Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein w/ Ed Niedermeyer | Tech Won't Save Us

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Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein w/ Ed Niedermeyer | Tech Won't Save Us · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: This world is run by an elite that has the solidarity with each other.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, they're interested in a line or conflict moment to moment and it doesn't matter what matters is their power and that they have it and that that doesn't change.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that to me is really the lesson of the Epstein files.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen in the first hand, you know, all this reporting and then nothing ever happens.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is that?
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, now we're finally starting to get
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: look at sort of the mechanics that explain what's gotten so badly broken in our society and and our world more broadly.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to tech won't say a bus made in partnership with the nation magazine.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host Pirate's Marks and this week my guest is Ed Neetermire.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you're a regular listener to the show, you will hopefully be familiar with Ed by now because he has been on the show many times to talk about Tesla and Elon Musk, autonomous vehicles, all these other things, and he is back once again.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, if you're not familiar with him, he is the author of Ludicrous, the unvarnished story of Tesla Motors and is working on another book at the moment, and he's also a co-host of the Autonicast.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I wanted to have him on this week because obviously Jeffrey Epstein is
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: very much in the conversation the past couple months because of these Epstein files and of course we know that Elon Musk has had some association with Jeffrey Epstein for a while, you know, we have known about the emails where Elon Musk is kind of asking about going to Epstein's island and trying to figure out the best time to go do that, but these documents that are out there now reveal a lot of other information about
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: the relationship between these two men how it developed and you know whether much ultimately came of it and the good thing about talking to Ed about this is that because he knows so much about the history of Tesla and Elon Musk there are a lot of things that he could kind of glean from the files that were maybe not you know expressed outright things about certain business dealings and relationships between other people that might have had an association
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: with Elon Musk at different times, and so I think that this is a fascinating conversation because we get into not just what motivated Epstein to try to find a relationship with Musk and yes, it was Epstein that tried to cultivate that relationship, not Musk trying to do so, and certainly how he, you know, one of his routes into that was through Kimball, Elon Musk's brother.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then we also get into talking about the business dealings that
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe came of or had some relationship to Jeffrey Epstein and the relationship that these men had to want another.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we talk about attempts to try to get must to go into Israel, that Epstein tried to facilitate things around Dubai and the United Arab Emirates.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then just this bigger question as we get closer toward the end of Epstein's life.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he is having
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And certainly that gets us to the point where there's this big scandal where Elon Musk tries to take Tesla private And there's talk of Saudi money involved and based on ads reading of the files it looks like You know Epstein was kind of behind the scenes and had some involvement in that too, and so
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, what I'm trying to say is I think this is a really insightful conversation for us to figure out more about the relationship between Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein and what motivated these men to, you know, basically come together, basically have these conversations and what each of them was getting out of it.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think for now, this is probably going to be the final episode that we do on Geoffrey Epstein and his relationship to these billionaires in the tech industry.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously there's a lot more that we could talk about, especially when you see names like Peter Teele in the Epstein files as well.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for me, I don't think that there's value in
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: getting into every, you know, different character who comes up in the Epstein files.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that Bill Gates and Elon Musk were some of the two major characters that were important for us to dig into in these conversations.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, we're worth having more drawn out discussions about.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I'm less convinced about that with some of these other people, but if it gets to a point where that's necessary, maybe I'll revisit it and maybe we'll have a conversation about some other of those folks as well.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So for now, if you do enjoy this conversation, make sure to leave a five star of you on your podcast platform with choice.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you do want to support the work that goes into making tech won't save us every single week, so we can keep having these critical in-depth conversations about so many different aspects of the tech industry and the people who lead it and run it.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And occasionally have some, you know, more hopeful conversations, I guess, as we did last week with Peter Jackson, then you can join supporters like Jack in Vancouver, British Columbia and Anna in Chicago by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us where you can become a supporter as well.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much and enjoy the sweetest conversation.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ed, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I always get to be here.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's always great to chat.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Get your insights on Elon Musk and, you know, everything involving him.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, unfortunately, this week we're talking about one of his more sorted aspects of his career, his life, I guess.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: People will be familiar with his name being in the Epstein files.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we obviously want to dig into that today.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, there's the kind of general reporting that people have been hearing about the obvious mentions of his name.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're very familiar with Musk and his history, so getting in there, you can see things that maybe other people aren't connecting the dots on.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was why I was really eager to talk to you to learn more about this.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But before we dig into those specifics, I want to ask you what you make of what we've been learning about the tech industry and, you know, kind of broader elite society from the Epstein files and what has been coming out in them.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, obviously the focus of the vaccine files and just the whole situation surrounding it is of course on the victims right and and the the sexual crimes that took place exploitation Rightly so right like that that should be the the focus, but I think you know for those of us who've been investigating various aspects of how power and and money work in our world.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's this whole other layer to to this right where it's like it's sort of like the.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: compare it to the ground opening up beneath our feet and we get this, you know, limited, right?
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is, I think, really important preface for the whole conversation that we'll be having here.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gives a very limited look inside the sort of nuts and bolts and mechanics of how our world works at the elite level.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, it is limited, and so there's going to be a lot of stuff that we're just having to string together sort of pieces here.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: alluded to is that I have all this context of covering Elon Musk and the number one sort of thing about about all this you know it's been I've looked at so many different parts of so many different of his businesses and and the different with his financial or technological or all these sorts of different things and exposing all this stuff and you know throughout this now 11 years almost that I've been doing it.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: the frustrating and baffling part is that like you keep bringing these facts up you know to light and then things just don't work the way we were sort of raised in school to believe that that they were supposed to work right you're supposed to the facts come out and the markets respond to them the regulators respond to them law enforcement response to them the the system words into action with the with the receipt of new information that's that hasn't been happening and throughout it
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: the mystery at so many different points is so many different way.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why does the stock keep going up?
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why why does, you know, what is going on here?
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think these these files, and again, it's very limited.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't tell us the whole story.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, it's like almost tantalizing a lot of times how close we're getting to understanding what's actually going on.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at least it gives us a view.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like a first step in my view towards understanding,
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, again, for me, what's really been fascinating is that you'll have messed up, but I think it applies to a lot of different things and so we now have the basis to start to piece together.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: what are the mechanisms that actually make the world work?
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when we see them, we understand that it's relationships, and it is sex and power and cool factor.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And very like high school kind of dynamics in a lot of a set, in a lot of ways, the history starts to make more sense.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because you understand, like, okay, this is an above all in all this.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the class solidarity of the elite.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: is the piece of this that I think, you know, really rings out and when you start to understand, like, okay, this is how the world works.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not markets and a liberal order and all that, again, all the stuff that we were taught in school about how things were supposed to work, that it is like high school and it is just clicks and power and mutual interest and class solidarity among the elite, then all of a sudden things start to make a little bit more sense.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: absolutely and you know as you're saying like I believe if I'm correct we only have like a segment of the Epstein files themselves because they're still a ton of documents that they're not releasing and then you know on top of that is like okay how many of these emails got deleted that we don't even have so as you're saying like we have
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, a very small picture, but even then that picture tells us a whole lot just on its face but also like you're saying when you have the context that you haven't digging into a further and seeing that there's a lot of things that's not unwritten but there are hints to when you pair it with other events going on at the time you can understand more what is going on there, you know, which is obviously what you've been doing with relation to musk but that other people have been doing with so many of the other people mentioned in these files, right?
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, no, it's a really good point.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So not only to limited window in terms of it's one guy's emails.
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And and the most interesting ones.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't even know who they're two and from because of it because the other party is redacted.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then on top of it, there is all kinds of evidence that this isn't incomplete survey of that of even that limited view, right.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, we'll probably talk about whether or not must went to the island and and like.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's fascinating because there's all of these allusions to certainly his desire to go and their relationship is really interesting.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the smoking guns all seems to be kind of mysteriously not there.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, you know, in the instance of the island, I think there is maybe some some ambiguity about whether or not he actually did.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But again, that's not also the whole point.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's, you know, the number one thing I want to get across about that scene files.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I don't want to take up anything away from the victims and the justice that they've been denied and deserve.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this is a really amazing resource to understand so many other things and again, it's in perfect, but a really big first step because before before these files, we just had to guess, you know, we didn't even have breadcrumbs to sort of follow and try and understand where they led.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even then, the way that Epstein utilized these women who he was trafficking, even come up in the story around Musk, but so many of these other people as well, right?
