Are Elon’s Best Days Behind Him? | On With Kara Swisher

27:21And he said that he just wouldn't do it because of that. And it put him really in this kind of interesting position where he is kind of this citizen of the world is making decisions that affect wars and really elevated that kind of the power that he has over kind of world events now in a very unique way that has kind of, you know, concerned people. And so in his comments that have followed regarding Putin and the Russians kind of pushing for peace talks and raising ideas for how that would work, just to a lot of experts, a lot of close observers of foreign affairs, just smacks of kind of influence from the Russian side.

28:01Now, Musk would say that he didn't talk to Putin and that sort of thing, but he does seem to be favoring the party line, which then when you put into consideration kind of the role that SpaceX is playing in global affairs, worries some people. Yeah, worries a lot of people, I can tell you. They sidle up to me at Washington parties all the time. But Tezza also does a lot of business in China. SpaceX is a U.S. military contractor, as you just noted. In February, former Congressman Mike Gallagher said that Starshield, which is a military version of Starlink, wasn't working for American troops in and around Taiwan.

28:36SpaceX denied the allegations. Becky, what's happened since February and stepping back? How has the Pentagon managing Elon seemingly split allegiances in China? He just recently was there striking a deal to be able to sell more of those cars there. Talk a little bit about that complication for him and for the U.S. I think the federal government is in the same position as a lot of Musk investors where they have to sort of balance access and getting their own needs met. In the case of national security interests, they probably have a lot more leverage. I'm not really sure what's happening on the inside with that.

29:14Anybody else on China where he is? Because he's made some statements that were pretty pro-Chinese. Absolutely. It's interesting, right? If you look at the revenues that come from China for Tesla, a huge important part of the business really helped Tesla get to where it is in large part by allowing Tesla to be the first Western automaker to open up a factory without a joint venture in the country, allowing it to fuel massive rapid growth during the pandemic, allowing it to really kind of be where it is now. So you put that in the back of your mind and then you see these pro-China comments that he's often making and siding with China and the debate over where Taiwan fits into that scenario.

29:56And it worries people and it gets back to the issue of Russia. It worries people, right? And you kind of alluded to it, I think of it as the Musk Doctrine, where he has business in countries where maybe there are more tougher ruling leaders that have a stronger grasp of things. He seems very deferential. But in other countries such as the U.S., he's very quick to go after every level of power and uses that in some ways, that defiance as part of his power that he gains in places like the U.S. You don't want to be a government official in the U.S. being attacked by Elon Musk. It's not just him. It's his echoverse of followers on X who then amplify every criticism and every attack to the point where it's very hard to be a politician in the country and be under attack like that.

30:49So let's talk about Twitter, X. It's now fully and officially, X.com. And he is not CEO, but the CEO, Linda Yaccarino, recently was a punchline at the network up front and everywhere she goes. The show that she created with Don Lemon blew up in her face because of Elon being upset about it. Let's talk about the business of X right now. Becky? Yeah, we don't have a lot of insight into how well ad sales are doing. I think it's still pretty much an ad-run business. The subscription business is not very popular. I personally am subscribing right now because I wanted to try Grok and see how it works.

31:31I don't have any sort of daily use for it. It's just like kind of sarcastic news summary. But there are people who are paying for it. I think it's still mostly sort of like the Elon Stan universe or people who are trying to become influencers on the platform. And Tim? Yeah, is an ad business. It doesn't seem it's clearly not what it once was. It's declining. Right. But if you think about it as something else, it's really an extension of his power, his soft power. It's definitely having influence, right? He's been embraced by a lot of people. It's expanded his reach into certain areas. It's definitely given him a bigger voice in global affairs in a way that you don't typically see with most CEOs.

32:17So in that regard, it is an interesting tool in his toolbox, right? He goes from the guy who had probably the biggest reach as a user or at least among the biggest reach as a user to now nobody can take him off of it, right? And it gives him carte blanche to do kind of whatever he wants. And as long as people are continuing to go to it and people seem to keep engaging, that gives him a lot of power with it. Right. He does have – he was just a car guy before and now he's this. Now, a Times recently published an investigation into Elon's relation with right-wing leaders like Javier Malay of Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India.

32:54And they basically concluded that he's lavished them with public praise usually on Twitter and then gotten favorable treatment for his companies from them. Kirsten, talk about this Twitter diplomacy. When he was buying Twitter, everyone was sort of perplexed. But a very sharp fellow billionaire told me he bought the company for international influence for his other businesses more than anything else. And I think that's borne itself out. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's interesting because the Twitter thing is kind of two separate trends coming together, right? So immediately after he bought Twitter, he kind of rearranged all the systems and the algorithm to make sure it was preferential to him, right?

