I think, in terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future. - And why is that? - I think I've done enough. It looks like Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a little bit tapped out of politics now. [00:00:20] During an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum, he, you know, basically said, I'm not really looking to continue donating large sums of cash, in political elections. And remember, Elon Musk was the largest donor in the 2024 election cycle. [00:00:40] To either party. By the way, out of all the donors on both sides of the political aisle, Elon Musk stood out as the individual who gave the most. He contributed $239 million through his own America PAC, $20.5 million through RBG [00:00:55] PAC, named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That's interesting. $10 million to the Senate Leadership Fund and another $3 million to the Maha. Alliance PAC. And that was just in the 2024 cycle. That doesn't even include the $20 million that he contributed to influence the [00:01:14] Wisconsin Supreme Court race, basically to back the conservative candidate. But that effort luckily failed. So that's a lot of money that he has funneled over to the Republican Party. But all of a sudden he's like, yeah, I think I've done enough. I think I'm done with this. So, Jake, what are your thoughts? [00:01:30] So, look, there's the things we've discussed before. His polling is terrible. So he's dragging down Republicans. They lost that Wisconsin race that he put over $20 million into. And remember, Trump won Wisconsin, but they lost that race by ten points [00:01:45] just a couple of months afterwards. And the juries had started to come in. He's very unpopular and he's going to cost Republicans elections. But more importantly for him, Tesla stock was cratering. And he began to realize, oh, right. Mainly libs Lives by my car. [00:02:02] They now hate me and they've stopped buying the car. And in fact, they started giving it back if it's a lease, etc. And his stock started creating, they started looking for a new CEO. We've covered all that so that there's that's already plenty of reason to get the hell out of Dodge, right? But I think that there is another reason as well, which is that he might have [00:02:21] already gotten what he wanted. - Yes, I think that's the case. - Yes. So what was it that he wanted? We'll talk about that in a second. Yeah. So look, there's also some data showing that President Donald Trump is no longer mentioning Elon Musk. Certainly not as often as he used to. [00:02:37] Let's take a look at this graph, which shows that Elon came up most often in the months of February and March. But since April, Trump hasn't mentioned Elon Musk on Truth Social even once. So look, Trump gets sick of people real quick, so I'm not surprised by that. [00:02:55] Plus, you know, there were things in motion to essentially Eject Elon Musk from the public eye because of the fact that, you know, while Trump's numbers weren't necessarily being impacted by Elon Musk in particular at the time, Elon Musk's favorability among the Republican base [00:03:14] continued to drop more and more. So it was beneficial for Trump to kind of push Elon Musk out. Okay. So, additionally, in February, Trump's fundraising operation invoked Musk in emails to supporters on a near-daily basis, but mentions Musk in fundraising [00:03:31] appeals abruptly stopped in early March. Since then, Trump has sent only one fundraising message mentioning Trump I'm sorry, mentioning Musk, a may email touting a Gulf of America hat that he that the Tesla CEO tried on. [00:03:46] Okay, great. So all of this money that Elon Musk put into the MAGA movement gained him some power, right? And he had some influence over the Trump administration. I mean, he was at the Qatar Economic Forum. He did go to the Middle East with with Donald Trump and an anonymous GOP operative told Politico that he's finished. [00:04:06] Done. Gone. He pulls terrible. People hate him. He'd go to Wisconsin thinking he can buy people's votes. Where? The cheese hat. Act like a nine year old. It doesn't work. It's offensive to people. And I think he's right about that. And remember, that's an anonymous GOP operative. [00:04:22] Now, Musk did not deny nor confirm that the blowback he's received is his ultimate reasoning for backing off of the political scene. Let's take a look at what he has to say. Is it because of blowback? [00:04:41] Well, if I see a reason to political spending in the future, I will do it. - I do not currently see a reason. - Okay. So I'm going to I'm going to skip ahead because I actually think what's really interesting here is why he believes the public dislikes him. [00:04:57] Because remember, think about everything. Think about everything that's happened with Elon Musk since Donald Trump got elected, there was the oh, my heart goes out to you, Hitler salute. Okay. Where he's obviously trolling and, you know, trying to provoke people. [00:05:14] There were the moments where he giddily was talking about