Latest / The Fourcast / Elon Musk v Donald Trump - who has the real power? | The American Fourcast

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Elon Musk v Donald Trump - who has the real power? | The American Fourcast · The Fourcast

0:00
Welcome to 2025. It's going to be 1 hell of a
0:02
ride, not just because of Donald Trump moving into the White
0:05
House on the 20th of January. And of course, everyone in the
0:08
world, around the world is rearranging their furniture
0:10
according to what the new president might or might not do.
0:14
But the other person we need to talk about is, of course, Elon.
0:17
As in Musk, as in the world's richest man, as in Donald
0:20
Trump's best friend, who's practically moved in to Mar a
0:23
Lago with some of his children and his mother.
0:26
You know, in recent months, he's going to be in charge of the,
0:29
the, the, the, the doge department for slimming down the
0:33
federal bureaucracy. He already owns one of the
0:36
biggest social media platforms on the planet, X.
0:39
And he's used that power not just to get, he would say Trump
0:42
elected, but also to disrupt politics in this country and in
0:45
Germany, which faces its own federal election on the 23rd of
0:49
February. So we need to talk about Elon
0:51
Musk. How rich is he?
0:52
How powerful is he? How far did he go with that
0:55
power? Lots of stuff to talk about
0:57
here. To discuss it, we've got Joan
0:59
Donovan from the University of Boston, the professor of
1:02
journalism, assistant professor of journalism.
1:04
I have Albert Eisenberg. He's a Republican strategist
1:07
today talking to me from Charleston, SC Welcome to you
1:11
both. Thank you.
1:13
Thank you. Joan, let me start with you
1:14
then. Who's more powerful at the
1:16
moment, Donald Trump or Elon Musk?
1:20
Well, I think Trump is going to move into power on January 20th,
1:25
but for right now, he's functionally inert.
1:29
But you know, Musk is definitely, by virtue of the
1:33
fact that he really funded Trump's campaign is, is really
1:38
in the driver's seat here. And you know, money really does
1:42
open doors. It opens doors to power.
1:45
It creates all kinds of interdependencies between the
1:49
party and, and Musk. And so unfortunately it it does
1:53
look like Musk is is at the head of the table on this one.
1:58
Albert, let me ask you, do you think that Trump could have got
2:02
elected without the help, financial and otherwise, of Elon
2:05
Musk? That's a great question.
2:08
I think victory has 1000 fathers in defeat as an orphan.
2:12
So there's a lot of reasons why Trump won a convincing Electoral
2:17
College and popular vote victory.
2:19
I think Elon putting his money where his mouth is and buying
2:24
the social media platform XI. Don't think he had a huge
2:26
financial incentive to do it and in fact got caught up in
2:29
litigation in Delaware on the price per share.
2:32
Ended up pretty much overpaying for X.
2:34
But I believe that it was an investment he made based on
2:37
values, free speech, open discourse, and a lot of
2:41
conservative people, a lot of just free thinking people have
2:44
been cut out of X and other social media platforms over the
2:48
last few years for saying things that were kind of just normal
2:50
things to say that ended up being true.
2:53
So taking over X and allowing for more open discourse on the
2:57
platform I think did help conservatives and non
3:01
traditional, non legacy media people kind of get their
3:04
viewpoints out. So, Joan, I mean, certainly in
3:06
terms of values for, for Elon Musk, but also there seems to be
3:09
an alignment between values of his principles and the values
3:13
of, of money, because since Trump got elected, Elon has got
3:17
a lot richer. Yeah, it's astounding the amount
3:20
of money that has been generated by this decision.
3:24
And I think part of it is. How much, by the way, remind us
3:27
of the numbers? Well, he was roughly around I
3:30
think 250 billion. And then there's been an
3:33
exponential increase in the last two months of at least I think
3:38
70 billion or more. I don't know where it stands
3:42
now, but the last number I've read was he was he was about, he
3:45
had about $400 billion something in, in, in that range.
3:50
And that's more money than one can count, right?
3:53
This is is an astronomical amount of money and that kind of
4:01
power that you have just when people know you have that kind
4:04
of money allows you to do things like buy an entire social media
4:09
network and not just buy it, but completely retool it so that
4:13
Musk is always and forever at the top of everyone's feeds.
