in three, maybe four states decide the election.

27:51.93
Henry
Mm hmm.

28:04.01
Henry
Yeah.

28:06.86
Mike
and And so, you know, cause like literally you you hear these guys, they talk about, i you know, I'm watching the news and they're like, Hey, yes, you know, well, opinion polls show that Harris, that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck, but that's completely useless information because you know, if you can convince, you know, 500 normal sane humans that Haitian refugees are eating freaking cats and dogs, you get elected.

28:36.10
Mike
and And so they're taken they they they this they're taking a chance. They're not talking to the real humans. You don't have to in the United States anymore, which is really sad.

28:46.55
Henry
Yeah, what kind of system is that?

28:47.84
Mike
No, but seriously, you know, every woman in the country decides to vote Democrat because the Republicans went and stacked the Supreme Court and got rid of the right to abortion.

28:48.41
Henry
Bizarre.

28:56.08
Mike
Nobody cares. Nobody cares because 500, you know, idiots in Pennsylvania will make the decision for them.

29:06.78
Geoff
I do want to come back to one question you raised earlier, Henry, or at least I think you raised earlier, which was around musks, you know, the reasons behind musks, cozying up to Trump.

29:19.24
Geoff
And certainly there's everything we've talked about, attention seeking, red pilling, woke mind, virus, all of this stuff.

29:19.36
Henry
Mm hmm.

29:26.13
Geoff
um But to what Mike said at the top, Musk is a businessman and there are concerns that that Musk has around his business. So, SpaceX is going to go public. It's a private company now, but everyone thinks it'll go public. like um And when it does, there'll be an IPO that may very well propel may very well propel Musk into being the first trillionaire the world has ever known.

29:56.15
Geoff
ah So it's crucial to him that those contracts remain in place and and and it's possible that another

30:02.44
Mike
100%.

30:06.98
Geoff
you know a different, you know depending on who's in the White House, they might say, hey, you are um doing all this flamboyant stuff online.

30:11.54
Henry
Yep.

30:16.19
Geoff
You're taking ketamine and drugs. You're going on podcasts, smoking weed. you know I don't know if we can trust you. ah you're You're breaching the contract for SpaceX as a government contractor to put it in you know to put it in simplest terms.

30:28.32
Henry
Ah.

30:29.63
Geoff
right so he He would want to protect that. More and more of i As much as Musk likes to talk about and made in the US, American company, more and more Tesla production is moving to China.

30:44.30
Henry
Correct.

30:44.94
Geoff
and as much as yeah you know As much as Trump talks about tariffs, you can bet that he would not put tariffs on his buddy Musk, making his EVs in China and and

30:44.86
Mike
Yep.

30:56.84
Henry
ah Yes, of course.

30:59.03
Geoff
you know, and, and moving his business to China. So that is very critical to him. We've touched on Starlink both here and in past podcasts.

31:06.69
Henry
Yep.

31:09.20
Geoff
Uh, but Starlink is, uh, you know, a huge, I don't know if it's making money yet, but it's, it's very important to Musk and, you know, and, and Starlink's being used by Russia and by Ukraine and, and,

31:16.05
Henry
No it is not.

31:25.34
Geoff
and both sides in the war and so on. and and I believe the US government is paying Ukraine's Starlink bill. so there are real in it Again, and in terms of like attention seeking and jumping on stage and all that kind of stuff, underneath there are

31:36.48
Henry
Yeah.

31:43.93
Geoff
there are all these business things that are also kind of circling around and and you can't and you can't help but wonder if if that, you you you you also have to put that lens um into the microscope when you're when when you're looking at this as well.

31:48.97
Henry
You know, Geoff, you're absolutely right.

31:55.90
Henry
Yeah, yeah, 100%. And to to to your, to that end, as you mentioned, I mean, there's no question about that. I follow SpaceX and Starlink very closely. um And I don't know if you realize that ah SpaceX has has received a ton of um regulations and directives from the f FAA saying, no, you cannot launch again your super booster because it It destroyed a radius in Texas of about a mile around the launch ah area, the sandbar that it was launched from.

32:30.06
Mike
Right.

32:33.63
Henry
And and the one thing that Elon cannot stand is the government telling him he cannot do something. ah Why? because Because there was so much wildlife um ah killed.