33:31And you can even just see that going on there now. And so now this is spread into his other, you know, job that he wishes to have, which I guess is one of a diplomat because he really wants to be involved in all these international affairs. And much like he was doing at Twitter, he's now kind of like leaning on these world leaders he's buddies with to get stuff done. Yeah. And is that effective? Is that worth the price of the money he's paid for it? I think in some cases it is effective. As you pointed out, my colleagues wrote about recently, it is effective sometimes. I personally think it's so funny, this bromance he has with like Argentinians Malay, right?

34:14I mean, all the pictures and the fun they're having and it definitely, you know, I'm sure he's not just doing that for the heck of it, right? Right. So, yeah. So, Tim, when you one of the things, the Twitter acquisition and the tsunami of mostly negative press that's followed him since since he got there. And it seems to have taken his toll. How much time of mental space would you say X occupies for Elon? And what is the price? Well, he would argue if he was here, he would probably argue that it doesn't take that much time. Right. That he's, you know, just one of many children that he loves. But clearly it has taken a toll on his businesses, right?

34:51And if you look at recent consumer data at the end of last year when he was being very outspoken on very contentious issues, you saw the share of Democrats, car buyers who identify as Democrats buying Tesla dropped dramatically. A sign that maybe they couldn't stomach kind of where he was going politically. That was really the first time we've seen this. And it's a bad sign for a carmaker, an EV carmaker, because in the U.S., the biggest cohort of buyers for electric cars are Democrats. Now, he has brought Republicans in to the Tesla tent, which is very important for growing that technology to be mainstream.

35:31But he definitely needs Democrats. And if they're turned off by his issues and his antics, that's troubling for the company. And Twitter has debt. Nobody has sold the debt. It does have a heavy debt load. He obviously has rich friends that want to get into the SpaceX IPO. Why have these banks not come after him? Is it just like a rich guy owning a yacht? This is his version of a yacht? There's a lot of people that think XAI and Grok are going to be the key to turning the Twitter acquisition around. There's people who think he's going to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and he's going to use Tesla data to train these models, and it's going to be the smartest AI on the planet, and then they'll have been in early.

36:15He's not having any trouble fundraising for XAI. Yeah, let's talk about that. So he's reporting raising$6 billion to create a competitor to OpenAI and others, in which he played a major role in the early days and then broke from. $6 billion is nowhere near enough money to compete with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. So you're talking a rabbit out of a hat. Is it really a rabbit or is it a dead rabbit? And is it okay to use his other company's data to do it? That's another thing. Yeah, the legal question and whether Tesla, how ownership of that data works, I think, will be a big issue over the next few months.

36:52It's actually come up when I have talked to people about the compensation package. Like if Elon is disengaged, but he's still CEO, is he going to use Tesla's resources to just make XAI into this giant AI company and leave Tesla behind? So I think that's one of the concerns from the people who are concerned. In the AI space, I haven't really seen very much traction for Grok. I've talked to people who say it's just not very practical to build on Grok. I don't think it is considered really extraordinary compared to the competitors. But$6 billion is a lot of money, and it's money that other companies can't necessarily raise.

37:33And there's the argument that he'll be able to buy enough hardware that he can train models to be smarter than any other models out there. So maybe the money will transform this, but there's a lot of competition in the AI space right now, and they're pretty behind. I mean, Amazon just gave me Anthropic$4 billion, I think. It's just like not enough money. It seems like it's not. It just seems to me, I don't know. Thoughts, Tim, or Kirsten? Well, you know, I mean, you ask why, you know, why aren't people upset or why investors going along with this? Well, if you look at kind of the long arc of his career, he's taken on a lot of things that didn't make sense at first blush that looked like they were going to fail and has pulled off these kind of rabbits, if you will, with whether it's the success of SpaceX or Tesla's success, right?

38:16So those successes give him credibility. Investors a lot of time are willing to kind of hold their nose in the current drama, the current dramas because they're making the long-term bet that over time ultimately that will be successful. And that is part of the drama around Elon Musk and why he attracts supporters and detractors is you don't know if he's going to pull it off, right? Is this the time that he's going to trip and fall on his face, or is he going to yet again kind of impress everybody with some daring feat? Right. In that regard, Neuralink, which they recently published a live stream video that showed the first patient to get the company's brain chip implant, move a cursor with his mind.