4:19
And that the message from the Republican Party was landing
4:22
with each and every ex user, particularly after July of this
4:28
of last year, year when Musk changed the algorithms and also
4:34
really fundamentally changed the structure of what we would call
4:37
free speech online. I mean, also, let's just take
4:41
take a step back, having acknowledged the fact that the
4:44
investment of a couple of $100 million into Trump's campaign
4:48
really paid off from from Musk. If he made, you know, some
4:51
people would say 7080 billion dollars since Election Day.
4:56
But also let's take a. Look at it, Matt.
4:59
What's so, well, it's an incredible investment for him,
5:01
right. And it's also investment in
5:02
terms of? Yeah, but I do think the
5:04
investment he made is more that it's a values based investment.
5:07
Like Jones said. He has more money than he can
5:09
count. I'm sure he's happy to be.
5:11
Rich, I think he wants. If you get very rich at the same
5:13
time, I mean it's value and the value of money tick, tick, you
5:16
know what's the different. From other billionaires, I
5:18
should just say that, you know, other billionaires have pledged
5:21
their wealth to philanthropic causes.
5:24
Musk is, he's not rich. He's greedy, Right.
5:28
So there is this kind of way in which American oligarchs have,
5:32
you know, done their own version of democracy by ensuring that
5:39
their wealth gets recirculated. Musk, though, is is just padding
5:44
his own pockets. I don't.
5:45
I don't think so. I think he's providing a lot of
5:47
value to people. I mean, he's revolutionized
5:50
electric cars. Where's the Musk Foundation for,
5:54
you know, for education? And yeah, but he's a technology,
5:57
he's a technological entrepreneur.
5:58
He's completely, I mean, if you ask most liberals what's the
6:01
most important thing we could all do, it's to transition to
6:04
electric vehicles. Nobody has been more
6:06
responsible. Than.
6:07
Elon Musk for that transition, I think his development of SpaceX,
6:11
his development of Starlink is advancing society.
6:14
I don't disagree. I don't disagree Joan with so
6:17
the critiques of him centering himself in the conversation, I
6:20
think it's a little overkill, but I, I, I don't think you need
6:23
to start a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to have a
6:25
positive impact on society. But I'm a capitalist.
6:28
OK. Just just quickly trying to put,
6:31
you know, Musk into a historical context.
6:33
I mean, you know, there's some fabulously wealthy individuals,
6:36
some of whom have been philanthropic and some of whom
6:39
have been not. You know, there's there's Jeff
6:40
Bezos, there's Bill Gates who just mentioned, you know, his
6:44
ex-wife Melinda. You know, then you've got, you
6:46
know, I mean, going back all the way to to Hearst, William
6:49
Randolph Hearst, you know, Citizen Kane, if you take all
6:52
these extraordinary characters and you put them in one line,
6:55
there's no one ever been quite like Elon Musk has there.
6:59
First to you, Albert. I think he is a singular
7:02
technological force that has envisioned and executed on a
7:08
staggering number of ideas and has transformed our tech sphere
7:14
the way that we operate and will continue to.
7:17
And I think if he is used in an effective way on DOJA, for
7:21
example, on reducing the bloat in federal government that is
7:23
weighing down the United States debt levels and also going to
7:27
endanger Western Europe because the United States will not have
7:30
the resources to protect democracy abroad.
7:33
If we keep spending money like we have, I think he will be
7:37
extremely well used. And I'm interested to see how
7:39
they use him. But what I was really getting at
7:42
is that, you know, he makes rockets, he makes cars.
7:45
He's going to be sitting, you know, in the cabinet of Donald J
7:48
Trump with a new. Cabinet.
7:51
Well, whatever. But rockets?
7:52
And. Cars are also subsidized by the
7:55
US government. Was going to get on to that.
7:57
So these things are subsidized by these are subsidized by the
8:00
state. You could argue that he wouldn't
8:01
have got Tesla or SpaceX off the ground without, you know,
8:04
without the help of the federal government.
