As President Trump sets down the government, he repeatedly claimed that popular safety net programs, including Social Security and Medicaid, were off the table and spoke sensitively about them.
In a three-hour interview with podcast host Joe Rogan on Friday, it seemed Elon Musk hadn't got the memo.
“Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme ever,” Musk declared.
That moment promptly offered an openness to Democrats who accused mask of trying to cut profits for the elderly and disabled. And it created a new headache for Republicans who have worked to explain how they plan to dramatically cut their budgets without slashing popular programs like Medicaid.
These are surprising and sometimes surreal risks inherent in Trump's decision to turn the presidency into a kind of co-production with world-renowned, often undisciplined billionaires. And the interviews left them naked.
Appearance – Musk's most extensive solo interview since the beginning of Trump's second administration – provided a window into his worldview, which was crude and contradictory. Musk defended his efforts with his government efficiency, instead despising it existential, and despising its scope, explaining the issues of unsafe work like AI sex robots.
Here are some takeaways from the conversation.
Musk acknowledged that he has wide-ranging goals.
Musk repeatedly acknowledged how radical his purpose is, calling for his project that cuts government workforce, cuts contracts, and calls regulations a “revolution” against federal bureaucracy.
“Bureaucracy usually eats a revolution at breakfast,” he said. “This is the first time they haven't, and the revolution may actually succeed.”
He acknowledged that it was very different from the slow pace of change during Trump's first administration.
“This is not something like the first term,” Logan later agreed.
“Yeah, this is a revolutionary cabinet,” the billionaire said.
But sometimes he downplayed his role.
Several lawsuits against Musk and his department include the question of what his role is and whether he is legally required to be more transparent about his work.
In the interview, Musk seemed well aware of the need to downplay his role as a result. He put his division out as a non-binding advisor to the agency, even if he portrayed his efforts as a transformation.
“These are the cuts Doge recommends for its departments, and we usually follow these recommendations,” Musk said. “But these are recommendations that will be subsequently confirmed by the department.”
He explained his futurist beliefs.
Musk described artificial intelligence as “what we should be concerned about,” but suggested that he was involved in technology to develop a system that “misunderstandings don't tell you anything worse than nuclear war.”
Musk said he believes that AI will be smarter than individual humans in next year or two, and that he predicted that AI will be smarter than all humans by 2029 or 2030.
He also talked about his long-standing dream of living on Mars. He said it is “very important to ensure the long-term survival of civilization.”
He characterized it as a competition with time.
“Before civilization has a certain future fork on roads like war, nuclear war, etc., can we make Mars self-sufficient, or maybe we'll be attacked by meteors or just civilization dies whispering in adult diapers, not adult diapers?”
Musk evoked many conspiracy theories.
At one point, Musk appears to refer to the doctrine of so-called great alternative theory. This believes that western elites hoped to “replace” white Americans with immigrants.
“The more illegal people Democrats can bring in, the more likely they will win, so that's what they're trying to do,” he said.
He then explained the conspiracy theory that liberals were planning to turn swing state blue by legalizing undocumented immigrants, calling it an “attempt to destroy American democracy,” and saying that preventing the outcome was a “folk of the road” moment that led him to support Trump.
“We will be a permanent, one party nation. This is what a permanent deep blue, a socialist nation, that will become America,” he warned.
In an interview, Musk also suggested that the government keeps a “peep of evidence” secret, including videos and recordings made by Jeffrey Epstein. We speculated that the federal government program to prevent spreading Ebola is actually involved in creating new strains of the virus. And they allegedly without evidence that “a bunch of really good, talented old white guys” had been kicked out of the Federal Aviation Administration as air traffic controllers to create space for fewer qualified women and people of color.
“We should not put public safety at risk because of some dementia philosophy,” he said.
Musk said he is not a Nazi – and appears to have revealed such accusations.
At one point, Logan asked Musk what it was like to buy Twitter.
Musk seemed to respond with a pun. “I didn't see it coming,” he said. “It's classic,” he said.
“People will go down anything,” he said. Rather than the word “gobble,” it appears to pronounce the last name of Nazi politician Joseph Goebbels.
Logan said it was “strange” to be accused of giving a Nazi salute after Musk made a hand gesture that looked like after Trump's inauguration. “Now I can't point things diagonally,” Musk said.
“Hopefully people will realize I am not a Nazi,” Musk said, adding that they need to invade Poland, commit genocide and start a war to be considered a Nazi. “War and genocide are the bad parts,” he said. “It's not their habit or their dress code.”
Musk and Logan talked about the sex robot that powered AI.
Without a doubt, the opening hours of the interview featured Logan and Mask, who are the president's special advisors and have offices in the executive office building in Eisenhower, discussing how quickly they can bring AI-technical sex robots to the market.
“It's probably not long,” Musk said. He recently unveiled his own AI software. “Maybe less than five years.”
“Really?” Logan asked. “Is it warm?”
“You'll probably get whatever you want,” Musk replied. The two men answered before discussing the possibility that they could have sex with “fur woman” or aliens from the film “Avatar.”
That moment
Marine Guest
New York Times photographer Haiyun Jian sat in the Air Force press cabin somewhere between West Palm Beach, Florida and Washington, Florida, when his son Xæa-xii and his mother were on the plane.
The billionaire and his family were on planes in front of Trump and reporters traveling with him. Haiyun didn't look at their boards, but she knew she might see them disembarking.
When the Air Force landed at Andrews' joint base, Haiyun actually saw the disappearance of the Mask family, then Marine Wang, usually the first family, and those traveling with him, saw a helicopter back to the White House. At that point, most of the other photographers had left.
However, Haiyun got stuck. She went low on the ground knowing that she could assemble the bright windows of the helicopter with the lens. And that's when she made this amazing photo of Xæa-xii, known as X.
X's existence, Haiyun told me, visually expressed the relationship between Trump and Musk.
“It's a way to capture power,” she said. “Without showing the face of power.”
Meanwhile, with x
Shutdown becomes a “sane check”
My colleague Ryan Mack is watching his mask posts on his social media platform.
Musk claims he has not been bothered by critics of his push to cut foreign aid, but he is paying attention.
On Monday, he hit X with a reply to political podcaster and former Obama speechwriter John Favreau.
“No one is dead as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding,” Musk said. “no one.”
“Sane Check” wasn't the way Musk explained his agency's plans a few weeks ago. Last month, when Musk's team stopped the USAID leader and told other employees to stay home, Musk declared with X, “We're closing it.”
Since then, the world has begun to feel an impact. My colleague Apoorva Mandavilli wrote about a four-year-old Ugandan boy who died in Ebola last week after the Trump administration cancelled at least four contracts with an organization that helps manage the spread of the disease. (At the Cabinet meeting last week, Musk said the government made an effort to “cancellately and easily in a very short time” on Ebola prevention.)
On Sunday, USAID's Global Health representative assistant wrote that the withdrawal of foreign aid will lead to an estimated 18 million additional cases of malaria, 200,000 paralytic polio, and thousands of deaths. Its manager, Nicholas Enrich, was on holiday on Sunday.
– Ryan Mac
Don't miss it
Mask's mother hits the global speaking circuit
China. Kazakhstan. United Arab Emirates. Elon Musk's mother, May Musk, has traveled the world for a long time to model, speak and promote her writing. However, for the past six months, with my colleagues Mara Hvistendahl and Joy Dong Write, she seemed to be in demand even more.
Click here for more details.
