← Bulwark Takes
Bulwark Takes
Elon's Worst Day: Baby Mamas, Spaceship Crashes, Stock Tanks, DOGE Embarrassments & More!
00:16:26
Loading summary
Transcript57 lines
- [00:00]
Tim Miller
Hey, guys, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark. I'm finally back with my partner, Sam Stein. When somebody has a horrible day, I want to discuss it with Sam Stein, particularly when it's somebody that is detestable, and that's Elon Musk. You know, I had a boss once. This was kind of a cringe thing. We made fun of them for this, but they called it when they had a bad day, you know, horrible. No, good day. They said that they were Alexandering. And I do think that it's possible that Elon is Alexandering today. Just a few facts about his day. Tesla Stock is down 5.6% just on the day. We'll have more on that. He was demoted. You and Andrew Egger did. Did a great video on that already. We can do that a little more. The SpaceX Starship had its second. Second failure in a row, leading to a spectacular shower of debris. This one was a. This one was a double negative for Elon because it. The debris kind of splashed back onto his other job, the faa, which is overseeing the faa. They had to halt some flights into several Florida airports.
- [01:05]
Sam Stein
So much debris.
- [01:06]
Tim Miller
Yeah, he's still in a legal battle with his fourth baby mama. And I guess this wasn't today, but as I mentioned, the cyber trucks were just being absolutely pelted with beads at Mardi Gras in a inglorious fashion. So I don't know which one of the. You've already talked about the demotion, so which one of the other ones do you want to start with there for Elon, or do you have any big picture thoughts on his day?
- [01:30]
Sam Stein
Well, no, I think you covered the big picture. It's. He doesn't had many bad days in the past, like 10 years. Like, these awards were just mad. Right? So, like this. This feels a little abnormal. There's also this big Wall Street Journal piece out tonight which kind of gets at the Tesla component of this. And it. I mean, to a degree, I guess this is predictable, but like, absolute falling off the cliff. Popular Democrats in terms of owning a Tesla, like, it used to be a source of pride toward in that car because it's so environmentally conscious compared to the other automobiles. And now I think there's one coordinator, like, it's like driving around in a big red MAGA hat. So people just don't want to be in a Tesla anymore. And I think that. I think that kind of gets to the pelting of the cyber trucks. I mean, they. Look, I'm not a big car person, so don't take my word for it, but I think the cyber trucks are ridiculous. Ridiculous. Like they look ridiculous, they're monstrosities, they're so big. And putting aside even the association with Elon, I don't think I would drive one of those. But now they become again, symbols of, you know, just MAGA politics. And that was Elon's choice. I mean, he made this decision he might benefit in the long run from it because he's got all these good government contracts that he could probably get his hands on. But in the interim, at least for today, it's been a financial punch in the nuts.
- [02:50]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Just a couple other things on, on Tesla then, if we're going to start there.
- [02:55]
Sam Stein
Sure.
- [02:55]
Tim Miller
Dave Portnoy of Barstool had a viral tweet going around where he was like, I own Tesla stock. Maybe Elon should get back, get back to work.
- [03:05]
Sam Stein
There's something to. Let's, let's pause for a second. There is something to us thinking about this in preparation. Like, is he not accountable to the shareholders of Tesla? Like, at some point aren't they going to be like, yo, your stock is like just falling off a cliff and like, you need to focus on this. Look, I looked it up like on January 29, 2021. So this is like right when Biden first week of Biden stock was selling at 264A share on January 17, 2025. This is last week to buy it in 426A share. So pretty substantial growth during the Biden. This today it's back down to 263 a share right where it was the first week of the Biden presidency. And I just think like, if you're a Tesla shareholder, if you're on the board or whatever and you have a stake in this company, like, I, I would be pissed. Like, I think porno is absolutely right here. It's like you're, you have fiduciary responsibilities to like make this company work and you're not helping. If anything, you're hurting.