8:07
But he's also getting massively involved in the politics of his
8:10
own country. I mean, literally by sitting at
8:12
the table of power, even if it's not the cabinet.
8:14
He's trying to get involved in British and German politics and
8:17
God knows where else. I mean, there's never been
8:19
someone quite like that, has their Joan.
8:22
As someone who's who's read a lot of history, but I'm, I'm not
8:26
a historian myself, I don't recall anyone that's had this
8:31
amount of impact in such short order.
8:34
If you think about the ways in which Musk interacted with,
8:38
let's say, the Obama administration or, you know,
8:43
even the Biden administration, he wasn't necessarily that
8:46
interested in governance here. Something has shifted where he's
8:52
now. I mean, he's invented a phantom
8:55
department based on his own wealth and vision of how
9:03
government should be run. And he has absolutely no
9:06
experience within that realm. And, and he's decided that the
9:10
things that Americans depend on every day, like Social Security
9:15
and like other kinds of government safety net subsidies,
9:20
are going to go away. He's going to cut the bloat out
9:22
of government. And he's unelected.
9:26
He's unaccountable. And this department literally
9:30
does not exist, right? But we treat it as if it exists
9:34
because what is the other option, getting sued out of
9:39
existence? Cause the other thing that Musk
9:41
does, which I don't think he plays fair in terms of trying to
9:45
shut down the speech of other people.
9:47
He's sued nonprofits that have had research that they've
9:51
conducted about his companies that he doesn't like.
9:54
And even, you know, to Albert's point earlier about, you know,
9:58
the platforms were shutting down conservative voices.
10:01
Who's got the ban hammer now? But he's not.
10:06
He loves free speech as long as it's not against him.
10:09
I mean, I, I would say that X is a much more open place that you
10:12
can express any number of opinions, including on the left
10:16
than it was before. And beforehand it was pretty
10:18
much you could be party line with the left and if you got too
10:21
far out of line, your speech was shut down.
10:24
And that's why they tried to ban it in Brazil, for example.
10:28
Yeah. I mean, there is actually an
10:30
example of a multi billionaire who has meddled in elections
10:33
across the United States and internationally on the left.
10:36
And his name is George Soros. Let's leave the Soros family for
10:39
another day. But you know, certainly
10:41
fruitful, fruitful terrain for discussion.
10:44
I want to turn to the European why do you think Musk, Elon Musk
10:47
has it in for the EU and specifically the governments of
10:50
this country and Germany? First you, John.
10:54
Well, I think, you know, power is its own currency here.
10:57
And he doesn't, you know, have the political clout, nor does he
11:04
have the expertise to be able to do this in a way that is
11:11
democratic. He has to buy his way in, you
11:14
know, someone who was recently that he recently demonetized on
11:19
ex Laura Loomer says, you know, you bought your way into MAGA 5
11:22
minutes ago. And I think I think it's true
11:25
that the way in which Musk enters into politics is with a
11:29
very heavy financial hand that creates an incredible amount of
11:37
interdependencies. And so when we look at the way
11:40
he's trying to bully and push his way into EU politics, it's
11:47
very similar to what we've seen in the US where he picks an
11:51
issue, he drives a ton of misinformation about that issue.
11:55
He points the finger at people that are not to blame.
11:59
And then he, you know, watches as the chaos unfolds.
12:04
Albert, I want to know from you. I mean, Donald Trump and Keir
12:07
Starmer have kind of made-up with each other that that, you
12:09
know, dinner in New York. Keir Starmer's explained some of
12:12
the things that were said by him and others that might have been
12:14
off colour about Donald Trump in the past.
12:17
So how come Trump's best friend Musk hasn't got the message
12:20
because he's really going for Keir Starmer.
12:23
How do you explain that? You know, where's where's that
12:25
coming from? It's hard to know what you know,
12:28
what the communication is off Twitter.
12:30
It's hard to know who's at what table and what's being said.
12:34
When you write something and you're in politics, you check
12:37
with other people sometimes, and sometimes you don't.
12:40
And that's the danger, the social danger of a platform like
12:43
X where people can unvarnished share their opinions.
12:46
But the reason why they're even saying making this point is that
12:49
he is incredibly wealthy. He has the ear of the most
12:51
powerful man, soon to be the most powerful man on the planet.
