Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've got to start with this, so he's working for free with DOGE, he's kind of put a lot of his life on hold. And you sued Twitter a number of years ago. You just made him pay you $10 million?
Donald Trump (00:14):
That's right. That's right.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
That's right.
Donald Trump (00:15):
Well, I sued from long before he had it.
Elon Musk (00:19):
Yeah, yeah. [inaudible 00:00:20].
Donald Trump (00:20):
I mean, they really did a number on me. And I sued and they had to pay, they paid $10 million settlement.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
You're okay with that?
Elon Musk (00:30):
I mean, I left it up to the lawyers and the team running Twitter. So I said, "You guys do what you think makes sense."
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I think it's funny because-
Donald Trump (00:37):
I think it's very low. I was looking to get much more money than that.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
So you gave him a discount in the lawsuit?
Donald Trump (00:43):
Oh, he got a big discount. I don't think he even knows about it.
Elon Musk (00:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
If you read and believe the media, he's become one of your best friends, he's working for free for you.
Elon Musk (00:53):
Well, I love the president, I just want to be clear about that.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
You don't care about that?
Elon Musk (00:57):
No, I love the president.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
You love the president.
Elon Musk (00:59):
I think President Trump is a good man and he's [inaudible 00:01:02]…
Donald Trump (01:02):
It's nice the way he said that, you know? There's something nice about it.
Elon Musk (01:07):
It really is.
Donald Trump (01:07):
It is.
Elon Musk (01:09):
Because I mean, the president has been so unfairly attacked in the media, it's truly outrageous. And at this point I spent a lot of time with the president, and not once have I seen him do something that was mean or cruel or wrong, not once.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I've known him for 30 years, and I've never seen anybody take as much as he's taken.
Elon Musk (01:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
And we've discussed this and I'm like, "How do you deal with it?"
Donald Trump (01:39):
Did I have a choice?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Well, you would say that to me, I'm like-
Donald Trump (01:42):
I didn't have a choice, that's the only thing I can say.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
What am I going to do, worry about it? And then culminating in two assassination attempts, which resulted in your endorsement.
Elon Musk (01:49):
Well, I was going to do it anyway, but that was a precipitating event, yes.
Donald Trump (01:53):
That speeded it up a little bit?
Elon Musk (01:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
The day of the assassinations.
Donald Trump (01:55):
Nice, I didn't know that.
Elon Musk (01:58):
Yeah. It just sped it up, but I was going to do it anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Mr. President, with your indulgence. I'm convinced that people only know a little bit about Elon, I don't think they know everything about Elon because as I studied and prepared for this interview, I learned a lot about you that I didn't know. I think people will think about Tesla, Democrats are demonizing you and trying to make the country hate you. I just want people to understand you a little bit better, and the person that you've gotten to know and have now put a lot of trust in. And just let's go over a little bit of your bios starting with PayPal, and how you became involved in Tesla, and SpaceX, and Neuralink and all these-
Elon Musk (02:42):
This could take a while. I mean, I think the way you think of me is, I'm a technologist and I try to make technologies that improve the world and make life better.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
You do show your shirt.
Elon Musk (02:52):
Yeah. And that's why I like my T-shirt says tech support because I'm here to provide the president with technology support.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
[inaudible 00:02:58].
Elon Musk (02:59):
Now, that may seem like, well, is that a silly thing? But actually it's a very important thing because the president will make these executive orders, which are very sensible and good for the country, but then they don't get implemented. So if you take for example, all the funding for the migrant hotels, the president issued an executive order, "Hey, we need to stop taking taxpayer money, and paying for luxury hotels for illegal immigrants."
Speaker 1 (03:25):
It's [inaudible 00:03:26].
Elon Musk (03:25):
… which makes no sense. Obviously, people do not want their tax dollars going to fund high-end hotels for illegals, and yet they were still doing that even as late as last week. And so we went in there and we're like, "This is violation of the presidential executive order, it needs to stop." So what we're doing here is, one of the biggest functions of the DOGE team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out. And I just want to point out, this is a very important thing because the president is the elected representative of the people, so he's representing the will of the people. And if the bureaucracy is fighting the will of the people, and preventing the president from implementing what the people want, then what we live in is a bureaucracy and not a democracy.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
You're both aware, you have to be keenly aware that the media and the punditry class… I think you've proven they have no power anymore because they threw everything they had at you, and they didn't win. And that was the New York Times, Washington Post, three networks every late night comedy show, two cable channels, they threw everything Lawfare, weaponization.
Donald Trump (04:43):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
And now I see they want a divorce, they want you two to start hating each other, and they try, "Oh, president Elon Musk," for example. You do know that they're doing that to you?