32:43.55
Mike
Oh, it's because he's a billionaire, Henry, it's because he's a billionaire.

32:44.58
Henry
And not only that, yes, there were people's homes that were hit with debris that were fired. four and five miles away. yeah So yes, you're absolutely right.

32:53.45
Mike
Mm hmm.

32:56.12
Henry
this He's cozying up to Musk because he knows that he can become America's first oligarch. when when When Trump becomes the dictator, the authoritarian leader of America, because he's going to get rid of elections um and then and the constitution, um Musk will be the number one oligarch.

33:18.99
Mike
Well, and, and, you know, I think the proper term Henry is czar. Um, you know, it, it is one of these things where, you know, and I, and I think this is the, this is the piece that, you know, I kind of want to, you know, I know you want to wrap this up, Henry, but I mean, I kind of want to call out this fact that, uh, you know, this, all of this flip-flopping stuff.

33:34.84
Henry
yeah.

33:40.65
Mike
Right? So Donald Trump's a ah Democrat for basically his entire life. Okay? And then he just flips to Republican and and goes to like full hate mode on Democrats.

33:52.96
Henry
yeah.

33:53.58
Mike
And why does he do that? Because clearly he sees that the Republican party is and the and the party leadership are easily influenced by just, we need to win.

34:07.99
Mike
You know, and maybe it was a timing thing, whatever, right? Obama, two terms, they're like, we haven't had anybody, blah, bla blah, blah, blah, blah. And so the thing that that that really bothers me, and and Musk is doing the same thing to just point Democrat his entire life, right? Now he's a convenient Republican. and And it's this idea that, you know, you know that Elon's doing what he's doing, just basically because he knows that he can then walk into the president of the United States and say, yo buddy, I need a favor.

34:37.42
Henry
Oh yeah, of course.

34:38.17
Mike
This cannot be the foundation of democracy.

34:42.55
Henry
No, no, not at all.

34:43.44
Mike
Musk knows, oh, he's a billionaire and he wants to be a trillionaire. So what he needs to do is he needs to have a president that will wipe out the EPA.

34:55.40
Mike
So there's no more concerns about the sandbars and people's houses and, you know, the seat, the the spotted horny toad frog or whatever it is.

34:55.74
Henry
Yeah. Yep. Yeah, yeah.

35:03.81
Mike
He'll wipe out the, you know, any kind of regulation, any union rules, any, he'll say, he'll be like, there's no such thing as unions in Tesla factories.

35:07.36
Henry
Unions Yeah

35:15.25
Mike
We're going to outlaw them because, because I, what are we going to do? If we don't outlaw them, they're going to, they're going to build all their cars in Mexico or China. And it's really hard to throw them over the wall. Right?

35:25.67
Mike
So, yeah I mean, this, this is the problem, right? We, we have democracy for a reason. It's so that you don't have one human, guy or girl, emperor, empress, who can just say, do this, do that. Oh, chop off her head. Oh, give him that guy's farm. That's the problem.

35:52.42
Mike
And that's the thing that people need to focus on when selfish, rich humans take it upon themselves to to beat their chests and and sensationalize politics.

36:07.97
Henry
Well said, Michael.

36:09.19
Mike
Thank you.

36:09.42
Henry
Geoff, very, very well said as well. Basically what we've determined is, is, um, well, Elon is, and Trump are the kings of distraction, but there's a method in their madness because they cannot possibly explain why they care so much ah about getting in power? Because how can you explain favorable tax rules and favorable um a union busting? You can't. So you have to distract and hope you get people all riled up and upset enough to vote for you.

36:47.35
Mike
It's hard to be a billionaire Henry and say I need, you know, because I'm a billionaire, I have the right to be, to make more billions.

36:54.26
Henry
Anyway, well, I guess we'll be ah watching this closely and seeing what occurs in the future. And we've got just a few weeks until that fateful day in November. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Geoffrey and Michael, looking forward to chatting with you soon.

37:10.47
Mike
Thank you, Henry.

37:10.80
Geoff
Thanks, Henry. Thanks, Mike. Talk to you soon. Bye everyone.

37:13.17
Mike
Thank you, Geoffrey.