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's key, as you were talking about all the things that you see in the files and the relationships between these powerful people, the procuring and the use of these women, of these girls, really, is a key part of what was connecting Epstein to so many of them.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a currency in that, yeah, that's exactly right.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was part of it was, I mean, there's a lot of elements to it in the different relationships.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly there was an element of mutual compromise that builds trust.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was also, you know, using women to attract people like, like, must, right?
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, and I think to start to get into their relationship a little bit here, like, there's been all this controversy about, like, did Elon go to the island and like, was he too uncool to go to the island?
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's like all these different sorts of,
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: theories.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think it is cool to be able to have some ability to talk about what that relationship really was.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what's interesting is, you know, in the early years, Epstein was very clearly pursuing must.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The way to make this all make sense is to think about it in terms of high school and like soap operas and stuff, right?
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the first times that Elon must name comes up that again, based on what we have in these files and in an Epstein's emails,
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's from people like Tom Pritzker, who's the chairman of Hyatt at the time, and he was already a very wealthy guy, right?
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think he was second generation sort of wealth.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he was sort of not running the business anymore, and he was investing in green energy stuff.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you think about the early the 2010s, that was a cool thing for wealthy people to do.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so he would, you know,
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, Pritz got to email to Epstein where he talks about buying a Tesla and again, this is, you know, this is how Tesla started.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was wealthy people who would go for a test drive in the car.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: They'd be blown away by the acceleration, the same way that a lot of people buy EVs, you know, ever since.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in addition to putting down money to get a roadster in those early days, they would almost, if you could afford to put down $50,000 or whatever it was and wait, you know, sort of an almost unlimited, you know,
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: how long if ever they were going to take to deliver.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you had that kind of money, chances are you also wanted to invest in the company.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it was this dual thing and this has been you know, a really important thread in understanding Tesla as a company.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the point that I'm getting at is that is that wealthy people say, and actually in himself he, he, he, he, he,
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's not a lot of evidence that he cared about EVs or green energy or anything like that.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he wasn't interested in Elon for that part of the business.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's evidence he was interested in the satellites and things like that in SpaceX.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can get into that.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what was what first brought him to the radar was just Elon was a rising star.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And specifically he was a rising star among the elite.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, you know, it's like
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, the new kid at high school, you know, or the kid who had to glow up over the summer and all of a sudden he goes to a bigger nobody to like, like, oh, this guy's cool and like everybody.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, and so, Epstein, you know, the first references are our people saying like, hey, do you know him or or yeah, you know, I've invested in this.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's really cool.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you just see must getting onto his radar.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then sort of that first year, and I wrote a blog post at sort of a call year one, it's a little bit more than a year, but it's sort of like late 2012 to through the sort of end of 2013.
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's when we start to see in the files that absolutely starts pursuing Elon.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's fascinating as well, because that's when you start to see the women sort of come into it.
• 14:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: definitely.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even just the pick-up on what you're saying about like Elon Musk is the rising star, he's the cool kid on the block, kind of a thing, you know, he's the new kid in the playground, whatever you want to say.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's also the fact that Epstein's kind of power and influence came in part from the network that he had cultivated, right?
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that you have all these people kind of turning to him for connections and an investment, you know, there was other
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, funding for different tech companies and making connections there and things like that.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's like, if you start having all of these wealthy people being like, hey, do you know this guy Elon Musk?
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then if you're someone like Jeffrey Epstein and, you know, your currency is in part relationships.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's also underage girls and things.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then it's like, I need to make this connection.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm probably interested in him too.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I have all these other people who, if I have a connection to Musk and I can use that connection to my advantage, then that further increases my importance to all these people, right?
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you know, one of the things that again, this has been freeing in a way, right?
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I've been struggling with this thing for so long.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the ways that I've realized like that the, the F-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: the auto industry going all electric right is Tesla company that that is positioned and has the culture and the and the resources to capitalize on that and what's fascinating about this is that you know actually he doesn't even talk about it that much about them because he's invested in all these all these different investments.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he doesn't talk about it that much.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: He relies on other people.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think this is why he sort of, it has helped explain his glomming on to academics and quote of what intellectuals is that he understood that he maybe wasn't smart enough to really understand this stuff.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when you do see him talking about stuff, there's one email, I think it was with Sultan bin Suleyum,
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who shows up all over the files it may have been with someone else so I'm not I don't have it in front of me at the moment But he talks about about like batteries and about how and this is you know in the early 2010s and he talks about how the cost of batteries is high Which you know is understood at the time, but he thought that like biobab
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: he really has this reference to biobatter.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he is analysis, when you read it, it's just like, it's fantasy.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's completely disconnected from reality.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't understand any of the stuff he's investing in and it doesn't matter because he exemplifies how the world actually works, which is, it's also, if everyone else who has money believes in something,
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter if you believe in it or not.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter if you do the investigation, and you see maybe we're overestimating like the potential for EV adoption in the short term.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we're wildly overestimating Tesla's ability to build vehicles at scale and to deliver on the mission that they say that the company is about.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: None of that matters.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to get it hasn't matter.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what the freeing thing for me is seeing how
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: that class operates and the power that they have to impose reality on the rest of us, it's been freeing for me because it helps me understand how I've both been so right and so wrong about this, which has been, you know, it's kept me up a few nights.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, definitely, a hundred percent, right?
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even when you're saying that, it's like, of anybody, it feels like Elon Musk is one of the best people who like exemplifies what you're talking about, right?
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: The fact that these relationships, the fact that these social dynamics keep these companies elevated even if the business fundamentals aren't there.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like who is it who demonstrates that better than someone like Elon Musk and his companies?
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, now we don't need to worry about the electric cars because the robots are, you know,
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Elon's just going to make all those instead and that's going to justify all the valuations.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's exactly right and because the narrative around the company has changed, the circumstances, the material reality of this company has changed so much, the trajectory, all everything about Tesla and Elon Musk himself as a personal exchange, the only thing that hasn't is that the vaccine class sees him as this rainmaker.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: simply as a result of them perceiving him that way.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's true.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like if enough of wealthy people see you a certain way and believe you, then it comes into being.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is how our world works in in a real way and Epstein understood, like his power comes from understanding how this world in this class works.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he understood that just in the same way that underage women or the consequence and free environment of a private island or the consequence free environment and freedom that a private jet offers all these things, these are all different kinds of currency.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, one of the things that's frustrating about these early years in particular, while we're throughout it, is there's just so much about the intent and what the plan is.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: What are people?
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is their theory of mind around all this?
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: That has always been the hard part with Elon.
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very difficult with that scene, because we
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: only have this stuff.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what does seem to to float up through all of this is that Epstein saw Musk as this rising star, which in itself is a form of social currency.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Other people in that network are asking about him, other people are reflecting to Elon.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I started to tapstein that this guy is cool and doing good thing, amazing things and building a better future and doing things that they want to be a part of.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in the absence of more granular data,
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: come to light, you know, hopefully, that it casts more light into exactly what Epstein wanted, because the timing of their like the 2012 or 2013 meeting at SpaceX is interesting.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know what the meeting was about.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit because we're skipping through the use of women to get to what he wants.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what we see is, you know, he's pursuing it because of the social cachet that Elon's start-up creates.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to explore the first year a bit more and how they get to know one another, but briefly before we do that, what did we know about Elon Musk's relationship with Epstein before these files were released?
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, what was the degree of knowledge that we had about how they were connected?
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: not almost none.