12:54
Yeah, I mean I. Mean said.
12:55
It's unchecked, you know, untethered, unaccountable.
12:59
Unchecked, there's going to be political ramifications for what
13:02
he does and if he if he steps out too far over his skis, he is
13:06
going to get punished. It is not we did not elect
13:08
President Elon Musk, we elected Donald Trump.
13:10
He has many, many advisors, including long standing people
13:14
from his history. This is something everyone left,
13:16
right and center knows about Trump is that he gets a lot of
13:19
opinions. He listens to a lot of people.
13:21
He has a lot of people close to him.
13:22
Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, first female chief of staff to
13:26
come into the the White House, ran his campaign extremely
13:29
disciplined. I would recommend that your
13:31
listeners and viewers check out the Axios interview with her
13:34
yesterday where she said we're going to have a no drama White
13:36
House. The people that I'm talking to
13:38
on the transition team are telling me that it is white
13:41
years stronger than the 20/16/2017 transition team.
13:45
So there's a lot of other stuff that's happening.
13:47
And my my last point is that there will be repercussions if
13:50
Elon gets over his skis. And I think that he's going to
13:54
have to be reined in and pulled into Doja and not necessarily
13:57
foreign policy. But I just wonder when she says
13:59
she wants to know drama, White House.
14:01
I mean, you know, Musk is the embodiment of drama.
14:05
How's that going to work? Is he going to be, is Trump
14:08
going to sort of put him into a distant, you know, I don't know,
14:12
maybe some distant cabin in Camp David to keep him quiet and
14:15
outside? It'll be interesting to see, I
14:18
think if the Trump team is able to get Elon focused on specific
14:22
things. I don't think he's dramatic with
14:24
his Tesla. I mean, he built the world's
14:26
most valuable carmaker from scratch and it's been incredibly
14:31
effective. Yeah, there's there's bluster.
14:32
He's a big personality CEO that he's not alone.
14:35
That is way into Tesla. He didn't invent Tesla.
14:38
He's not he he sued his way into being called the founder.
14:41
He built Tesla effectively himself and has revolutionized
14:45
the electric vehicle. What do you look?
14:47
Like nobody works like you don't.
14:49
Nobody is like the sole founder inventor of.
14:53
I mean the guy who bought the Coca-Cola recipe in 1890s didn't
14:57
invent Coca-Cola but he made the company.
14:59
Elon is Tesla. Everyone knows that.
15:02
I think people that work at Tesla, especially the people who
15:05
were there when it started, had a vision not unlike other
15:10
visions for electronic cars. But what set Tesla apart was
15:14
that it was a luxury sedan. It wasn't being made
15:18
economically, you know, with small seats, you know, like the,
15:21
the contemporary cars of the time.
15:23
I mean Tesla. Tesla has a brilliant marketing
15:28
team despite Elon's. Product.
15:31
It's online. I mean, I, I don't know, I, you
15:34
know, I like Detroit Muscle, so I'm a different breed.
15:38
Just on, you know, on the potential conflicts there and
15:42
quick answers, please, Albert, you first.
15:44
Is it possible? Is it inevitable, as many people
15:47
have suggested, that Trump's going to get fed up with people
15:50
like us talking about Elon and not Donald?
15:53
Possibly. You think he'll sideline Elon
15:56
Musk? I think Elon needs to stay
15:58
focused or he will get over his skis and create problems and it
16:03
will mean that there is a rift. Potentially, Joan.
16:06
Joan, do you think there's a problem, a clash of interest
16:09
here? We've seen this with the H1B
16:11
visa issue. You've got Laura Luma, you know,
16:14
sort of a MAGA voice very much on the populist, right, you
16:18
know, quite close to Trump, you know, famously sharing a couple
16:20
of rides with Trump on Trump Force One.
