Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, appeared on a new episode of Tucker Carlson’s web video show Monday in an almost two-hour interview. Musk made false claims about undocumented immigrants voting in the U.S., lied about the state of California legalizing theft, and complained about homeless people, among a host of other topics. Musk even claimed—first jokingly and then not-so-jokingly—that he would be thrown in prison if Donald Trump didn’t beat Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
“If he loses, man, what…” Carlson said with a laugh, “you’re fucked, dude.”
“I’m fucked. If he loses, I’m fucked,” Musk said as they both laughed. “How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be? Do you think? Will I see my children? I don’t know.”
Musk went on to explain that he’d been “trashing Kamala non-stop,” notably mispronouncing the name of the vice president, while outlining the “joke” he’d told on his social media platform X about the potential assassination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Musk eventually deleted that tweet.
It was all done with a laugh, but the discussion was also deadly serious, as viewers would learn while the two men spoke at length. Later in the interview, which was recorded on Sunday, Musk reiterated that he was such a threat to Democrats like Harris would even have him jailed. The billionaire said X in particular, which Musk bought for $44 billion back in 2022 when it was known as Twitter, was such a threat that Dems would try to “shut it down by any means possible.”
“They’ll try to prosecute the company, prosecute me. I mean, the amount of lawfare that we’ve seen taking place is outrageous,” said Musk.
Musk has very publicly backed Trump in this election and even started a Political Action Committee that’s offering $47 to registered voters in seven states who sign up for his “petition.” But Musk appears to think of himself as a perpetual victim of liberal forces, despite being the wealthiest person in the world.
The billionaire SpaceX CEO also repeated lies about the state of California making theft legal, a right-wing meme that’s popular on X, which would seem to contradict his own assertion that he would eventually be thrown in prison for crimes if the Democrats remain in the White House.
“Well, you know this whole movement to decriminalize crime,” Musk asked Carlson.
“Oh, I’ve noticed. Yes. What is that?” Carlson replied.
“Madness. Like to make crime… crime legal, like in California you can just steal things and nobody does anything. It’s like fully legal to steal anything under $1,000 in California,” Musk insisted.
Musk is referring to the fact that the cut-off for when a misdemeanor becomes felony theft is $950 in California. But as Washington Post criminal justice reporter Radley Balko wrote in 2023, debunking this meme, 34 states have a higher threshold for felony theft than California. Republican-run states like Texas ($2,500) and South Carolina ($2,000) have much higher thresholds, which undercuts this idea, despite what gets parroted non-stop on Fox News and X.
Musk also complained that the public hasn’t seen deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, a particularly funny observation given the fact that Musk’s brother reportedly got set up with a girlfriend by Epstein in an effort to get close to Musk, according to a 2020 report from Business Insider. Musk compared the number of clients we know about to the number of people who’ve been prosecuted for Trump’s failed coup attempt on January 6, 2021, calling them “protesters” despite the fact that they were trying to stop the certification of the election so that Trump could remain in power illegally.
“I mean they put like, whatever, five or six hundred January 6th protesters in prison and not one person on the Epstein client list,” Musk said, before Carlson asked if the list will ever come out.
“You know, I think part of why Kamala’s getting so much support,” Musk said, “if Trump wins, that Epstein client list is going to become public.”
Carlson then asked Musk “do you think Reid Hoffman is uncomfortable?” referring to the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who had visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in 2014, according to a 2023 report from the Wall Street Journal. Hoffman told the newspaper that he was on an “MIT fundraising trip” at the time.
Musk replied by saying that he did think Hoffman is uncomfortable along with “Gates,” presumably referring to Bill Gates, who also met with Epstein at least three times, according to reporting from the New York Times. Musk also noted with a laugh that Hoffman “was my vice president of business development at PayPal.”
But, again, if any association with Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is something to be worried about we have some bad news for both Musk and Donald Trump.
Carlson also claimed during the interview that rooms at Epstein’s homes were wired for video, suggesting any tapes could be implicating powerful people, though it’s not actually clear if such tapes exist. And Musk took the opportunity to pivot to talking about Sean Diddy Combs, who was recently arrested over sex trafficking charges.
“Where’s the video? I mean, between Diddy and Epstein, there’s probably several thousand hours of footage here,” Musk said. But, again, that’s an odd thing to bring up given reports that Musk has said he’s “good” friends with Diddy, who was also an investor who helped Musk take Twitter private in 2022.
Is it possible Trump could actually release new information about Epstein? The former president was asked about whether he’d release any potential client lists on the Lex Fridman podcast last month. And his response was very odd.
“Um, he was a good salesman. He was, you know, a hale and hearty type of guy,” Trump told Fridman before suggesting he might release files on Epstein without saying anything definitive. It was Trump’s own Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta who, as a U.S. Attorney in 2007, gave Epstein a sweetheart plea deal that provided the pedophile with immunity. And Trump defended Acosta at the time back in 2019 when people were calling for Acosta to be fired after new Epstein revelations came out.
And don’t forget what Trump said of Epstein in a 2002 article for New York magazine.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump is quoted as saying. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
The rest of Carlson’s interview includes the usual whining from Musk about how the Democrats are trying to rig the election. Musk ranted about illegal immigration, claiming that Democrats are flying undocumented migrants into swing states to change the election. Musk also said the Dems will “legalize so many illegals that are there that the next election, there won’t be any swing states.”
Musk even said that because Kamala Harris didn’t go through the traditional primary process before President Biden stepped aside, the Democrats were creating a “tiny oligarchy,” which is a funny thing for an American oligarch to say. Musk’s companies have literally made billions from U.S. government contracts and subsidies for SpaceX and Tesla, but the billionaire flatly denied that this was the case.