Donald Trump (04:58):
Oh, I see it all the time. They tried it, then they stopped [inaudible 00:05:02], they have many different things of hatred. Actually, Elon called me, he said, "They're trying to drive us apart." I said, "Absolutely." You know they said, "We have breaking news, Donald Trump has ceded control of the presidency to Elon Musk. President Musk will be attending a cabinet meeting tonight at eight o'clock."
Elon Musk (05:21):
Yeah.
Donald Trump (05:21):
And I say, it's just so obvious they're so bad at it. I used to think they were good at it, they're actually bad at it because if they were good at it, I'd never be president because I think nobody in history has ever gotten more bad publicity than me. I could do the greatest things, I get 98% bad publicity. I could do outside of you and a few of your very good friends, it's like the craziest thing. But you know what I have learned, Elon? The people are smart, they get it.
Elon Musk (05:49):
Yeah, they do actually. Yeah.
Donald Trump (05:49):
They get it. They really see what's happening.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And at the end of this interview what I would like is, I want people to know the relationship and know more about you. What is the relationship Mr. President?
Donald Trump (06:04):
Well, I respect him, I've always respected him. I never knew that he was right on certain things, and I'm usually pretty good at this stuff. He did Starlink, he did things that were so advanced and nobody knew what the hell they were. I can tell you in North Carolina they had no communication, they were wiped out. Those people were, they had rivers in between land that never saw water. All of a sudden it was a river and a vicious like rapids. People were dying all over, they had no communication. They said, "Do you know Elon Musk?" They didn't really know I knew him, and I said, "Yeah." He said, "Could you get Starlink?" It's like the first time I ever heard of it, I said, "What's Starlink?" A communication system that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I have it.
Donald Trump (06:48):
Yeah. I called him and I said, "Listen, they really need." And he got thousands of units of this communication, and it saved a lot of lives, he got it immediately. And you can't get it, I mean, you have to wait a long time to get it. But he got it to them immediately. And I said, "That's pretty amazing," and I didn't even know he had it. We watched the rocket ships and we watched Tesla. I think something that had an effect on me was when I saw the rocket ship come back and get grabbed like you grab a beautiful little baby, you grab your baby, it just-
Elon Musk (07:21):
Hugged the rocket.
Donald Trump (07:22):
I've never seen-
Elon Musk (07:23):
Everything needs a hug and clearing rockets.
Donald Trump (07:26):
No. And he said, "You can't have a rocket program if you're going to dump a billion dollars into the ocean every time you fly, you have to save it." And he saved it, first time-
Elon Musk (07:35):
Its never been done.
Donald Trump (07:35):
… that I've ever seen that done. And nobody else can do it. If you look at the US, Russia, or China, they can't do it, and they won't be able to do it for a long time. He has the technology. So you learn. I wanted somebody really smart to work with me in terms of the country, a very important aspect. Because I mean, he doesn't talk about it, he's actually a very good businessman. And when he talks about the executive orders, and this is probably true for all precedents, you write an executive order and you think it's done. You send it out, it doesn't get done, it doesn't get implemented. They don't implement it, maybe they're from the last administration, and they are in some cases. You try and get them out as fast as you can. But as soon as he said that, I said, "That's interesting." You write a beautiful executive and you sign it, and you assume it's going to be done, but it's not. What he does is he takes it and with his a hundred geniuses, he's got some very brilliant young people working for him that dress much worse than him, actually-
Elon Musk (08:34):
Yeah, they do.
Donald Trump (08:35):
…. they dress in just T-shirts. You wouldn't know they have 180 IQ.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Wait a minute, so he's your tech support?
Donald Trump (08:41):
No. No. He is. He is, but he is much more than that.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I actually literally am tech support. I actually am tech support though. But that's-
Donald Trump (08:46):
And he gets it done, he's a leader. He gets it done. You get a lot of tech people and you have people that go to a tech, but they get… He gets it done. I said in real estate, you had guys that would draw beautiful renderings of a building. And they'd draw the rendering, it would be great. And he'd say, "Great, when are you starting?" But they were never able to get it built, they couldn't get the financings, they couldn't get the approvals, it would never get done.
(09:05)
And then you have other guys that are able to get it done. They could just get it done. I was in real estate. Same thing in this, he gets it done. So when he said that, he said, "When you sign these executive orders, a lot of them don't get done, and maybe the most important ones." And he would take that executive order that I'd sign, and he would have those people go to whatever agency it was, "When are you doing it, get it done. Get it done." And some guy that maybe didn't want to do it, all of a sudden he's signing. He just doesn't want to be bothered.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Do a lot of those executive orders have to be codified into law? Do you need the Republican Congress to follow up.