38:56It's now got some problems. They're still working on it. They're going to implant another person, but apparently the little strings came out of the brain or something like that. He and I have talked about this a lot, but it's way far away, this idea. And there are other companies. Again, there are other competitors that nobody gets written about that aren't just his thing. How much progress has Neuralink made towards its very heavy goals? And is it a flash in the pan or a real company? I did some research into Neuralink. You know, I don't think it's a flash in the pan. I think it's a legit company.

39:28I actually don't think he's very involved with it at all. It's just, you know, Neuralink and the Boring Company seem to me as sort of like, kind of like the fun tiny things he does on the side sometimes. But it does seem like it has been on track to help people with disabilities. But this goal of all of us using Neuralink as a society seems many, many years, if not decades, off.

40:00we'll be back in a minute

40:12there is a lot to talk about when we talk about donald trump and jimmy kimmel one big question i've got is why in 2025 our late night tv shows like jimmy kimmel's show still on TV. Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks. If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes. But what are you even anymore? What even is your brand anymore? I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels. And that was James Ponowozik, the TV critic for the New York Times. This week, we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now.

41:01That's This Week on Channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. So let's talk about his state of mind, because he is a restless mind, and of course, he's gotten more involved in politics. Kirsten, you broke the huge story about Elon's recreational drug use, which everybody knew about, I can tell you, including, and thankfully someone wrote it. And yet it took us a year to get that story. I get that. I understand that. But I'm saying everyone knew about it. Everyone knows you wrote about using LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine. Talk about his partying in the drug use and what role, if at all, it plays in his decision making.

41:38What has changed since you reported on that? And I have to say the most important thing about that story was the money the board was getting to me. That, to me, was at the dead center of it. But go ahead. Definitely. To be honest, I don't think much has changed. I mean, I think, again, this comes back to the Tesla board especially. So something like this, when a high-level executive, maybe not even the CEO, is using recreational drugs at a normal company, that would warrant, at bare minimum, an internal investigation. And maybe it could be like, you know, a check the boxes internal investigation.

42:15We hire an outside law firm. Think about if this was like Pfizer or Morgan Stanley's CEO. None of that has happened in this case. The government contractors seem not to care what kind of drugs he is doing or not doing, even though it's a clear violation of his government contracts. So I think it's kind of just the status quo, to be honest. Yeah. So nothing happened. Nothing. Nothing. Not the government, not losing its security. To our knowledge, right? So, I mean, there could be something going on. But, you know, in that Financial Times interview, Robin Denholm even said she wasn't aware that he was using drugs, I believe, which is just sort of unbelievable.

42:59Yeah. Yeah. So nothing at all. Just he's taking drugs. That's it. Yeah. Any other executive would have been fired. But, you know, Tim, I think, brought up a really good point, which is always super important to remember when writing about Elon Musk is Tesla has done insanely well. SpaceX has done well, right? So if you're an investor in these companies, why do you actually care if he's like doing Coke or whatever he's doing, right? The company is doing well, so there are two sides to this, for sure. Tim, last August, you did have a column with the headline, Elon Musk's latest antics have some asking, is he out of touch?

43:36According to some of his supporters, he is, quote, ensconce in a distorted reality that is warping his perspective and threatening his businesses. You've had about 10 months to consider that question. Is he out of touch with reality? He seems to live in a bubble, that's for sure, right? A bubble of, you know, we've seen over the years, you go back to the early days of Tesla, let's just use Tesla as an example, early days, there were people around him who told him hard truths. They didn't maybe last long, but they did that. And, you know, for the betterment of the company, it's hard to say that there are people around him now who are giving him the same kind of hard truths.

44:11We don't know that to be the case. I don't know that to be the case. And it's hard to see anybody there tempering some of his excursions, right? And so that's – by its very nature, you've got a lot of people around him who are either hanger-oners or kind of supporters or people that kind of encourage him to be in that bubble-like environment. Then – but I'll put that aside. Then he's on Twitter and he's hearing. He's taking in all of the negative feedback and seeing it all. But then he's also being reinforced by this new kind of lesion of echoes that kind of whatever he does support him and that kind of feeds him even more.

44:48So it's an interesting dynamic where he kind of is a guy in his own little world where he hears everything he says is just great. Yeah, that's certainly true. I've heard from a lot of people close to him that are disturbed, I would say. They're all like, Kara, do you want to talk about it? I'm like, no, you should get him some help. That's my feeling. You should get him into therapy if you're really worried about him, actually. It's not my business. But Becky, to Tim's point, do people around him who can tell him no push back on his bad ideas? Is that a problematic thing? Is he lost perspective because he's surrounded himself with yes men who slavishly lick him up and down all day?