- [04:04]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I mean, it's down just 29% this month. This month? This month down 29%. I mean, that is, that is opposite of the rocket to the moon, you know, like you're going to the center of the earth. So that's, that's negative. I, that's interesting though. I didn't know it said below.
- [04:19]
Sam Stein
I guess not just hit today where it was at the first week of Biden's term. So, you know, four years of fairly steady growth. I mean it was pluses Minuses. That was height of COVID obviously, went down a little bit, and then it went back up. And then there's all this tension with Biden over, you know, the fact that Biden didn't invite him to the EV summit and all this stuff. And of course, Biden was pushing for every car company to go into electric to level the playing field. But through it all, Tesla really progressed in terms of stock value, and then it's all been pissed away in the short period of time since Donald Trump's election.
- [04:53]
Tim Miller
Well, that's a shame. All right, and then to his other business that he's supposedly running, SpaceX. Boy, why don't we show the video there of the. Of the. Of the SpaceX? Was it a crash? What do you want to call it?
- [05:09]
Sam Stein
Yeah, it was an explosion. Yeah, let's do that. Oh, my. I just saw that starship blew up.
- [05:24]
Tim Miller
There it is.
- [05:29]
Sam Stein
Holy. That's a lot of debris. It's a lot of debris.
- [05:40]
Tim Miller
That's a lot of debris. I mean, it happened in Texas and it was halting flights going into Palm Beach.
- [05:47]
Sam Stein
It's, like, everywhere.
- [05:48]
Tim Miller
So, like, I mean, it's.
- [05:49]
Sam Stein
It's actually quite pretty to look at, but I'm sure Elon, it's like, oh, my God, again, this is like the second time in a month, right? I feel like we just experienced this.
- [06:00]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Explodes mid flight. Second time. If you want to know how serious this is. I pulled up at Elon Musk on X and his Last tweet was 3 hours ago. As we sit here right now, starship launch attempt. Now, exclamation point, space. I mean, Elon has gone three hours without tweeting. He has done two retweets. He's done two retweets. Yeah, but, I mean, for Elon, and this is a man. Have you ever seen. That's funny.
- [06:31]
Sam Stein
No shit's serious.
- [06:32]
Tim Miller
Yeah, about, like, how many of the hours of the day that he tweets? I mean, he's tweeting basically everything except for, like, 5 to 7am so that's not true.
- [06:44]
Sam Stein
I woke up from Morning Joe today and, like, my four youth was just, like, unbelievable. Like, Elon tweets. It was unbelievable. But, yeah, he's gone quite conspicuously silent.
- [06:56]
Tim Miller
On the SpaceX thing, so that's a bad sign. Um, and then I haven't had a chance to watch your. Watch your Edgar video. But the. The. I mean, the demotion, whatever you want to call it, like, just this notion that, like, that he has to be reigned in, that Trump is saying things like, use a scalpel. I don't know if I believe how much of this actually is going to happen. Like, he's still going to be able to run roughshod around the government, but, like, there have been now a series of things where they've had to pull back, you know. Right.
- [07:27]
Sam Stein
So this is what Edgar wrote about and what we were talking about, which is, and I'm with you, like, let's just, I want to, like, be upfront and transparent. I think, I think this is more show than anything. And just Stein over. The Washington Post had an interesting observation about, too, which is like, he's got his people in all these agencies, he's got access to all his data, and they've already foreshadowed that they're going to actually do bigger, more dramatic moves in the spring when it comes to government reduction. So I don't particularly think this is the end of dogecoin. But that being said, this is the first time that Trump has really publicly kind of pushed back against Doge or called into question how much power should have. And then on top of that, I mean, every day, multiple times a day, there's some sort of embarrassing headline about how JV the operations are, how little they know and how, how badly they're screwing things up. Agencies that have to be rehired, personnel that are critical that would let go, lawsuits that expose how stupidly they organized everything. Revelations of the, the staffers having, like, weird ties to, like, fringing groups and stuff like that.