16:23
She has fallen out with Elon Musk in the most spectacular
16:26
way. They're not talking to each
16:27
other other than with insults. And it's specifically about this
16:30
issue of the the business visas, which Musk himself had once, you
16:34
know, Once Upon a time they got him started in the US And she's
16:37
saying actually that doesn't work because that is taking away
16:41
that's giving jobs to foreigners who that should be going to, you
16:44
know, white middle class Americans or even black middle
16:46
class Americans. Yeah, well, there was a big
16:48
debate during the campaign around this notion of quote, UN
16:52
quote, black jobs, where Trump was claiming that migrants and
16:55
immigrants were coming to the country and we're taking low
16:57
wage work away from black Americans.
17:00
And it it that argument was something that resonated very
17:05
well. It made MAGA really excited to
17:08
want to vote for Trump. There were only a few issues
17:11
that really mattered in this election.
17:13
And what to do about immigration was probably the penultimate
17:17
issue. Albert and I could probably
17:18
agree on that. And what came about afterwards,
17:23
though, was very interesting. And it has a lot to do with how
17:26
we think about the American Dream in the US Whereas, you
17:30
know, Musk wanted to say, you know, I am the American Dream.
17:33
I'm an immigrant who came here. He claims to have struggled, but
17:37
his father tells a different story.
17:40
You know, but he achieved the American dream.
17:42
He, you know, and, and, and he's now, you know, richer for it.
17:48
That idea of the American Dream only plays well on the left when
17:52
you go deep into the heart of MAGA, the idea that America was
17:57
won by conquest. America is not a land full of
18:00
immigrants. And so MAGA rejects this notion
18:04
that Musk is the embodiment of the American dream, which is
18:08
also one of the fundamental ways in which we rationalize these
18:11
H1B visas, which is that we want America to be the strongest
18:16
country in the world. How do you do that?
18:18
Well, as Trump's, as Trump and Elon say, you know, you, you
18:22
build up the home team. You get the best players from
18:24
around the world. What Loomer and Bannon really
18:27
singled in on it and and understood is that's displacing,
18:32
you know, all of these white Americans that are getting
18:36
computer science degrees that are no longer eligible for these
18:40
middle management positions. Right, Albert, If there's a a
18:44
tussle, a fight, a fist fight between Elon Musk and the likes
18:48
of Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, and indeed the MAGA base
18:52
that has been incredibly loyal to Donald Trump, who wins that
18:54
fight? So just quickly to respond
18:57
because Joan made a couple racially tinged comments.
19:01
You talked to a lot of black American voters who shifted
19:04
Republican this election and have continued to.
19:06
It will continue to. And they don't really like the
19:08
migrant hotels being placed in the middle of low income
19:11
neighborhoods. They feel that their jobs are
19:14
being taken and that they are people who are coming here
19:17
illegally are getting to cut the line.
19:19
And a lot of legal immigrants feel that as well, which is why
19:21
the Republican Party's diversified so much.
19:24
Matt, as far as Laura Loomer, she has no constituency on the
19:28
right. She's tried to run for Congress
19:30
multiple times, has lost pitifully.
19:32
She's a loud voice on the fringe.
19:34
Steve Bannon has a constituency on the right.
19:36
I think there's an interesting debate, open debate to be had
19:40
about the H1B visas, about how much immigration is good for
19:44
society and about stopping illegal immigration and
19:47
hopefully deporting a lot of the people who came here illegally
19:50
to broke the rules to be here. So those are interesting
19:53
debates. It's unclear who's going to win,
19:55
who's going to take the middle path, who's going to capture the
19:58
undecided factions, But certainly having these debates
20:01
is good. Something else, Joan, that that
20:03
may come up and I wonder what you say about this is China.
20:05
So, you know, Musk's biggest Tesla factory is in the Shanghai
20:10
area, produces almost a million cars a year.
20:12
Trump and many of his in foreign policy team are very much
20:17
focused on containing the power of China, both in terms of trade
20:21
and in terms of military, you know, and so on.
20:23
Do you see that becoming a potential point of friction
20:27
between Musk and Trump? It certainly is going to become
20:31
a bigger deal over time, especially as Musk seeks to free
20:37
up and ease any impediments to shipping his cars around the
20:43
world, tries to create favorable conditions for his own
20:46
businesses. This is where investigative
20:49
journalism is going to have a a huge role to play in terms of
20:54
being able to unearth and understand some of these
20:57
technicalities. And so I do think that as as we
21:02
shift into this new administration, there are lots
21:08
of things are going to have to be renegotiated with China as
21:11
well as Russia as well as Ukraine as well as Israel.