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So as the files, one of the very earliest releases, there was like something that the House Dems released where it was like an essential item of like, you know, onto the island, but it was very ambiguous.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was just in the last year or so.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Prior to that, you know, what's interesting is the only thing and and we'll get to the funding secured episode of 2018.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the huge mysteries of all this was
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: that in 2019 when FC passed away, all of a sudden in New York Times ran this very battling story about how this guy went to Epstein's townhouse and they had like this on background or off the record conversation about Tesla.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was an end about Elon Musk and that was sort of in the context of this whole funding secured craziness that happened at the end of the summer of 2018.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is when Elon Musk is saying that Tesla is going to go private.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: That he has the money to do it just to the Saudis and specific are going to take him private.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember that story coming out in 2019 and being like, like, why would Epstein be involved with Elon Musk?
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he was that in 2019 that was, it was just incomprehensible.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, Epstein was not the meme that he is today.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it didn't have that.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: immediate like oh my god like you know he definitely went to the island kind of thing or anything like that it was there was no It was it was impossible to piece it together, but it was like it was so weird It was weird for the New York Times and what we get into to there really you know how they fit into all this too If you hunt but but the the New York Times running a piece after a guy died saying we had an off the back off the record Background conversation with him was like that's a weird thing to do from a journalistic perspective
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then it will also.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, but this is just one of many mysteries, you know, throughout all this that that we now can sort of look at and understand, but other than that.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: no one knew anything, you know, I've been as close as I think as anyone to Elon Musk various dirt, you know, and I just never came up.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, and to be perfectly honest, like, there's so much stuff to investigate with Elon that, like, I very long time ago, got very good at saying, like, okay, that's interesting, but like, I'm never going to be able to prove anything there, so I'm just not going to bother.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can really have to decide what's worth
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was like flitted across the radar once, but the idea that there was more there would not have occurred to me until we just got this massive dump and it was literally in real time as I'm going through the emails, it's like, oh, wow, like these guys were, these guys were indeed.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I would add the only other kind of piece there is the photo of Elon Musk with Gisling Maxwell at a party that has been circulating for a number of years, right?
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is right.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there was
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to remember there was some email about kung fu lessons, there were there were a couple of these little of these little grains again, it's it's one of the things I just had to beat into my head covering Elon Musk is like there's too much there's always too much and it's like you really have to optimize for where you can actually make an impact on something because I've certainly wasted a lot of time taking really it to really compelling stuff and just not being able to prove it and that that teaches you.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: be ruthless about what you decide to invest in and so yeah so there were there were a couple little crumbs but nothing to suggest the kind of relationship that we now know and again we this is a lot we still don't know but we do know that that they were more than just casual acquaintances absolutely and and so what's the into that right because as you're saying the first piece and you have a series of three pieces that you've written kind of digging into
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Elon Musk really relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and what you're able to kind of glean from these files that have been released again, a limited portion of what actually is out or exists but is not out there, right?
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: How does Elon Musk ultimately get connected with Epstein?
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You were saying that Epstein was pursuing Musk for a while and you know, one of the things that really stood out to me was the important role that connection with his brother Kimball seemed to play to actually finally make that connection to Musk himself.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: in this world, it's, again, it's, it's high school, it's a social world and what I think it's very clear in the first year, especially of email, is that Elon is, he doesn't need absolutely for anything.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he's not, he doesn't understand, he's pursuing him and it's not clear exactly what Epstein wants other than then the currency of being close to someone who his
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what we know is how he gets to him, right?
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the direct approach is, it's just not an option.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Elon is already enough of a rising star that he's random people can't just be like, hey, I'm this rich guy, like,
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, let's be buddies.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how does he do it, right?
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, it's a fascinating insight into who actually was and how he operated that he went after Elon Musk's brother.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Kimble Musk is not, you know, super well known outside of us, you know, free to pay way too much attention to the Musk clan and all of that.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: You mean not everyone's buying his cookbook and
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, so so Kimmel Musk is ostensibly, I mean, he's famous for being Elon Musk brother.
• 25:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's like that's, you know, he ran this like the kitchen, which I guess had a couple restaurants and he positions himself as like a food influencers or you know thought leader, whatever.
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like he's kind of a joke, you know, and like in a lot of ways, I say this like he's actually the most like relatable like he's a goofball for the most part.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like if anybody remembers a clip of Kimbal Mosque, it's him basically pushing Elon Mosque on stage to admit that they were like illegal immigrants and working in ways that didn't actually, we're not included under their visas and Elon is like, no, you don't face no time.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no exactly like that's and Kim bullies like he's fun.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Love.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's on the boarder.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was he got kicked out the board of a burning man He's a he's a bomb event and and so arrow must their father talks about them and and he basically it's very funny how he describes him because he's like
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, yeah, Elon was like a nerd.
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kimball was like the ladies man, like he was like, you know, handsome and like confident and he had all the things that Elon didn't have.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's funny with the way their father talks about him.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kimball is the one that seems to have the sort of, you know, Janissa Kwa that we now, somehow, Elon has become like the avatar of this sort of like, people want to be around him and whatever.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like,
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Kimbo was like, I think it's it's helpful to think of him as a womanizer and as a kind of a party boy a little bit Elon comes across in these in these emails as being very
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, and this is the period where Elon was building his legend of the guy who was just sort of constantly at the computer, you know, always answering email.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't in like the lab, you know, he wants people to believe that, but he wanted to work a haul.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't like, you know, working on batteries or any of that shit like no.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was he was he was emailing a lot and he was he was working a lot and that's really clear in in the correspondence because he's very Kurt with with optional lot, but
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kimble is both out there in the mix, partying, I think, a bit of a social climber, running the kinds of businesses that don't get investment based on, you know, it's the people who invest in restaurants like that.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is very much a social world.
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Womanizer, I think, I think, been through a divorce at this point.
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's this web of connections, Epstein, leverages, bars, nickel-inch,
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: work for Bill Gates, of course, to get and and he and we don't know exactly how Anne Ekligen and Kimball had linked up, but they were friends and it's very clear in the email like when when this starts happening towards the end of in September of 2012, the must brothers are coming to New York and so absences this is this opportunity to get his hooks into that basically.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: He leveraged his nickelage, a sort of, it looks like he and Kimball are sort of, you know, like, like, be lads out on the town kind of a thing.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's very clearly their dynamic.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that provides absolutely in because that's, actually knows how to deal with those guys, right?
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, those guys are our FC's bread and butter.
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so through nickelage, he connects Kimball Musk with a woman.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nicholage asks in one of the, one of a number of very disgusting and, and the troubling passages, he says, prepare this woman for, for Kimball.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's as the Kimball still has an X or like a soon-to-be X sort of in the picture, but it's okay.
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll sort of handle that, prepare this woman
• 29:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then that's absolutely insane that.
• 29:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's also shocking like to see the way they communicated with each other such that am I right that Nikolayk is the one who's reaching out and being like prepare this woman kind of with it.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're right.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is Nikolayk.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 29:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 29:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so and so Nikolayk clearly understands who FC man is and how we operate.
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like that is from one email.
• 29:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it's worth saying this is in 2012 is that right.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is yeah.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is after Jeffrey Epstein has already been convicted of sex crimes years before right.
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: His commission was 2008, I think.
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Nicolette is clearly he's a middle man.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: He understands what he's doing.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm just interpreting based on the email.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the man I've been spoken to him.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what's in his heart.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, the emails are interpretable and that's very clear.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: that he understands that this, that both he and those woman aren't intermediary between not just Kimbo, but I think, well, the email doesn't make it clear, he understands that Kimbo doesn't get to get to Elon, but I have to imagine it goes without saying, um, because, you know, I don't think every ever everyone wants to invest in the kitchen, right, in Denver.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so it's a woman is a way to get to, and she has to be prepared for Kimball, but again, it's, she may like Elon.
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that the implication that right, like where this is going is sort of there, right from the beginning, they meet up.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to parse,
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: exactly.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's always ambiguity, you know, it makes sense, right?
• 31:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: People don't send emails.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, sometimes they'll send emails and say it was good to me, right?