- [08:37]
Tim Miller
The cuts that they posted having to be, like, taken down because they weren't real.
- [08:42]
Sam Stein
Yeah.
- [08:42]
Tim Miller
It's like they exposed the CIA black site today. There's so much crazy shit happening. We didn't even get to that on the YouTube page that they accidentally exposed, exposed to CIA our buildings viral tweet.
- [08:54]
Sam Stein
But I'm not, I haven't seen the accompanying articles. I've been hesitant about it.
- [08:57]
Tim Miller
Okay, we're not sure that's true.
- [08:59]
Sam Stein
Well, I, I, the fact that we think it might be true, I think is concerning. It. It fits a pattern, which is, I mean, that the, the story with the sites is that they posted like, something like 430 government buildings that they, that they thought would be good to sell. And among them, among them were like, literally the Department, like, oh, let's just sell the Department of Justice.
- [09:25]
Tim Miller
What the fuck Department of Energy for anybody is. If you looked at the Department of Energy building, it is like this Soviet honeycomb bullshit.
- [09:33]
Sam Stein
Yeah.
- [09:34]
Tim Miller
Like, who is going to buy that?
- [09:36]
Sam Stein
I thought we should Buy it. I honestly thought we.
- [09:38]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark, move into the Department of Energy.
- [09:40]
Sam Stein
Yeah. Like, create a little Venmo fund that people can contribute to. And, like, we'll just move into hud. It's ours. Like, who's gonna buy it? But the fact that they did this at the same time that they're doing this, everyone has to return to work policy. Now, that might just be malicious on their part, and they want people to, like, work in the halls and the stairwells. But it also is just. It's so hackneyed, it's so poorly executed. And I. I just wish. I know people are like, well, he's a genius, and this is exactly what he did at Twitter. And, like, this is just a corporate takeover strategy. And it's like, yeah, but that didn't work, right? Like, Twitter lost severe amounts of value. The company had glitches all the time. The product hasn't been made better, it's just been made, like, more dumpster fire. Ish. And we kind of like that, I guess.
- [10:28]
Tim Miller
Community Notes is good.
- [10:29]
Sam Stein
You like me, that's fine. He made a nice little part. But beyond that, it's like, just because he had a template and he's adopting the same exact template for government, I don't think that makes him a genius. It just means he has a template that he can't, you know, improvise off of or do things differently around. And so, to me, this just is. It exposes a lack of creativity or thoughtfulness. And I think, you know, all these headlines, it may not diminish him in Trump's size all that much, but it's enough to cause embarrassment that Trump feels the need to, like, at least go public and say, you know, we're reining.
- [11:03]
Tim Miller
Him in a little bit, and eventually, I don't know, look, maybe I'll be right. Maybe I'll be wrong. To me, this looks just like an unbelievable shit show that is going completely consume the government, but. I know. But to a point where, like, the problems become so real that they're, like, they have to be addressed, like, at this point. And at that point, Trump starts looking around and he's like, I need somebody to blame for this.
- [11:29]
Sam Stein
Well, yeah, and that's the thing. I think that's the big point that people are missing, which is we're only two months in. Not even. No, we're like a month and a half in. Yeah. Jesus Christ. I mean, the problems that we've. That have been created by Doge are real, but they're not, like, that comprehensive Right. Like, yes, firing, like, the. The nuclear safety crew is really bad, but what would have really been bad is if, like, you fired the crew and then, like, we had a real problem at Los Alamos. Right. Like, that's really bad. Firing the food inspectors is bad, especially during bird flu. But, like, what if we have, like, a really severe salmonella outbreak? I mean, the social. It goes across the board. At some point, the real world actually does intervene in a more severe way than it has to this point so far. And that's when things get really rocky. I mean, we. Again, we are just a month and a half.