all the different government programs that he was cutting. He seemed to get a rise out of trolling the left. So he loved to troll. I mean, that really stood out when it came to Elon Musk in the beginning of Trump's second term. [00:05:31] But here's what he thinks in regard to why Americans have soured on him. Tesla, obviously, you know, takes me to a certain extent to what some would say is the brand damage done by your government service. I don't know if you would agree with that. [00:05:49] - I. Have some pros and cons. - There have been some pros and cons. Was it worth the undertaking at Doge and everything else that you've done, and how outspoken you've been in terms of the things you believe in, to antagonize so many potential buyers and or users of things like a robo taxi. [00:06:04] Well, I mean, unfortunately, what I've learned is that legacy media propaganda is very effective at making people believe things that aren't true. - What would an example of that be? - That I'm a Nazi, for example. And how many legacy media, publications, talk shows or whatever, [00:06:24] try to claim that I was a Nazi because of some random hand gesture gesture at a rally where all I said was that my heart goes out to you. And I was talking about space travel. And yet the legacy media promoted that as though that was a deliberate Nazi gesture, when in fact, [00:06:39] every politician, any public speaker who has spoken for any length of time has made the exact same gesture. Okay, I don't buy that at all. At all. But even if you do, even if you do, let's say we give that to him. [00:06:55] I don't think that's the only reason why people soured on Elon Musk. Elon Musk made a point to troll people while he was in the public eye. If you've made a point to troll people, you can't be shocked and you can't blame the media for why people dislike you. [00:07:12] You're asking for it and then whining about it after the fact, after it impacts Tesla financially. So yesterday we covered about the story about how some people wanted to push him out. Today he confirms that he is getting out of politics. So then there's two components here. Why? [00:07:28] And and what did he get out of it? So first let me address what I was talking about. The why. So if you're hardcore MAGA, you don't understand what we're talking about because you loved Elon. And and of course, since everybody's in their own bubble and they think everyone is in that bubble, they can't understand the people outside [00:07:46] of that bubble couldn't stand Elon. So I'm going to explain why in a second if you're in that category. Right. So they would see the what they're calling the Roman salute and they'd be like, what's the big deal? He just snapped his legs and sprung his arm out in that exact way, guys. [00:08:04] Even if you don't think it was a Nazi salute, you're super confused as to why others thought it was. When it looks identical to one. Really? Okay. Like. And you're. And you think that there's no chance in the world that he was trolling. [00:08:20] It was just the most random hand gesture you've ever seen. Okay. You might believe that, but you have to understand that a great majority of people do not believe that. Right. And he did it twice. And it wasn't just raising your hand. I've defended Laura Ingraham and many others who just raised their hand. [00:08:37] Right. Okay. But that's a that's one part of it. But the more important stuff is like all the things that MAGA loves him with the chainsaw. Exactly. The cheese hat. And so but no, the cheese hat is just cheesy, but the chainsaw is extra symbolic because he was cutting jobs of innocent people at that time and MAGA loved it. [00:08:55] They're like, yeah, let's cut, let's cut, let's cut. Right. By the way, we actually didn't cut any of the pork and we didn't cut the Pentagon. We didn't cut from any of the giant corporations who are robbing us blind. All he did was fire a bunch of innocent people who worked in the government, half of whom were Republicans. [00:09:12] Okay. And that are now like, what the hell? What do we get fired for? So the country hated that MAGA loved it. So that's why Elon and MAGA are like, I don't get it. The chainsaw was great. Firing people was great. The Roman salute was great. Well, why don't people. [00:09:27] But but your perspective is not the perspective of the majority of the country. And if you say, what do you mean Trump won the election? Of course we're the majority. But no people that voted for Trump in the middle are not hardcore MAGA, right? They independents and. [00:09:43] Yeah, they they voted based on inflation, immigration, etc. They might agree with you on the border. Not it might. They do agree with you on the border, but they don't agree that you should have cut hundreds of thousands of random jobs of people who didn't do anything wrong. Exactly. And not actually get much savings at all. [00:09:59] And then say, oh, by the way, we're going to pass a $5 trillion tax cut for corporations. Exactly. And remember, many of the individuals that we're