Donald Trump (09:41):
Yeah. And they will be, a lot of them will be. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
They will?
Donald Trump (09:42):
But look, in the meantime, we have four years. The beauty is we have four years, that's why I like doing it right at the beginning because in executive order is great. I mean, the one problem, it's both good and bad because when they did all these executive orders, I've canceled most of them, they were terrible. I mean, we were going to go radical left communists, okay? It was crazy. Their executive-
Speaker 1 (10:01):
They were really crazy.
Donald Trump (10:01):
… orders were so bad if they ever got them codified, you'd never be able to break them. So the damage that Biden has done to this country, and it's not even Biden, it's the people that circled them in the Oval Office, okay. But the damage they did to this country in terms of let's say open borders, there's so many things, but open borders where millions of people poured into our country, and hundreds of thousands of those people are criminals. They're murderers, they're drug dealers, they're gang members, they're people from prisons from all over the world. And we have a great guy, Tom Homan, and he is doing so incredibly. You saw the numbers, they're down 96%-
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, 95%.
Donald Trump (10:42):
… he is a phenomenal guy. And Kristi Noem is doing an unbelievable job, and he wanted her, he said, "She's so tough." And I said, "I don't think of her as that way, she's very nice." He said, "No, she's so tough." And she is, I see with the horses, she's riding the horse, let's go. She's great. But the team we have is really unbelievable. But those executive orders, I sign them and now they get passed on to him and his group and other people, and they're all getting done. We're getting them done.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Let me go back a little bit to your background because-
Donald Trump (11:15):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
… it's beyond impressive. You were the chief engineer, for example, you were an early believer in Tesla. You became the CEO, and then the chief engineer, which was phenomenal. SpaceX, same thing, which is unbelievable. I mean, you were the first company, private company to send astronauts successfully into space. First private company to send astronauts into orbit. That's pretty deep.
Donald Trump (11:44):
He's going to go into orbit soon.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Okay. Yeah.
Donald Trump (11:46):
No, he's going to go to Mars, he's going fly on-
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Starlink.
Elon Musk (11:49):
At some point.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Is in over-
Elon Musk (11:50):
They always ask me like, "Do you want to die on Mars?" And I say, "~Well, yes, but not on impact."
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Starlink is in 100 countries. This is going to be hard, I feel like I'm interviewing two brothers here.
Donald Trump (12:01):
You go ahead.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Starshield, which could be used for national defense.
Elon Musk (12:06):
Yeah, it is already been used for national defense.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Then you have a, what is it called? Optimus, a part of Tesla.
Elon Musk (12:12):
The robot. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Robotic arm. Then you have an AI arm, and then you have something that really fascinated me and it's called Neuralink.
Elon Musk (12:22):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
You might help the blind to see, and people with spinal cord injuries that they can recover where in the past… How close is that becoming a success?
Elon Musk (12:36):
Yeah. Neuralink, we've implanted Neuralink in three patients so far who are quadriplegics, and it allows them to directly control their phone and computer just using their mind, just by thinking. So we call this product telepathy. So you control your computer and phone just by thinking. And it's possible to actually control the computer and phone faster than someone who has working hands.
(12:57)
Then the next step would be to add a second Neuralink implant past the point where the neuron's damaged, so that somebody can walk again. And so they can have full body functionality restored, and-
Donald Trump (13:12):
And you like Bobby, right?
Elon Musk (13:14):
I like Bobby actually, yeah. I supported Bobby Kennedy, I think he is unfairly maligned as someone who is anti-science, but I think he isn't, he just wants to question the science, which is the essence of the science… The scientific method fundamentally is about always questioning the science.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Well, they didn't tell us the truth about COVID, that's for sure.
Elon Musk (13:35):
Correct. Yes.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
And we learned a lot with the Twitter files. And that just then raises a question, you're the richest man in the world. You may not like that part.
Elon Musk (13:44):
Yeah. I think it's neither here nor there, I don't know if it matters.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
You're pretty competitive, I've known you a long time, but-
Donald Trump (13:47):
That's where I beat him, president.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
But he's on your team. Well, that's true, he can't top that.
Donald Trump (13:52):
I wanted to find somebody smarter than him. I searched all over, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
You really tried hard.
Donald Trump (14:01):
I couldn't find anyone smarter, right? So we had to for the country, so-
Speaker 1 (14:05):
But this is the thing.
Donald Trump (14:07):
… we settled on this game.