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had a good meeting with you or whatever, like, you know, have a safe flight back.
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's some of that.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's a number of points where there's some ambiguity about where exactly the meeting
• 31:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: took place, but it's clear that that unmeaning took place, absolutely.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think was trying to get them to his house, which is interesting as well because that brings up, right?
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's all the cameras, and there's all the sort of rumors and speculation about about blackmail and things like that.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like Kimbo went probably went to his home.
• 31:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, with Elon, it's always a little less clear, and I think it's probably because Elon was just less of a guy to send those kinds of emails.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: his emails are all very short and very curt and you could tell he's got a lot on this plate and and again if you know the history of what he was going through at the time he had a hell of a lot on this plate and so it makes perfect sense nothing was interesting because as we'll get to like he was and and when the moment presents itself he he he he becomes very interested but
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think what's important about that first meeting and then I think they come back to New York like shortly thereafter, this leads up to the first sort of maybe we'll go to the island around the new year.
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So again, I think for me, the most important thing of that is that dynamic of Elon comes up on the radar, you know, of in this world he's becoming a star, FC and pursues him through a web of social connections using women as a currency.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that ultimately, you know, Elon is and for a while after this, continues to be Kurt with him, continues to sort of be a little even dismissive of him, but that ultimately the appeal of what Epstein has to offer is something that very clearly connects with most.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just to be clear.
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know exactly when Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein meet for the first time, but we do know that Jeffrey Epstein makes a trip to SpaceX specifically in 2013.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is a confirmed one, but we don't know when they meet before that is that right?
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so so there's talked about him coming to the islands December 2012 January 2013 the email suggests that they struggled to link up the timing was off and that it looks like maybe they met from lunch in like St.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: the next year as well, Elon by this time was looking forward to going to the island and make it into maybe why that interest was had grown over the course of that year.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But even then, I absolutely was like,
• 33:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't make it.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so they didn't, it seems like they didn't link up then either.
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not, you know, I think there's been a lot of speculation on social media and stuff about, you know, was Elon too uncooled to go to, to actually an island.
• 34:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that was the thing.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: We also don't have, you know, really, as you say, the definitive proof, like, yes, he was definitely here on this date, you know, an F.C.
• 34:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: was there, whatever.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, so there is ambiguity about the island piece of this.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what's unambiguous is that there's something going on between them, right?
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's some sort of meeting I think in the, in the Virgin Islands, somewhere over that sort of new year period, and then in sort of February, so just months later Epstein's assistance are reaching out to Musk's Elon Musk assistance, organizing a meeting at space
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: the two of them and three girls that he brings with them and am I right and three girls yeah that's exactly right and and so you know the had to have been something there I think the missing piece of this is what was abstinence interest
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: emails are really shaky on that front.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The sort of theory of mind of like what exactly was Epstein trying to get?
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because again, clearly there was the social cache A and who this was going to be a useful person to him in a generic sense.
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like that wasn't enough to precipitate a meeting in at SpaceX headquarters.
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's one thing for them to meet up on vacation and have lunch and who knows what they talked about.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But meeting up at SpaceX,
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a big deal if only because, you know, you referred to these three girls, you know, they had to send their passports, right?
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's like a record of their passports at SpaceX, visiting in order to comply with, you know, ITAR.
• 35:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know all the details of defense legal compliance, right, that exists to prevent, you know, foreign entities from, from infiltrating, you know, folks who are, who are part
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: it was this interesting thing where you don't have a meeting at SpaceX just for, you know, to hang out with women.
• 36:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like there was clearly some business angle to it and we don't know.
• 36:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is the part, and I didn't even write this in my year one piece, it's too speculative because we don't know.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have no hint of evidence about what the business angle is for that first
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: that first quarter of 2013 was what I call the Immaculate Quarter of Tesla.
• 36:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the most misearliest and most mysterious periods in the country, the company's history because the Model S have been in productions in summer, but like it was not doing while the quality sucked.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They only had a couple of colors that was available in.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: The
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: the word of mouth was not good.
• 36:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: People who were sort of saying, you know, you're sort of wait, you know, one of the things you expect with the small startup car company, and the sales weren't doing well.
• 36:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: They turned that around not just in that first quarter of 2013, but the last month.
• 36:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think I don't have the dates in front of me, but the meeting was in April, and like mysteriously the next month Tesla sold enough model assets like turn around the sales sold enough to make their first profit, which then they leveraged into borrowing money, paying off the government loan and this is where Tesla stock started to go crazy so.
• 37:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's too speculative to say, like, like, I really, you know, I want to avoid legal problems.
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to, you know, and I want to make it clear that like this is this could very easily just be a coincidence and I have no evidence that there was more all they know is I don't know what the business relationship was.
• 37:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: was interested in Tesla as a business, was interested in green energy, was interested in electric vehicles, but he was a guy whose currency was favors.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so if Elon was desperate at that moment, and needed someone to raise money to buy some cars, to get them off Tesla's books, and maybe they would buy some of my back later, or who, you know what I mean?
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like if there was some sort of stealth bailout that happened there, absolutely, certainly would have been the kind of guy to do it.
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So again, I'm not alleging anything I just don't know, but the, the, if you know the context that mysterious involvement right at that particular moment is certainly interesting.
• 38:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, certainly raises some questions, right?
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Questions that could potentially be answered if more files were released, maybe, you know, but or at least, you know, hinting towards something it's hard to say.
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• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like, you know, in this kind of first period, there's one other piece that stood out to me that I feel like even links this into the next part of the story that you talk about and this is of course, Ehud Barak who is a former Israeli politician, I can't remember the exact month that he's reaching out, but like 2013 he's still he's still in government he's minister of the fans early in that year is reaching out essentially to try to see if Epstein can arrange, you know, a connection with most to try to get Tesla into Israel.
• 40:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, he's like significantly rebuffed in that moment by Musk, but that's those kinds of requests are not rebuffed in the same way a few years later, so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's it's also yeah, the the context of what was going on with musken and Tesla at the various points in the story matter and again, not in the way that that conclusively prove anything, but as we are piecing this together, it's just some some things right, so again, so so why was it that Elon Musk was willing to meet with at space acts with a convicted sex offender.
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: six months after meeting him, well, we can point to the fact that Tesla was in financial crisis.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, and, and FC and had, you know, access to search shady and socially intertwined money, right?
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, maybe that maybe that explains it.
• 41:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why was later that year?
• 41:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, because once once,
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tesla got through that first quarter of 2013, they paid off their government loan, which they contrasted against GM and Ford, not doing it.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: They started talking about the solar superchargers.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is exactly when he first started talking about autopilot.
• 41:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Basically, as soon as they paid off that government loan, Elon very clearly set out to, and I call it going, he went ludicrous mode, right?
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's starting in that second quarter of 2013.
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: you can't even see it on the stock price now because it's a dynamic that started literally in the second quarter of 2013 has become so huge that you can't see it starting on the stock chart anymore.
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you go back and you look at from IPO until 20 whatever, 16, 17, 18, wherever, you can see that is the inflection point.
• 41:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is where Tesla becomes, you know, seven years before the term meme stock existed, Tesla was becoming a meme stock.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was creating the
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: the the the profile for that.
• 41:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when Aude Baroque reaches out to absene that absene reaches out to must that is I don't know it's later that in 2013 it's after the stock has started to go crazy it's solved so so you want to solve this problems in the short term and it suggests the fact that it rebuffs
• 42:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Epstein, it doesn't rule out the possibility that he owes Epstein a favor, but it made kind of maybe hints that maybe, you know, Epstein didn't just completely bail him out, which is again, why I don't want to forward that theory too strongly.
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's clear is that is that Tesla's short-term problems are over.
• 42:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: The stock is going crazy.
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the engine of, it's always been the engine of that whole thing.
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also, Tesla was struggling to expand.
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Model S has only been on sale for a year.
• 42:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were still producing at a very small numbers.
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the original tooling for the Model S was 20,000 units a year, which is
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny volume.