45:25How does that impact the situation? That's what it is. I'm sorry it is. I've heard from lots of people. I think we saw with the Tesla layoffs that people who don't do exactly what he want don't last very long at the companies. People get really scared when they have to directly report to him. It's so much better to have a manager in between because if you're directly reporting to him and he's observing everything you're doing, there's no way he's not going to find something wrong with what you're doing. So I don't think there's a lot of space for pushback at Tesla or SpaceX. So where is pushback?

46:03Does it exist? I haven't found any pushback. I haven't either. Yeah. It's interesting. I talked to him about this years ago, and I said, you know, there was something that happened. I said, well, you know, I've talked to a bunch of people who said they told you this was a dumb idea. And he says, well, people all the time tell me I've got dumb ideas, right? You know, but they said I was never going to be able to land a rocket, and I've done that. and, you know, done this EV thing. And that kind of, you see that clouding some of his thinking, right? It's almost as if he wants to prove somebody wrong if they're telling him no or that's not possible, right?

46:36And we've gotten to the point now where it's just, it's like feeding itself, right? Yeah, it's nonsense. Mark Zuckerberg does that. They all do that. I was right about this, but they don't tell you the times people were right and pushed him in the right direction. He never remembers that part. I think it's a real blind spot. He used to listen to a lot of people. I know people think he's kind of a troll right now, but he did use to—he had a lot of people around him who pushed back on him, and now I think there's almost nobody. And speaking of people who do influence him, Tim, you wrote a piece about Elon's infatuation with Gad Saad, a Canadian marketing professor, author, and culture warrior who rails against the quote-unquote like mine virus.

47:15It's just one of the right-wing thinkers whom Elon seems to have glommed onto. I feel the COVID lockdowns radicalized him more. He was upset that the Biden administration ignored Tesla, his words. Is there any clue to help us understand his obsession with sort of strafing immigrants, Jews, trans people, black people, gay people? And are there any other right-wing thinkers he's engaging with online besides Saad? It's definitely – you definitely see – and he's even talked – Elon's talked about 2019. He starts to see the world a little bit different. But then COVID happens and we really start to see it differently through his public stances, right?

47:55One of the things that makes it challenging to write and to kind of follow him is that sometimes he is on the forefront of kind of having his fingers on the pulse of where society is on some of these contentious issues, right? It's not that – immigration is definitely contentious. I don't think a lot of people would say they support illegal immigration. But it's the tone. It's the tone. That's what I mean. It is the things that he's saying that goes a little too far in a lot of people's minds. It's a cruelness to it, right? And, you know, that is some of the challenge of like trying to kind of balance as you watch him as a man and as a leader.

48:34And I think Walter Isaacson talks about demon mode where sometimes it just something clicks. And I've talked to people over the years who say you could almost tell the red mist had come over his eyes of just anger and seeing things in a certain way. And I guess it's the flip side of his ability to be so right on so many issues to think that EVs could be a thing or rockets could be a thing. And then some of these other social issues, he seems to be out of touch with a lot of people that are very hurtful to some people. Kristen, what do you think about that demon mode? I think it's nonsense, but go ahead.

49:08Well, I think the real issue, and this speaks to the demon mode, is, and this is not just Elon, this has been a problem with other executives, is you don't know when they actually have an actual mental health issue versus their drug use. And so is demon mode just like actually when he's like taken too much ketamine? Is it actually because he has a diagnosis that we don't know about, even though we've spoken about other mental health issues. So I think it does, I agree, sound a little bit sort of like apologetic to him, but I think it really more than that speaks to the fact that we just don't know.

49:46And won't know. And won't know, probably, yes. Becky, when you talk to people, I think a lot of executives kind of want to behave like him and then don't in some ways, but do you get worries from those who are there at the company about that or are they just going along for the ride? It's totally mixed. There's still a lot of people who really look up to him. Even when I talk to people working at the factories, it always surprises me. They'll describe conditions that are unsafe. They'll describe bullying. They'll describe ways in which just the HR has failed them. And they'll always say, I don't think Elon would let this remain if he knew about it.