Elon Musk (14:08):
Well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So-
Elon Musk (14:10):
I am just trying to be useful here, so-
Speaker 1 (14:12):
This is the interesting, this is where we are as a society. And I hate to do this to you, but I'm going to do it anyway. You're doing all of these things, yet DOGE, nobody at DOGE gets paid a penny, correct?
Elon Musk (14:24):
Well, actually some people are federal employees, so they're doing-
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Some are… okay. They're helping?
Elon Musk (14:27):
But it's fair to say that the software engineers at DOGE could be earning millions of dollars a year, and instead of earning a small fraction of that as federal employees.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Okay. So just-
Donald Trump (14:38):
And they're very committed people.
Elon Musk (14:39):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
So you're committed to helping the blind see, people with spinal cord injuries, recover.
Elon Musk (14:46):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
You're committed to getting to Mars, you're going to help next month two astronauts that I think were abandoned, they dispute that in an interview.
Donald Trump (14:57):
When you getting at them?
Elon Musk (14:58):
At the president's request or instruction, we are accelerating the return of the astronauts, which was postponed kind of to a ridiculous degree.
Donald Trump (15:07):
They got left in space.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
They were supposed to be there eight days, they're there almost 300.
Donald Trump (15:12):
Biden.
Elon Musk (15:14):
Yes. They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Okay. It's not good. Now, if I had the weight and the pressure of doing that successfully on my shoulders, I think I'd be… But we spoke before we did this interview, you are very confident, you think this will be a successful mission?
Elon Musk (15:34):
Well, we don't want to be complacent, but we have brought astronauts back from the Space station many times before, and always with success. So as long as we're not complacent-
Donald Trump (15:45):
When are you going to launch?
Elon Musk (15:47):
I think it's about four weeks to bring him back.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
About four weeks?
Donald Trump (15:50):
And you have the go ahead.
Elon Musk (15:51):
Yeah. And we're being extremely cautious. Yeah.
Donald Trump (15:54):
You now have the go ahead.
Elon Musk (15:55):
Yes. Well, thanks to you-
Donald Trump (15:56):
They didn't have the go ahead with Biden.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
What's that?
Donald Trump (15:58):
He was going to leave him in space. I think he was going to leave him in space. He considered it like-
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Well, it's like we were growing up lost in space.
Donald Trump (16:04):
He didn't want the publicity. Can you believe it?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Unbelievable. And so I want to echo something that the president said, and then ask an overarching question. So people get hit with Hurricane Helene, they have no communication with the outside world. You come to the rescue, you donated that, I believe?
Elon Musk (16:23):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You donated to the people in-
Donald Trump (16:26):
He saved a lot of lives in North Carolina. He saved a lot of lives.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
In California after the wildfires?
Donald Trump (16:31):
California, but I mean in North Carolina where they were really in trouble, they had no communication, people were dying.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Nothing.
Donald Trump (16:36):
They were dying of starvation. He saved a lot of lives in North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Okay, now you're going to rescue astronauts. And again, you do all of this, I would think liberals would love the fact that you have the biggest electric vehicle company in the world.
Elon Musk (16:56):
Yeah. I mean, I used to be adored by the left-
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Not anymore. He killed that, huh?
Elon Musk (17:01):
… less so these days.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
I really did a number.
Elon Musk (17:04):
I mean, this whole sort of like, they call it like Trump Derangement Syndrome, and you don't realize how real this is until… You can't reason with people. So I was at a friend's birthday party in LA, just a birthday dinner. And it was a nice quiet dinner, and everyone was behaving normally. And I happened to mention, this is before the election, like a month or two before, I happened to mention the president's name. And it was like they got shot with a dart in the jugular that contained methamphetamine and rabies, okay? And they're like, Why?" And I'm like, "What is wrong? Guys, you can't have a normal conversation? And it's like they become completely irrational.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
He has no idea, but if you're friends with him, you pay a price. I walk in a restaurant in New York and was like half the room, it's daggers, and they want you dead.
Elon Musk (17:51):
No, the eye-dagger level is insane. I mean, I had some invitation… So I got invited to basically a big sort of DEM event, but I didn't received the invitation the beginning of last year, and I still attended even after I'd endorsed President Trump. And I didn't realize how profoundly that would affect how I was received. I mean, I walk into the room, and I'm getting just the dirty looks from everyone. If looks could kill, I would've been dead several times over.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
But that was not [inaudible 00:18:33] before Trump-
Elon Musk (18:36):
You try dodge the ashes in the floor.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
[inaudible 00:18:37] before Trump that never happened right?
Elon Musk (18:38):
No.