talking about, the federal workers who were fired, who lost their jobs as a result of this Dodge effort, were veterans as well. [00:10:14] Many veterans, by the way, are on the right, identify as Republican. They have conservative families. So, you know, he did lose some support among conservatives as well. It's just that his lack of favorability or the bulk of that lack of favorability was [00:10:31] represented by, you know, independents, obviously, Democratic voters as well, and some conservative Republicans. Okay. But the other thing I'll say is you have to consider the optics of being the richest man on earth, cutting jobs, getting people fired. [00:10:50] It's not going to bode well. People are going to dislike you. And cutting cancer research and funding for malaria so that kids in Africa don't get, you know, this terrible disease while you're laughing your ass off about a chainsaw. And. ET cetera. [00:11:05] All right. But what did he already get that he might have thought? Mission accomplished. I already got what I wanted out of the US government. I'm gone. Well, to me, two things stand out. One is contracts for his own companies. And. And I'm going to keep an eye on this like a hawk. [00:11:21] So Trump is proposing Golden Dome, which is this nonsense project that's supposed to give us the same kind of security that Iron Dome gives Israel. But Israel is a small country. America is gigantic. Golden dome would bankrupt us and very likely wouldn't work. [00:11:38] Okay, so it's a boondoggle. And out of 180 companies that applied right now, they're claiming that the leading candidate is SpaceX. No. And so then then. Okay, wait. He's the number one donor. He puts in $290 million to Trump. [00:11:55] He might easily get $290 billion back through Golden Dome. So if that happens he thinks. I got what I wanted, I got 1,000% return. Actually, this would be much higher than that. It's 1000 x of what I put in in this corruption scheme where I bought Trump. [00:12:12] So if that happens, he's already like, yeah, I made it. That alone is more than enough, to justify his return to get return on investment. And then the second part is, look, this one is more speculative, but they were massively interested in all the government information. [00:12:31] Right. Remember, the Doge comes in and they're like, we need all the info. We need all the private information of all the taxpayers, all of the American citizens. We need their health care information. We need their financial information. And then he got a bunch of hackers and brought them into Doge, [00:12:46] a bunch of CEOs, Silicon Valley CEOs, and they all got that information. What did they do with it? - No one knows. - There's a third thing, though. I mean, the whole rare earth minerals deal. Oh, that's another one. That's right. So let's just be honest here. Let's be clear. [00:13:05] No one gives a ton of money to any political group or candidate without expecting cookies in return. And it appears that Elon Musk has gotten plenty of cookies. It did come at a cost outside of the campaign contributions, by the way. [00:13:21] Obviously Tesla was hit hard by his unpopularity, let's put it, you know, simply. And so but whatever. I mean, look, he's gotten the some of the concessions he's wanted from Trump. I think it's good for him to take a step back from politics. [00:13:36] I don't think he's helpful to Trump. I don't think he helps Trump's image. So I wouldn't be shocked if Trump was like, all right, it's time to go, you know, behind the scenes. And Trump already got his money. Yeah. And if he's not going to run again, he doesn't need Elon's money anymore. And now he's getting so much money from the Gulf countries [00:13:52] and that he doesn't really need Elon. So now it's so it's a convenient divorce, right. And then they don't I've seen no indication that they hate each other. We're not overstating what's happening here? Correct. Ellen just is saying himself today that he's largely leaving politics for now. [00:14:08] And I think that the main reason is he thinks. Mission accomplished. Yeah. I already got us to get a rare earth mineral deal in Ukraine for no reason. And that's mainly, you know, the mineral that goes into the Tesla's lithium. That's why I'm pushing to annex Greenland. [00:14:24] And, you know, and do all these weirdo attacks of random countries. Oh, look, they all have lithium. Oh, that's so interesting. Then there's Golden Dome, and then there's all the access to the information. And I'll tell you what. There's one last thing that I'll say about this. If he gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and it turns out [00:14:40] that they did something wrong with that private information of American citizens, it's not just going to be the left that's mad at him. Then the right's going to be mad. And that's a whole different animal. I think he's playing a dangerous game. And it makes sense for him to try to get the hell out of Dodge [00:14:55] before he gets caught. 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