21:17
And, And so it's, it's really going to be a, a very large and
21:24
potentially damaging shift in power, especially if it's well
21:31
known that the Super rich are going to get away with padding
21:37
their own pockets during during this transition period.
21:41
Just want to talk about journalism quickly.
21:43
We've seen in a couple of instances that, you know, either
21:47
the Trump administration is, you know, is going for journalists.
21:50
There's the case against the Des Moines Register after the
21:53
publication of a poll just before Election Day.
21:56
There's the case against ABC, which ABC settled.
21:59
Then you've got, you know, apparent alleged examples of
22:02
self censorship. This is famously the Washington
22:05
Post, not that, you know, publishing an editorial
22:08
endorsing Kamala Harris before the election.
22:11
Do you feel that, you know, in the world of the media with the
22:15
4th estate, especially in the United States, where journalism
22:18
and investigative journalism played such an important role
22:22
that that Elon Musk especially, but also, you know, Mehta and
22:26
Mark Zuckerberg ending, you know, fact checking on Facebook
22:30
today, we heard that, you know, fundamentally this is something
22:33
that that Trump and Musk can chalk up for a victory for them.
22:38
Yeah, I think it's, you know, incredibly important that we
22:41
don't confuse social media with journalism.
22:44
Journalism is an incredible profession where people, despite
22:49
their own personal interests, pursue the truth there.
22:53
And it's it's a hard job to do. And I think that, you know, we
22:58
have because of the way social media has taken up so much of
23:03
the advertising revenue, we've come to see social media and
23:06
journalism as similar things, but they're really not.
23:09
And what I'm hoping for now that there is a, a very contentious,
23:16
you know, set of political powerful elites in the US that
23:20
are dead set on getting rid of journalism, that the, the
23:25
profession is going to become more important than ever.
23:28
And those that stand at the end of these four years are going to
23:33
be, you know, I have a feeling they're going to have some of
23:37
the stories of our lifetime. They're going to be, you know,
23:40
the first draft of history, as we say.
23:43
And but I do worry that, you know, as our major media outlets
23:48
have been bought by billionaires who have now sought to shape
23:51
them in their own political image, that we are really going
23:58
to have to advance rather quickly a whole new set of ways
24:02
of doing journalism that is accountable to the public in the
24:06
public interest and not to anyone CEO.
24:11
I'll. Jump in.
24:13
Yeah, I mean, I think I'll say like a badly run car company,
24:16
that legacy media has absolutely degraded its own value in the
24:20
views of American news consumers, which is why it's
24:22
approval ratings is generally as low as Congress is.
24:26
And that's a problem of media's own doing because most of the
24:30
legacy media outlets, and by that I mean the left-leaning
24:32
legacy media outlets, basically every local major newspaper in
24:36
the country aside from the Wall Street Journal, every TV and
24:40
cable news station aside from Fox News, a number of important
24:43
websites have degraded themselves and refused to speak
24:47
truth to power when the power's on the left.
24:50
And that's it could be. Well, I'm just let me just
24:52
finish this point. My point is that so the media
24:54
outlets have refused to Yeah, I'm just going to finish this
24:57
point so. $50 million they fox lost for lying.
25:03
Yeah, OK. And ABC just has lost 15 million
25:06
for defaming the president. They have refused to speak.
25:10
They've refused to speak truth to power when it's inconvenient
25:13
for them because they're mostly staffed by very left-leaning
25:16
people. And that's why no one trusts the
25:18
legacy media, which I think we can agree on.
25:21
A lot of important investigative journalism has switched to sub
25:24
sub stack, which is fascinating and has shifted to podcasts
25:27
because basically with the legacy media unfortunately
25:30
refusing to speak truth to power under the Biden administration
25:33
and publicly announcing they were going to take a big breath
25:36
after Trump and let's be less adversarial, of course, they
25:39
were less adversarial with Biden and his cronies.
25:41
So that has shifted. So it still exists, Matt, and
25:45
there's really interesting journalism being done.