The exchange is so unbelievable it’s worth quoting at length:
Musk: There’s this total misunderstanding that my companies have been subsidized and supported by the government and get all these—and it’s like, do you really think that a Biden administration is going to subsidize me?
Carlson: Probably not.
Musk: In fact, they take away every contract they possibly can. So, for example, there was the FCC contract to $42 billion for providing rural broadband.
Carlson: Yes.
Musk: Okay. We actually first said, look, we think there shouldn’t be any subsidies, so we recommend that this program just not exist. But since you’re insisting that it exists, we will compete. And we have better products, so we won, I don’t know, about a quarter of it, which would have included the devastated areas like North Carolina and so on. And the FCC took it away illegally. They just voted—three out of five commissioners voted away and said, even though you won it, we’re rescinding it.
Carlson: On what grounds?
Musk: And do you know how many people they’ve connected?
Carlson: How many?
Musk: Zero.
Carlson: So, you think that was political?
Musk: Well, the three Democrats voted against it. And the two Republicans voted for it.
The FCC didn’t immediately respond to questions emailed on Monday. The FCC program he’s referring to was a contract awarded in 2020 that provided SpaceX with $885.5 million in subsidies to deploy Starlink internet satellite service. The FCC cut off SpaceX in August 2022 citing poor speed test data, according to Reuters.
But, to be clear, Musk’s companies have all profited handsomely from government money, even if SpaceX is currently having a tiff over one contract. And it’s frankly unbelievable that his company would try to tell the government a program shouldn’t exist and then bid on it.
But none of that stopped Musk from saying some of the most ridiculously over-the-top things about what will happen if Harris wins on November 5.
“My view is, is that if Trump doesn’t win this election, it’s the last election we’re going to have,” Musk insisted. “That the Democrats, the Dem machine has been importing so many people… bringing in so many illegals… flying, flying in with this like CVP [sic] border app thing that nobody even knew about like a secret program. That’s illegal basically.”
Musk was referring to the CBP One app, which allows immigrants to apply for asylum. And while both Musk and Trump have tried to say this app is Biden’s doing, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Right there on the Customs and Border Protection website, you can see the app was launched in October of 2020. And you may recall that Trump was president at that time.
Elon Musk is all in.
(0:00) Elon Musk Is All in on Donald Trump
(6:35) Providing Starlink to Victims of Hurricane Helene
(9:22) If Trump Loses, This Is the Last Election
(21:49) The Epstein and Diddy Client List
(33:38) Vaccines
(35:49) The Movement to Decriminalize Crime… pic.twitter.com/jNqB1ThqQz— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 7, 2024
Musk, who’s worth about $264 billion, also complained about homeless people during his interview with Carlson, another very wealthy man.
“Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little behind on their mortgage and if you just offer them a job, they’d be back on their feet,” said Musk. “But if you go and look at downtown Philly or San Francisco or parts of New York and actually most downtown, what you actually have are violent drug zombies.”
Musk, who called Trump “the underdog,” also claimed that there are more billionaires in the Democratic camp than in the Republican camp. Forbes, the leading news outlet with expertise on the ways of the wealthy, actually conducted a survey of American billionaires in 2020 and found that 43% identified as Republicans, 33% identified as Democrats, and 24% identified as Independents. Yet again, Musk is full of shit.
Carlson, whose father was America’s top foreign propagandist during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, also discussed George Soros, who Musk said wasn’t really in charge of the left-wing political machine to “legalize crime” anymore. Instead, Musk blamed that on his son, Alex Soros. Carlson said their policies were “expressions of hatred toward the United States.”
“If I was pushing that on a country, I would only do that if I hated the country and wanted to destroy it,” Carlson said.
Musk, who refers to himself as “culturally Christian,” also rambled about what he calls the “woke mind virus” which he claims is a replacement for religion and is waging a “woke holy war” that’s “highly resistant to change.”
Musk launched into his theories on overpopulation and that people should be having as many kids as possible.
“We need to stop scaring women that having a kid destroys your life,” Musk said. “This is false. We terrify girls into saying that if you get pregnant it’s your life’s over. This is what schools teach. I agree we should not have teenage pregnancies, but actually having a child is one of the most delightful, happiness-inducing things you can possibly do.”
The billionaire was also railing against hormonal birth control for women, saying it “causes depression,” and suicidal thoughts while “changing their preferences for who they want to marry or have kids with,” insisting that “it changes their personality.”
Musk also called SSRI anti-depressants “the devil” that “zombifiy people,” with Carlson even suggesting it has something to do with America’s mass shooting epidemic.
“I’m not saying no one should ever be subscribed [sic] SSRIs, but giving them out like candy is easy,” said Musk.
Musk then segued into hyping AI, claiming generative AI could write “a better essay than 95% of all humans,” and better images than “90% of artists,” calling it just “objectively the case.” The billionaire also whined about OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who he’s had bad blood with ever since Musk was pushed out of the organization.
“I don’t trust Sam Altman, and I don’t think we want to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy,” said Musk.
The whole interview was just ridiculous and cringe-worthy all around. Musk told Carlson that he didn’t even have a teleprompter when he delivered his speech at a recent Trump rally over the weekend. Carlson looked incredibly impressed, which is hilarious if you actually watched Musk’s embarrassingly bad performance. It was incredibly clear Musk was winging it because he constantly repeated himself and didn’t have anything interesting to say. Instead, his painfully awkward jumping became the story of the event.
+ There are no comments
Add yours