50:25They often think that Elon, they see him as sort of like a flawed hero, but who would not let the conditions of the factory slide if he was like there on a day-to-day basis. It really surprises me because I see it as being a little bit more of a trickle down. I think that like very high level managers do have an impact on what things are like on the floor and that they are responsible for what things are like on the floor. But no, there's still a bit of a hero dynamic. He's often not blamed. Yeah, it's a little Trumpian. And speaking of that, Musk met with former President Donald Trump in March.

51:01He said he doesn't support Trump. I think he's lying. He also said he might endorse a candidate closer to the election. What's their relationship like or is RFK Jr. more of an attraction to him, Tim? He's been clear that who he's not going to support and that's Joe Biden, right? And he definitely has embraced the Trump populism, the billionaire populism, if you will. And that can be helpful to the Trump campaign. It can help elevate the message. It can help kind of amplify that message as we get closer to the election day in November. And that's beneficial to Trump, having Elon out there attacking Biden on a regular basis and kind of amplifying discontent about the president.

51:47And you definitely want that if you are Trump. You don't want it the other way, right? Sure. So I'd like to end on this idea. Tim, one of your recent columns was called With Elon Musk, Does the Bad Outweigh the Good? So let's hear from all three of you when factoring in everything does the bad outweigh the good or vice versa. Are we in the Howard Hughes portion of this story? You had a passage I want to read, Tim. It was also talking about the pay package but also what he was like as an entrepreneur many years ago, which is when I spent most of my time with him. It was also another era for an entrepreneur, one before Musk pulled off one of the most remarkable corporate turnarounds in a generation and became in the process one of the world's richest men.

52:31It was the era of Elon as the underdog, the guy with a chip on his shoulder trying to prove Motor City and Big Oil wrong, as well as all of those short sellers betting, no rooting against him. Hungry Elon, sleeping on the floor of factory Elon, staring into the abyss, chewing glass Elon. That factory floor thing was so nonsensical. In any case, each of you, let's start with you, Tim, since you wrote that, then Becky, and then Kirsten, you get the last word. People always want to know, is he the hero or the villain? And I think it depends on the day. Sometimes it depends within the day, right? There's just a lot of gray.

53:06And I think the long arc of time will kind of weigh that. The challenge with judging or kind of making an opinion on Elon and the today is that there's so much changing. We don't know what Elon we're going to get tomorrow or the next week or a month or a year from now, right? And what do you think it will be? That's the drama of it all. Oh, you're not going to guess. Think about what he has already accomplished, though. It would have been 20 years ago. Who let the dogs out? It's my dog. 20 years ago, it would have been hard to imagine the idea that electric cars could be not even competing but eating lunches of the established car makers.

53:43So that, in a lot of ways, is some of his legacy. What he's done with space is some of his legacy. But now, as we get into this later part of his life, that will definitely be part of that kind of legacy that he leads. Becky? I think we're entering the era where Elon has competition in EVs, competition in reusable rockets, and we'll find that his early advancements in those two areas are some of the best things that he's done. I think that the market is just going to get a lot more difficult for him. He's not going to be the only one doing it anymore. The question of what he does next, he has so many supporters.

54:19Like I said earlier, he can raise so much money. He's never going to be the underdog ever again. But will he have the same impact? I am open to having my mind changed, but I suspect that the best work is behind him. Yeah, I would agree with that. Although someone asked me if he was ever going to be, when is he going to get got? And I'm like, never. He's really rich. Never. Kirsten, you get the last word. Well, that's kind. I mean, I agree with Becky. I think his fans base is still completely enormous. But I do think Twitter really hurt him. And I do think that just from what I've seen and even just from, you know, the willingness of people to talk about him, even, you know, on background or off the record, I think the sentiment is changing against him for the first time in a way that it hasn't in the past.

55:11You can even see it in San Francisco with all the people with the bumper stickers on their Tesla saying, like, I bought this before I knew Elon was crazy. So I do think there has been an effect. Yeah, he's a butt of a joke now in a lot of ways, which I think was unfortunate because it didn't have to be that way. In any case, we will see what happens. Who knows? Maybe he'll go to Mars and stay there. One can hope. Anyway, thank you so much. We love your reporting. You'll have plenty of material. And if you ever run out, you can go over to OpenAI and then there's plenty of material there. Anyway, thank you so much, all three of you.

55:46Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

55:52On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Rosel, Kateri Yoakum, Jolie Myers, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher, Andrea Lopez-Cruzado, and Kate Furby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda. And our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you just found Tesla stock you bought five years ago. Bingo. If not, you have to party with Steve Jervison. And I can tell you that it's not going to be any fun. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us.

56:30We'll be back on Thursday with a new episode of On.