25:47
It's just not being done at The Washington Post.
25:49
OK, Joan. Yeah, I, I mean, I think we can
25:53
agree on part of the end point here is that journalism does
25:56
need to reform. But I don't think, you know, it
26:01
was that the Washington Post opposed LED up on Biden.
26:06
That would be ridiculous to even assume given the amount of
26:10
stories that they've told. His cognitive decline.
26:14
Do you remember when the Wall Street Journal published that
26:16
story about his cognitive decline in spring and all the
26:19
other outlets refused to touch it and, oh, now everyone was
26:23
aware for years? I mean, that's a classic.
26:26
Example, No, because he, he, you know, when we talk about older
26:30
people and we talk about cognitive decline that, you
26:34
know, very similar to the way that the Republicans ran a
26:37
strategy around Hillary's health at the end of her during her
26:40
2016 campaign. You know, these are typical
26:44
things that come up. But there are elements where
26:47
Biden comes out and does very cogent speeches that are very
26:50
smart, well articulated. The policies that he's been able
26:54
to enact have been able, you know, have have helped millions
26:58
of Americans, but. Your opinion as a voter or as an
27:02
objective? So, you know, as, as someone who
27:09
has to look at, you know, facts as they are, right, We can see
27:14
that there's very many examples out there where every single
27:18
politician, when they reach a certain age, face these exact
27:21
same kind of criticisms. It's it's nothing new.
27:26
Isn't the point whether, you know, Albert, you don't like the
27:29
Washington Post? I suspect you probably don't
27:31
like the New York Times and Joan, maybe you like both of
27:33
them. I don't know.
27:33
But the point is that when these discussions take place in those
27:37
newspapers, they are discussions.
27:39
And sometimes, you know, the journalists disagree with the
27:42
editor and the owner and they end up quitting, as this
27:44
happened in the Washington Post and this happened before in the
27:47
New York Times. But getting back to Elon Musk,
27:50
you know, he has 220 million followers on a platform that he
27:56
owns. He's both editor in chief and
27:58
publisher. And I don't see that there's a
28:01
lot of discussion going on inside, you know, the the ex
28:03
empire about what Elon should or shouldn't say.
28:07
And that kind of power, whether you are on the right or the
28:10
left, that kind of unfettered power at the end of the day
28:15
isn't good for democracy. Question first to you, Albert.
28:19
Well, I think what you just described is basically what the
28:21
situation would have been when it was big three cable news
28:24
channels, you know, going through the 60s, seventies, 80s,
28:27
nineties, before the fragmentation of media.
28:30
And, and you know what the unfettered power of somebody who
28:33
ran a paper like the Philadelphia Inquirer would have
28:36
been like in the 1980s, Nineteen 90s, before this breakup.
28:40
They had like a million readers, if they were lucky, or half a
28:42
million. No, I understand the scale.
28:45
The scale is much different when it's a global social media
28:48
platform, but there have always been, I mean, in media is a for
28:53
profit endeavor if it's independent, if it's state-run,
28:56
it's not independent by nature. So there's always been people
29:00
running this and trying to make money off of it since the
29:04
pamphleteers and before, and this is just the new iteration
29:08
of it. I my greatest hope is that the
29:10
legacy media platforms that I believe have undercut their own
29:14
value by not calling balls and strikes when it comes to the
29:16
left. That is my opinion as an
29:18
observer of politics, as a conservative, as somebody who's
29:21
seen countless stories that have not been reported fairly or not
29:23
been reported at all. My greatest hope is that
29:26
publications like the Washington Post hire people with diverse
29:30
viewpoints and start pursuing news and editorial with a more
29:33
low rounded view and their approval ratings will go up and
29:36
people will start listening to them again.
29:38
Joan will this I mean, we know that American media has become,
29:41
you know, divided into different silos.
29:43
You know, it's like it's like gated, different gated
29:45
communities that don't get on with each other.
29:47
You know, especially in cable television, could ultimately the
29:50
power of someone like Elon Musk, the, you know, the embodiment of
29:53
disruption, you know, be good for freedom of speech and the
29:58
independence of opinion. One of the things that we've
30:01
lost when we lost newspapers is is this local news angle and,
30:07
and learning about things that matter in our communities.