- [12:20]
Tim Miller
Speaking of the real world intervening, I just. I think that there's some signs that some balls are being dropped for Elon. You know what gave it away? Well, in addition to the spectacular shower of debris over at SpaceX and Tesla stock dropping and, like, Doge being a complete clusterfuck, we did. We got together, the two of us, to discuss Ashley Sinclair, his fourth baby mama. But I don't think we've discussed together what happened a couple days ago with Grimes, the third baby mama. Grimes, who I love and is, and I will. I will broach no criticism of her. I know some people aren't for it. I will always be for Grimes. She was tweeting about Adam begging to answer. Begging him to answer his phone because they have a sick kid, and she needed him to get on the line to deal with something.
- [13:08]
Sam Stein
Right.
- [13:09]
Tim Miller
This is somebody that is in way over his head. Like, if you have a baby mama that is posting publicly, please call me. Your child is sick. And meanwhile, you are, like, manically tweeting, and the two companies you run. You run are, like, dealing with major crises. I. I just. It seems like he, like, really does not have his handle on things, I guess.
- [13:37]
Sam Stein
Well, it's not just one baby mama tweeting.
- [13:39]
Tim Miller
I'm.
- [13:39]
Sam Stein
It's two baby mamas. And then on top of that, like, you have all these problems around the government, and then your rocket exploded for the second time, and your companies are, like, losing, like, billions upon billions of value. That's bad. It's not good.
- [13:53]
Tim Miller
If you were the EVP of the rocket company and you just had your second explosion, you're kind of like, I need the CEO around the clock. I've done crisis communications for companies back in the day when I was a PR man, and it's like, when there's a real crisis of the company, like, you need the CEO to be kind of around all the time.
- [14:11]
Sam Stein
You would think so. You would think so. But I mean, I just don't understand. Again, we talked about this in the first video, but, like, where does he have the time to do any of this? I mean, it's. It's so severe. There's so much going on. He's so in demand and he's, you know, obviously he's focused so much on the government. And I, you know, I don't want to get too much into the psychoanalytical stuff, but, like, I do think, frankly that, you know, there's something wrong when you have two children, two mothers of your children begging you to, like, return cause, and you're just not doing it. And I think you need to probably reconsider where your priorities are. And, you know, who knows what is going on privately that we don't know about. But to me, that's like a real red flag. And, yeah, of course, if your rocket ship explodes, you should absolutely stop what you're doing and focus on doing that again. It gets back to, like, accountability. He doesn't really have any. He just goes about and does his business. He, you know, he really harms people in ways that I think people don't appreciate. Like the amount of tip line stuff we get from people who've lost their jobs and whose spouses have lost their jobs, their lives have been ruined. But for him, it's like nothing. And so, you know, eventually you think this stuff catches up, but in the. In the. In the moment, you're sort of wondering, like, is there something that he wants to. Like, will there be ever a time where he feels like he needs to recalibrate, or is he just, like, flying by the seat of his pants at all hours on ketamine, Basically.
- [15:37]
Tim Miller
Probably the latter.
- [15:38]
Sam Stein
Probably the latter.
- [15:39]
Tim Miller
Federal government, folks. The bulwark.com tips. If you're dealing with anything, the book.com tips you do. Anything you want to share with us as far as federal government job displacement or crazy happening. If you see Elon shows up or Big Ball shows up. Yeah. Just get thepoolwork.com tips. Tesla shareholders, good luck.
- [15:59]
Sam Stein
Please send us tips too.
- [16:02]
Tim Miller
We want to do it. Yeah. You let us know if you're having any concerns about the fiduciary responsibility and baby mamas. You can send us tips as well. All right, Sam Stein, that we don't.
- [16:13]
Sam Stein
Know you yet and you feel compelled to tweet of him. Just send us a tip instead.
- [16:17]
Tim Miller
Yeah, we'll be seeing you soon. Thanks, Sam. Thanks for doing this.
- [16:20]
Sam Stein
Thanks, Tim. Glad to have you back, bud.
- [16:22]
Tim Miller
Bye.