• 42:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's funny is big huge by roadster standards, right?
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a big leap, but it was still miniscule.
• 42:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so they were struggling at that time with like as you, you need to open to a global market.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're selling a card of rich people.
• 43:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have to open global markets, which you have to be really smart because you don't have a lot of money to invest in the sales and the service locations.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's literally, right, it's like you think of like the luxury brands have this thing.
• 43:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's why you see Paris and New York and Tokyo and London, you know, or Dubai, like a couple of little, then Dubai being a much later thing.
• 43:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: At that time, Tesla had very little money to invest in new markets.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they were
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: as supply constraint.
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they had more demand already by the mid to late 2013, then they were able to, you know, so we're very struggling.
• 43:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was their first time building a car themselves properly.
• 43:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so they were really struggling with that.
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, and of course, as you reported, Elon Musk made a bunch of design decisions that made it even harder to fill.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, that's a whole other topic.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
• 43:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, so the point being is that Israel, it was very easy for him to just blow Israel off.
• 43:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like they did not actually go into Israel, and I don't have the number in front of me.
• 44:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was in the 2020s.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 44:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the Israeli car market is tiny, it's notoriously corrupt, like Mazda's the best selling car.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a, again, I have a
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: feel like I have a lawyer, think of my shoulder this whole episode.
• 44:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not accusing Bazaar or the Israeli Automotive Authorities of Kamra.
• 44:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just reflecting what Israelis have told me about how their car market worked.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that their car market looks super different than every other car market in the world, which tends to suggest or imply that something other than the same market dynamics and are driving those markets are at play in Israel.
• 44:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the point being is that Tesla didn't go there until much later, I think after the Model 3 came out,
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: which makes sense because it's just not a market, it makes sense for them to invest in.
• 44:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, it must rebuff that and then later that year, you know, it looks like their relationship is sort of getting a little rocky again.
• 44:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, you know, who knows what exactly is going on behind the scenes?
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Epstein reaches out again and he does this a lot where he just emails people and and he just sort of says you know when you come to New York when you come to New York Hey buddy kind of stuff is the files are full of this and it's again it's an insight into how the world works people love that right people love to feel like Someone who's wealthy and powerful cares about them.
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a great way to manipulate people
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I say this as, you know, it's happened people have tried this on me, you know, like when you're a blogger and some CEO emails, you know, you're like, you know, and it's like it's a powerful tool actually reaches out later in in 2013 and says, hey, the general the UN general assembly.
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: is meeting in New York to be a lot of interesting people at the place.
• 45:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to come hang out.
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think for most people in that click, you know, in that world, that's very appealing, compelling thing.
• 45:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Elon responds very clearly and this is like exchange, I think, encapsulates their relationship really well.
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Elon responds and is like, just super bitchy with him.
• 45:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's just like, I'm running, you know, and you could tell it's the
• 45:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is now starting to believe by late 2013.
• 46:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's getting high on his own supply.
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's believing his own press.
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this machine that has now gone way off the rails is really starting to build up a head of steam.
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, I'm running two very important companies.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm very critical to their success.
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't just, what he's like, this just does it, you know, going off to New York and hanging out with a bunch of diplomats, just doesn't seem like a good use of my time.
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Epstein, you know, has clearly been putting a lot of efforts, been a year of cultivating this relationship and quite successfully.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he sees that I think slipping away and he goes back to, I think, the baseline of like, okay, how do I make this work?
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: What does this, what do I have at this guy wants?
• 46:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not diplomats in the UN General Assembly, right?
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's women.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He said he and he says he's like, what do you think I'm a arsler?
• 46:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: No one there is going to be under 25 or over 25 and everyone will be super cute.
• 47:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, Elon doesn't respond to this, but it's very telling to me that, you know, Epstein is trying to understand him.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's trying to figure out what makes this guy tick.
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And those are the sort of the two things, the two major currencies that Epstein trades in.
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's status and prestige, which is symbolized by the UN General Assembly to be able to rub elbows
• 47:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, so performance of running the world, or it's sex.
• 47:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Elon is not, he wants sort of a new class of elite that is coming in, and Epstein is figuring out which of these currencies works with him, and it's not the status thing, it's the sex thing.
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the end of that year, Elon is like,
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm ready for a vacation and again, if you look at Tesla was just doing better at the end of 2013 that it was at the end of 2012 and and that's where the infamous Elon like, you know, when's the big party on the island or that actually that may have been the year earlier, but he's, but by the end of 2013 Elon is just unambiguously, I really want to go hang on on your island.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: and unfortunately, we don't have emails to confirm whether that actually happened or not.
• 48:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you mentioned, you must kind of blow off this potential relationship to Israel.
• 48:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But of course, you write that several years later, Sultan bin Suleyam, the CEO of Dubai Worldport, is kind of reaching out to Epstein, making a similar request to get Tesla into Dubai, to get that all set up.
• 48:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And by 2017, this is kind of bearing
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: fruit.
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what do we make of that relationship of why Musk seems much more open to, you know, pursuing this kind of relationship in this moment versus when the Israelis reached out?
• 48:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're sort of the the cyclical nature of Tesla's business.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, again, by, by, you know, 2012 was an almost going bankrupt year.
• 48:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: 2013 was, you know, solve that, you know, and then you're doing good sort of into 2014.
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: By 2015, things are getting challenging again, right?
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've had to make these big investments in growth.
• 49:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, the quality problems are persisting.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: The model S is doing OK, but the model X is really struggling to get to market.
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Vince Williams, interest in Tesla, too, it starts with the model X.
• 49:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: He just wants to get a Model X.
• 49:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, I'm an actually, we're very close.
• 49:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I've been for quite some time.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the background there is really Dubai had a series of distressed debt moments as well.
• 49:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, like this is, this hints at maybe white Elon, what the business relationship was is that when you are a properly get over spender as
• 49:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the Elon and the guy who ran to buy ports world at different scales totally different scales at this time of course, but they both sort of were beyond their means and a corporate sense right they were not keeping that eagle eye on the bottom line they were very you know boom bust sort of things and when when these sorts of guys run into trouble, Epstein is just one of the people they call and again this is you know talking about like how is it that companies that don't have good business models.
• 50:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, you can just stay in business and and and their valuations continue to grow understanding that their guys like absolutely out there that connect people with various sources of capital and that they have all these relationships that are not necessarily just built on the bottom line, right, and building successful businesses.
• 50:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that's almost secondary or tertiary, even inside a lot of these cases.
• 50:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, basically, I mean, they have this long relationship with, you know, he, he would, the email app scene, asking him to find apartments in New York.
• 50:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: He treated him like a, like a concierge, a lot.
• 50:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, and FC was very gracious, you know, again, this is how these relationship work.
• 50:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: He, you take those kind of undignified moments and stride.
• 50:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You help out the powerful guy.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then when it's your turn, you get something out of them.
• 50:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a, there's a mysterious moment where, you know, obscene is asked by, but eventually I'm to get about a model X.
• 51:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very confusing about where obscene's getting his information about the availability of the model X.
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a couple of different, like, the way
• 51:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: He basically says, we'll find out November 15th and it's possible that like there was a typo and cause obviously his emails are full of typos and it's possible he might have a refist when Tesla like that's the most sort of innocuous explanation as that Tesla was releasing information on the fifth but even then it came out earlier
• 51:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing was like November, if it could be November 15, which is actually very close to when the model X ended up coming to market and what's fascinating is that again, you have to contrast what's going on behind the scenes with what's going on out in public at this exact moment at a Jonas of Morgan Stanley who is basically Elon's
• 51:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is my personal characterization because he almost like, you know, chief stockpumper for for many years.
• 51:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: As this request for information is happening, he is starting to drip feed out ahead of that earnings release.
• 52:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fact that the model acts is delayed and then it won't come out until Q3 of of 2015.
• 52:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, it's it's it's again, there's there's hints that may be obscene is actually getting even like.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: non-public, material non-public information from inside Tesla, there are interpretations where that's not the case, it's sort of hard to tell.