30:10
The Internet has been able, especially social media has
30:13
turned all local issues into national and international
30:17
issues. And so I think, you know, one of
30:19
the things that if we are going to bring social media out of the
30:24
clouds and back down to earth, and if we are going to regain
30:27
free speech in America in a way that does represent The Who we
30:33
are, then we have to move away from these mega influencers on
30:38
social media and get back to listening to each other and
30:41
working in community. I think that's the only thing
30:44
that's ever worked to save democracy.
30:47
Is, and just a quick answer on this one, join you first.
30:50
Is Musk ultimately good or bad for democracy?
30:54
I think anybody that greedy is a net bad for society.
30:58
OK. Albert, what do you think?
31:00
Same question. Depends how you define
31:02
democracy. I think Musk has been a net
31:04
positive for the world and for America.
31:07
Democracy, as in the ability of the people to elect their, you
31:10
know, their, the representatives in government with a, you know,
31:14
with a, with a fair playing field, full transparency, you
31:19
know, one man, one vote, one woman, one vote.
31:21
I think if you can say anything about X, it's transparency,
31:24
perhaps a little too much of it. So by that barometer, definitely
31:27
a good thing. OK.
31:29
Next question, also a quick answer if you don't mind, who
31:32
can control or rein in Elon Musk?
31:35
First You, John. I, I don't think anyone's going
31:39
to be able to. I think the the ultimate, not
31:42
even Trump. No, because what's happening
31:45
right now is you see this meme of President Musk, you know that
31:50
that's something that's irking a lot of people in the Trump
31:54
world. It's it's starting to become
31:56
something that's notable almost to the point where people say it
32:02
accidentally. Now, they don't mean to say
32:05
President Musk when you type into who said?
32:08
That job? President Autofill comes back
32:10
with Musk and not Trump. And so, you know, these kind of
32:14
things tell us that, you know, that there will be a separation.
32:19
But with money like that, in the power that that kind of money
32:24
bestows upon you, you know, Musk could, could figure out a way to
32:30
replace Trump. I mean, of course, John, it has
32:32
to be said that the Democrats who have been desperately
32:34
looking for some kind of opposition script since their
32:37
defeat in November have pounced on this President Musk mean this
32:42
man, right? Because this is.
32:43
God forbid they acknowledge their policies are too far in
32:46
the left. You know, the biggest affront,
32:51
the biggest affront, in my opinion, my personal opinion to
32:54
democracy was that the Democrat Party didn't hold a primary.
32:58
One of the fundamental ways in which we acknowledge and
33:03
understand ourselves as represented citizens is the very
33:08
few times we have the ability to make a choice.
33:11
And they and they missed that because of because of Joe Biden.
33:13
And then. OK, that's again.
33:14
Yeah. They missed because of Joe
33:15
Biden. There was no crisis.
33:17
There was no reason why. Maybe if we had had more media
33:20
reporting on his cognitive decline, that was very obvious,
33:23
he would have been out earlier. That's what.
33:25
Happens when you suppress speech.
33:26
You're, you're going down one of those famous cul de sacs.
33:29
We can't do that, you know, or what they call a no food the
33:31
road in America. Final one to you, Albert.
33:34
You know who can reign in Elon Musk?
33:37
I think Elon Musk can reign in Elon Musk, and I think the Trump
33:39
team can reign in Elon Musk. There's a lot of people he's
33:43
listening to. OK, so Nigel Farage saw that
33:45
Elon Musk was his best buddy. Then Nigel Farage got turned on
33:48
by Elon Musk, and now there's a lot of scrambling going on
33:51
inside, you know, Reform UK. You know, could Elon Musk turn
33:54
on Donald Trump, Albert? I think that that's speculation,
33:58
but I, I, I mean, I think a lot of people in the media would
34:01
love that because then they get to talk about Elon Musk more.
34:04
Well, that's it. I'd like to say thank you to
34:05
you, Professor Joan Donovan from Boston and Albert Eisenberg from
34:10
currently Charleston, SC Thanks to both of you.
34:13
This was the forecast, the American forecast, and see you
34:17
again soon.