• 52:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the start of this interest.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, this is why Epstein was positioned himself to have a relationship with Tesla because he knew, you know, eventually people who are less plugged in than Tom Pritzker, but equally, if not more wealthy, we're going to find out about this Tesla thing and want in on it.
• 52:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Ben Sully, I'm sort of exemplifies that.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I think he's reaching out like specifically looking for three cars, right?
• 52:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: For Hayme's wife and his son or something like that.
• 52:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
• 52:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that sort of resolves it ambiguously because the model model x isn't ready and then going into 2014, you have 2015, the you get a version of the of the same request that a block had forwarded through FC, which is come to this time come to Dubai now I think the big difference.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Other than so, so there's the market is different.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a much more established luxury car market than Israel.
• 53:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know Dubai has has become one of those Paris New York London sort of fashion tour kind of luxury destination type of places by this point as well.
• 53:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the other, there's another subtext going on here too, which is notably absent from the Ahead Baroque.
• 53:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once you see the contrast, which is, he basically straight up says, you don't have to bribe anyone.
• 53:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will make sure that you can get in to Dubai.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will put you on, I'm forgetting the day.
• 53:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the main commercial strip in Dubai.
• 53:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a former Porsche dealership.
• 53:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Actually,
• 53:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: and their old place needed a tenant.
• 53:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the other subtext to this.
• 53:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the pitch was basically we'll roll out the red carpet.
• 54:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like this is a luxury market.
• 54:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will get you in there.
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm the only guy who can get you in without, and this is the other crucial thing without a partner, you know, a lot of car markets, whether or so on the big scale of this is China.
• 54:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, Tesla was the first foreign automaker to enter into China without a local partner.
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a number one priority for Elon.
• 54:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: enforced partners.
• 54:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He will just not go to your country.
• 54:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that was also the other thing was it was like, you know, you don't have to, and again, he said it all as explicitly as you can put it in an email.
• 54:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to bribe me or anyone else.
• 54:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will make sure to it.
• 54:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll put you on the commercial strip and we will help you out.
• 54:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And sure enough, the UAE becomes not just a source of sales, right?
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: They get that former portion dealership.
• 54:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: They get the big building, Elon comes there.
• 54:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: tribute to humanity, kind of the same way that the pyramids where I guess another sort of slave labor built monuments, and then the big thing is that the government buys a lot of cars.
• 55:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what's amazing is that, you know, Tesla was just in the very earliest days of even hyping the self-driving and autopilot thing at this point, and there's what's at the Dubai Future Foundation,
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: makes us incredible video.
• 55:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was like AI slot before AI slot.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was, it was just really bad at it.
• 55:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: They took, it was literally, they took a Tesla Model S and they made this video that shows, you know, an emeraldian man, of course, getting in the backseat and it's got this whole user interface that's projected onto the window.
• 55:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's fully driver, but it's a Tesla.
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's like taking Tesla at that time was still just sort of hinting at like it was it was the self-driving pitch was just in his infancy and they're taking it in turbocharging it you know and so they're essentially they're doing you know government funded advertising the local taxi organization is buying you know model assets
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is a hard sell for a taxi company again with the prospect and they're hyping it as you know into buying a show.
• 56:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, they're still struggling to put this together.
• 56:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now they got the Chinese companies in there to try because they've had this future vision that like 30% of their rides would be autonomous by 30 30 or whatever.
• 56:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, by 2030.
• 56:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they thought Tesla was going to.
• 56:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or they were willing to buy into the vision of Tesla was going to provide that.
• 56:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it was, it was a lot of things that made that work.
• 56:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: One was the sort of timing of where Tesla was.
• 56:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was Dubai's a more appealing thing.
• 56:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was the, you don't have to bribe anyone.
• 56:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was the government.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to support you.
• 56:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there was one other element as well, which is that apparently Epstein pitched him in person.
• 56:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was not just sort of an email saying, hey, who asked me to ask you what do you think, kind of a thing.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was in person.
• 56:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: As far as we can tell, it looks very, again, we don't have, you know, the timestamp photos.
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, but it looks pretty clear.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, Epstein says I'm going to meet with Elon today, remind me, give me more detail on that
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then immediately like asks, how did it go?
• 57:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: How did it go?
• 57:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: How did it go?
• 57:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing, by the way, too, that Dubai got out of all this was it really was right when they were turbo trending their world government, symposium or whatever they call it, and Elon Musk came for that.
• 57:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, they already had big names.
• 57:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not like he made it, but
• 57:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's this mutualistic exchange that we see with Elon again and again, which is you treat him like he's a big deal, he treats you like you're on the cutting edge of the future and it's a circle jerk that has right like sort of taken over our world.
• 57:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, everyone kind of wins in the sense that they get what they what they want out of a right, you know, the emeraldies want the cars, except for the self driving taxes.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course, of course.
• 57:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 57:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, but, but at least they get the boost, you know, they have the Tesla's, you know, they get the participated in the PR, they get to like, you know, bask in the aura of Elon Musk, you know, and he again gets gets pumped up in in this way.
• 58:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're talking about the Emerodys here, but obviously, you know, as you were talking about earlier, the Saudis and Musk, there's also a very important relationship there that really, you know, is is most emblematic in 2018 as you were saying when Elon Musk announced is that he's going to take Tesla private that he has secured the Saudi money to do it, and I know that there is stuff in the Epstein files that you're after finding that.
• 58:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: that relates to that as well.
• 58:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what is that telling us about?
• 58:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are these Episempos further revealing about what is going on in 2018 around Elon Musk's supposed intentions to take Tesla private in that moment?
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Epstein claimed as emails have links to the the king of Saudi Arabia going back to 2011 was the earliest I found.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So quite early as far as the files are concerned.
• 58:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So clearly, and I don't really know where that relationship started, where it comes, like, you know, there's emails from French diplomat talking about, you know,
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: the harem that the Saudi king has.
• 59:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's, there's, you know, implications of, you know, that maybe the sexual thing is a factor in that we don't, I don't know.
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's, there's so little about about the origins of that relationship that I can't even begin to speculate really.
• 59:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: the relationship with the Saudis between and the Saudis seems to intensify based on my reading of the files.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sort of around that 1415-16 sort of culminating and a trip that he takes to Saudi Arabia where apparently Muhammad bin Salman meets him on the airplane.
• 59:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I meet him at the on the tarmac rather when is airplane lands.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's, you know, pretty significant.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is around the time that Mom, I'm been someone also sort of solidifies his position as the, you know, as the power and Saudi Arabia where he locks.
• 1:00:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: he had a theory that the by going public that it could create an exposure.
• 1:00:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sort of an attack surface that would create vulnerabilities for the Saudi state.
• 1:00:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he's clearly advising them.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And more importantly, by, you're certainly by 27, 18, people are emailing him and saying, and asking him about the Saudi friends.
• 1:00:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And these are well-connected, you know, Atlanta, Thomas, the junior at the New York Times, and truly on a lover,
• 1:00:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: who a lot of people don't know, but she sort of figures in and all this.
• 1:00:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really had a clever, someone that I got the pleasure of figuring out who she was through my coverage of Tesla.
• 1:00:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: She is an immensely powerful woman in the East Coast establishments.
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was involved in the Bush administration, so she was a chaining person.
• 1:00:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: but she's positioned herself very much as a centrist in D.C.
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, very equally at home, sort of with either party, and Michael Wolff connects her with Ewan.
• 1:00:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, she's next to her.
• 1:01:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was already connected with the X-ray with the Epstein, because they were both sort of a kind of anti-Trump, a little bit in the first Trump administration.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's sort of like, oh, he's going off the rails, and she was,
• 1:01:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: writing about how there needs to be a third party candidate, which is, again, classic Belt Beltway sort of, you know, oh, well, we just need, you know, someone who's sensible in charge and, you know, and, and, absolutely, of course, it's like, oh, you're so smart, you're so smart.
• 1:01:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: when Michael Wolfe introduces him.
• 1:01:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Epsenus is basically talking to Michael Wolfe.
• 1:01:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Michael Wolfe is the author of Fire and Fury or whatever it is, the book about the Trump administration.
• 1:01:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And fascinating character in his own right is the author.
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But basically, Epsenus saying, I need help with PR.
• 1:01:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Michael Wolfe says, well, this woman, Juliana Glover, he says most times, she's wholly owned by Elon.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Elon has bought her out.
• 1:01:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so she can't take other words.
• 1:01:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like,
• 1:01:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: you guys will get along and sure enough they do and they're sort of talking about this sort of third party kind of anti Trump stuff a little bit but then all of a sudden the funding secured thing blows up and all of a sudden she's in his email saying
• 1:02:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: In case you're advising certain parties that may or not be involved in what's going on, like I can help you sort of message, you know, like the potential of Tesla.
• 1:02:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, really clearly leading through the lines, and again, you know, what we know about, you know, the Saudi,
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Arabia.
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So my husband's home had been, you know, clearly was interested in, and what we see with the rise of my husband's home, is this interest in Saudi Arabia from Saudi Arabia in the tech sector.
• 1:02:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we've had, you know, these big, say, visits and meeting all the the tightens and we have huge investments and clearly, you know, and, and so I think
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, there was that big controversial visit where he came over and like spent so much time visiting all these CEOs in Silicon Valley and and all that kind of stuff right this was before the kind of murder of jemal kishouji which turned them off for a bit, but now they're all back in the this out of the sphere again.
• 1:03:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, one, and you think about the sort of heel turn that Silicon Valley has really sort of leaned into.
• 1:03:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So heavily, and it makes sense that a lot of that comes from this huge influx of wealth from the Gulf States, and that they're targeting that as a source of investment.
• 1:03:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's also, of course, in the Zerb era, it was hard to get yield elsewhere, except outside of Silicon Valley.
• 1:03:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they weren't the only ones, but F-Cine,
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: seems to have been at the forefront of that trend of the Gulf States getting into and meeting up with the tax secretary.
• 1:03:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if Epstein personally brokered the Saudi meeting about, because the Saudis did meet with Musk that summer of 2018, and there was talk of an investment, but the funding was not to get right.
• 1:03:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know the funding was not secured and Elon just sort of popped off about it.
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: As there's this like multi-day scandal, Epstein makes it clear, like he blows off other people who's dealing with crypto stuff at the same time and he's like, I can't deal with this right now, I'm like fully engaged in this Elon thing.
• 1:04:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like both, so he and Triliana are ostensibly doing a glove or ostensibly on opposite sides of this deal.
• 1:04:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's advising the Saudis, she's advising Elon or representing Elon,
• 1:04:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: and get their collaborating, and the collaborating on among other things manipulating the New York Times.
• 1:04:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the sort of the number one thing that comes out from for me in this period is they are talking, they are both getting information in and out of the New York Times.
• 1:04:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are,
• 1:04:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: from their sources who work at the times they're learning about stories before they before they come out and then they are collaborating to manipulate those stories and manipulate the coverage when you know that right and then it's like okay so now it makes sense that that
• 1:04:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this guy, and I can't remember exactly which reporter it was who, who, um, I think it was James, it was James Stewart, who goes to, uh, actually his townhouse and, and records an interview with him.
• 1:05:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're not records a housing interview with him.
• 1:05:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then doesn't write about it until the guy dies a year later.
• 1:05:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like all of a sudden, this, this makes a little more sense.
• 1:05:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: What does it, there's a lot that still doesn't make sense, though.
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, so we can see how they, how they manipulate the situation,
• 1:05:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like we still don't really understand why Elon sort of announces in the first place like whether whether there was there was clearly something else going on like the deal didn't exist and he was trying to will it into into being fascinatingly Epstein is has a horror of drug use.
• 1:05:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at this time, he's like, your boy is smoking weed on Joe Rogan, right?
• 1:05:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was also happening at this time.
• 1:05:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, this is, you know, and he's employees were emailing him about it and be like, this is bonkers.
• 1:05:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, every time, everyone in, in absence of a world was like, oh, my god, drug people are bats.
• 1:05:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Keep them away from us.
• 1:05:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, they're, they're, they're those people.
• 1:05:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're, you know, one of us means, you know, you're not a drugy here.
• 1:05:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're into the stuff that we're into.
• 1:06:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, the relationship between him and and Glover is really fascinating because again like the number one thing that comes true is there are an opposite size of the deal but they're also both part of the same class.
• 1:06:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: They both have access to the New York Times.
• 1:06:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: They both are able to manipulate it.
• 1:06:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: They both and they're they're they're working together.
• 1:06:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think to sort of
• 1:06:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: diffused, you know, and by the way, she, of course, is like, oh, Elon does barely even drinks.
• 1:06:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's trying to manipulate him too.
• 1:06:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they're book collaborating and many, anyway, it's it's one of those things where it's like you realize with these people are both in this class.
• 1:06:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They both build immense power.
• 1:06:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even though they're on opposite sides of this deal, this is just one deal.
• 1:06:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like they all have other things, another interest and this moment will come and we'll go and they will still be there.
• 1:06:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they will continue to, and again, in the moment whether they're trying to spin each other or collaborating to spin the times or whatever else it is that they're doing.
• 1:06:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: there's this interplay of of conflict but but that is smothered by again the the class solidarity that that happens in this world.
• 1:07:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hearing everything that you're talking with that like obviously there's the whole piece with Elon Musk and you know with the deal with the Saudis and again how Epstein is involved in this very key moment.
• 1:07:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: In, you know, kind of like the history of Elon Musk's business empire, certainly one that we have talked about many times, but you know, this kind of wrinkle of it was not something that we were aware of, you know, again, until these files were released.
• 1:07:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the other piece that really stands out to me again is this relationship to the media and to the New York Times and kind of the influence and the passing of information that is there that also I would say presents some big red flags, right?
• 1:07:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so, and the part where I have some personal experience with this, you know, is fascinating.
• 1:07:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, I was around this time frame, actually a little before this.
• 1:07:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was contributing regularly to Bloomberg.
• 1:07:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a couple of review at the time, now Bloomberg opinion.
• 1:07:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I was starting to write more and more about Tesla.
• 1:08:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's one instance specifically, it was in 2016, so it was before this, but after Juliana Glover, as to how I found out who she was, was I wrote about the painted black basically Tesla doing this fake self-driving video, and this is when they started doing, you know, full self-driving.
• 1:08:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I write this draft about it, and I'm very skeptical, critical, and we're in edits, and all of a sudden, my editor gets this lit laundry list of corrections from Julianna Glover, and to be perfectly honest, like they're almost all, in fact, they were all.
• 1:08:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, there was one, there was one.
• 1:08:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: where I'd said a few, there'd been a few deaths, because we knew about two, we had two proven deaths, and then there was the gauly ending in Josh Brown, and I think it was a Jamie Banner somewhere else.
• 1:08:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, the point is that I could prove two, and I suspected a third, and it was all but obvious that there was a third, but okay, so we'll say two, instead of,
• 1:08:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: a few.
• 1:08:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was the one correction that was like fine, yes, legitimate one word.
• 1:08:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then there was this laundry list of others, most of which were just sort of we dismissed out of hand.
• 1:09:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And some of which we actually went in and I could show you this piece today.
• 1:09:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, like she says that the drive that they did started at Tesla's factory, which is in Fremont and ends up at at their headquarters in Palo Alto.
• 1:09:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, how does it cross the bay?
• 1:09:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't cross the bay.
• 1:09:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I grew up in the
• 1:09:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's still in that piece 11 years later, you know, or 10, you almost 10 years later, it's still in that piece.
• 1:09:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the power of Julia and a clever.
• 1:09:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I went on Bloomberg TV in San Francisco.
• 1:09:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's my first time doing an in-person, you know, at the Bloomberg Studio in San Francisco.
• 1:09:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was so excited for it, and Emily Chang is there, who's great, by the way, and, and.
• 1:09:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You were literally five minutes to going on air and Emily Jenkins is phone call.
• 1:09:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, okay, mm-hmm.
• 1:09:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's how to phone.
• 1:09:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she looks at me.
• 1:09:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, I am so sorry about this.
• 1:09:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, this doesn't happen.
• 1:09:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was my boss's boss or my boss's boss something like that.
• 1:09:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just her boss.
• 1:09:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: With someone way up.
• 1:10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, you know, we've had the word is come down.
• 1:10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I have to ask you about corrections that were made to your piece.
• 1:10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, I'm sitting here, I'm like, wait a second.
• 1:10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is Bloomberg TV asking about one word correction after a bunch was dismissed out of hand in your own outlet.
• 1:10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a Bloomberg, you published the thing.
• 1:10:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm on TV to promote it on your TV channel.
• 1:10:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And anyway, this was like, this was my first hint at the kind of power that
• 1:10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: is for sale in this country and that Elon had bought.
• 1:10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we now know from Michael Wolf, he just bought her out.
• 1:10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I shuttered to think what her annual rate is to not work for anyone else.
• 1:10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's got to be a lot of money and boy does she get results.
• 1:10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, and again, I saw it firsthand.
• 1:10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so to see her in Epstein collaborating and then just to see all of the things that he has this
• 1:10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: that has the solidarity with each other.
• 1:10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, they're interested in a line or conflict moment to moment and it doesn't matter what matters is their power and that they have it and that doesn't change.
• 1:11:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that to me is really the lesson of the FC and Files.
• 1:11:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen in the first hand, you know, all this reporting and then nothing ever happens.
• 1:11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is that?
• 1:11:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, now we're finally starting to get
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: a look at at sort of the mechanics that explain what's gotten so badly broken in our society and where world more broadly.
• 1:11:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Totally and Elon Musk is just one of those, right?
• 1:11:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're talking about your experience with regard to Elon Musk and reporting on Elon Musk, but when you touch so many of these other billionaires,
• 1:11:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: You find that they have their own PR people and fixers and lawyers who are doing the same sort of thing to try to make sure that negative coverage of them and their businesses are staying out of the headlines, you know, are not being reported on, are being, as you say, corrected so that, you know, it is not as critical, it better reflects their narrative, that sort of a thing, to try to take, you know, the potential pain of this.
• 1:12:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: out of it.
• 1:12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I just want to pick up on, you know, to kind of close off our interview, the moment we're talking about here is about a year before Jeffrey Epstein is arrested and then ultimately goes on to supposedly kill himself.
• 1:12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know there are still questions about that, you know, what ultimately happens there.
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like this is already getting close to the end of his life and he still has this, you know, very close involvement with Elon Musk and his empire.
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, as we wrap this up, I wonder in your mind, you know, again, based on
• 1:12:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: the limited information that we have, what do these revelations tell you?
• 1:12:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Big picture about the relationship between Epstein and Musk and and how that all operated.
• 1:12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think there's a couple of things.
• 1:12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is just that, you know, F.C.M.
• 1:12:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: represented this point of entry, this nexus of of money and power, if you could get close to him, when things got sketchy.
• 1:12:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I'm not just talking about Elon, you know, uh, or when you wanted something, he would he was a fixer.
• 1:13:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was a fixer and the realities of the business didn't matter.
• 1:13:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You look at at how he did business and he was, you know, he would ask for these
• 1:13:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: very sketchy characterizations of financial deals that he was being asked to participate in, they had very loose grasp of the fundamentals of businesses that he was involved in, and everything was sort of social.
• 1:13:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's understanding that we don't live in, again, the world that we were taught as a schoolchildren to believe, you know, that there's a system and that it works in systematic ways.
• 1:13:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, there is a system, but it doesn't work in systematic
• 1:13:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: The number two of it and I think this is something that is going to bear a lot more reporting and I think it helps explain not just Elon Musk but a lot of the things that are happening I think in our world our politics right now especially as we go to war in the Middle East is the role of golf oil.
• 1:13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: to be perfectly blunt and a lot of things and I think you can sort of step back and look at some high-level things and again maybe you know we need more information to flesh a lot of this out but you know you see the rise of the idea of the network state and you see you know that is that is what that's what Dubai is is a literature networks right and it's it's sort of the template
• 1:14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: for what a lot of people are trying to create from Silicon Valley.
• 1:14:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you just see a general attitude where tech companies act more like
• 1:14:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Gulf States than they do sort of American companies for better force.
• 1:14:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to want to romanticize American business culture because obviously there's a lot of wrong there going way back.
• 1:14:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you know and we see this in our politics too and even in you know I made a joke on blue sky about how you can't get a PR job anymore because like when someone reports negative news about the company like the response is just like
• 1:14:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: the CEO, like, puts out a tweet that's like, yeah, we did it, and it's part of some bizarre, you know, like ideological, there's no denying anymore.
• 1:15:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like people, the masks are off, and how that's happened in both business and technology, and then in our politics,
• 1:15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I don't want to, I don't, I also don't want to say, like, oh, so there's all these foreigners in there and they're money, but like we know that that oil and oil money are one of the foundations of our world and that that and it creates a lot of power and that power is wielded by people who have what I consider to be very objectionable values and I see them seducing the power in our country towards those values because those those values privilege power.
• 1:15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: and the naked use of power against the less powerful and justifies it in any circumstances.
• 1:15:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I see where our country across again, the business and politics and everything else is drifting, we're drifting towards a Dubai type world of intense wealth and the spectacle of wealth and technology that is built on slavery and exploitation.
• 1:16:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that feels like the world where we're headed to.
• 1:16:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that as we get more information, I hope we do.
• 1:16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think, I think of nothing else.
• 1:16:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope the FC and Files inspires hackers to not, that this information is power.
• 1:16:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need to see more about what's happening in this.
• 1:16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think,
• 1:16:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Epstein was really the midwife in a lot of ways or certainly a facilitator of this transition from, you know, letting loose the last messages of I think what are
• 1:16:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: to reasonably good American values, which again, I don't want to run besides American history, but this noticeable turn towards things that look even worse for those of us who've been critical of America's past that the future looks even worse.
• 1:16:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I see Epstein sort of at the center of brokering the relationship between certainly technology and that sort of petro.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: dollar power.
• 1:17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think you know on that basis he is a linchpin in understanding this very mysterious in a lot of ways.
• 1:17:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mechanics of it don't, I think a lot of people find that some baffled by this turn that's taking place and I think that's seen files hold a lot of answers as to why this is all happening and they suggest that we need to do a lot more digging and we need to
• 1:17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Expose a lot more emails from a lot more people because what's happening is really important and you know, we haven't been asked to vote on it or even have a proper discourse about it because we don't have the facts and so hopefully this is step one and and you know at least trying to to do some of those things.
• 1:17:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, very well said, you know, we need to be having that discussion, you know, we need to get more of these files, whether that's through hacking or through leaking, you know, someone can put them out there because they do exist, but then the other piece of course, you know, picking up on what you say is, okay, we know this much about Jeffrey Epstein, you know, still a very limited amount.
• 1:17:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But how many more Jeffrey Epstein's are out there trying to do a similar sort of thing as well, right?
• 1:18:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's a lot of, I think, accountability that is really needed for what is happening here and unfortunately we're not seeing nearly enough of that.
• 1:18:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Certainly in the United States, but in many other places as well.
• 1:18:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ed, it is always great to speak to you, to get your insights, even when it's terrible topics like this one, but we need to know what is going on and how this world actually works and how these powerful figures are connected through these networks that are just terrible.
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I appreciate you taking the time.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much.
• 1:18:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, it's a pleasure as always.
• 1:18:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ed Needermire is the author of Ludicrous and a co-host of the Autonicast.
• 1:18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with the nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks.
• 1:18:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Production is by Kyle Hucen.
• 1:18:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry.
• 1:18:43
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• 1:18:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.