← On with Kara Swisher
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- [00:02]
Kara Swisher
It's on.
- [00:13]
Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. President Donald Trump and first buddy Elon Musk's alliance imploded last week and although cooler heads have prevailed for now, the fallout from their split will reverberate through D.C. and Silicon Valley for years to come. Come as the dust settles, I wanted to assess why it happened and what comes next. So I brought together four very sharp minds to help us make sense of it all. Henry Blodgett, Kirsten Grein, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Rick Wilson. Henry Blodgett is the co founder and former CEO and Editor in Chief of Business Insider. Before that he was a tech analyst on Wall street and you can find his writing on Substack at Regenerator. Kirsten Grine is an investigative business reporter at the New York Times and author of two books and winner of more than a dozen awards. Her recent reporting on Elon Musk's recreational drug use has been revelatory and impactful. Kristen Soltis Anderson is a pollster, contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, author and co founder of Echelon Insights. We were both co panelists on the Chris Wallace show on CNN and she has always had great incisive data driven analysis. Rick Wilson is a former Republican, political strategist, ad maker and political commentator. He's the co founder of the Lincoln Project and you can find him on Substack or listen to his podcast the Enemies List. Now that the news cycle has moved on from this spat, it's important to take a moment to analyze what Trump and Musk's falling out reveals about the gop, the electorate, the blurred lines between tech and politics, and the two men themselves.
- [01:49]
Kirsten Grein
So stick around.
- [02:03]
Kara Swisher
Hey everyone, quick update. We taped this episode on Tuesday morning before Elon Musk tweeted quote I regress some of my posts about President at.
- [02:12]
Kirsten Grein
Real Donald Trump last week.
- [02:14]
Kara Swisher
They went too far. You think Elon so maybe a truce, who knows.
- [02:19]
Kirsten Grein
But even before Musk walked it back.
- [02:21]
Kara Swisher
It was clear he was headed in that direction and everything in this conversation still holds. This is a must. Listen.
- [02:32]
Kirsten Grein
Hi everyone, I have a favor to ask you. The on with Kara Swisher team is planning for the future of the show and we want our listeners to be part of the conversation. Visit voxmedia.comsurvey to give us your feedback.
- [02:44]
Kara Swisher
Thanks and enjoy the show.
- [02:50]
Kirsten Grein
It is Henry, Kirsten, Kristen and Rick. Thanks for coming on On. For anyone who's been living Under a rock. Last week, the R man in the world and the most powerful man in the world got into a social media spat. Elon has already deleted some of his most egregious tweets, including an allegation that President Trump was on the Epstein list. And then Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles without a request from Governor Newsom, who gave Elon an excuse to begin embracing the president. President Trump again on Twitter, which he's doing effusively. Who's more relieved with the news that California is giving them a chance to change the media narrative, Trump or Elon? Let's start with you, Kirsten. Since you did this story sort of focused in on some of his problems that had gotten, obviously, a lot of attention, a lot of his drug problems. Do you perceive that it was just sort of a bender from Elon that this happened or something more significant?
- [03:45]
Rick Wilson
I think it was a lot of things that came together at once, basically. And, you know, it had a lot to do with this big, beautiful bill that Elon didn't like, but it also had to do with Jared Isaacman, the NASA chief that he pulled. Right. And then, I think, you know, they probably were holding it in check for a long time. They have very similar personalities, and I personally was surprised how long they lasted together. So as. As has been documented by my colleagues in the Post and other newspapers, you know, like, it was a buildup of things over time that just kind of exploded, I think.
- [04:26]
Kirsten Grein
Right. Rick, your assessment of who's more relieved about the news in California?
- [04:31]
Henry Blodgett
I think that Elon is falling into the classic Trump trap, where someone gets thrown off the cliff by Donald Trump and they'll get signals like, yeah, that's just how he is. Let's all be friends again. And he will keep touching the hot stove a couple more times before he realizes that you never really, really get back in with Trump unless you are going to completely break yourself and completely humiliate yourself, you know, eg, Marco Rubio and a handful of others. But I think that the truce is a delicate creature right now because we will see Trump increasingly pressuring Congress in the next couple of weeks to pass this bill. It's going to be his big centerpiece. This is one domestic piece of legislation that they believe will have a meaningful impact, and I think he's under a lot of pressure to get that done. I think that Elon's act alone has cracked a little bit of that solidity, even in the House. Trump would probably like to change the subject to immigration, California, you know, illegal alien roundups, things like that. Those are visuals and thematics that Trump has always been strong on with the base, and that consolidates the base around Trump in a way that Elon was trying to consolidate. But I don't think it worked as well for Elon as he thought it might. You know, being the responsible adult in the room is not a role Elon plays well.
- [05:52]
Kirsten Grein
Right, right, right.
- [05:53]
Kara Swisher
Henry echoing Kirsten I think a lot of us were surprised that it lasted so long, but it blew up in spectacular fashion. I think Trump actually characterized it correctly, which is, I think Elon went temporarily insane when he started going after him personally. Because if there's one thing we see again and again with President Trump, he is very consistent. If you go after him, he's coming after you. And I think a lot of folks who've been watching here have sort of underestimated the damage that President Trump and the administration can do to Elon Musk. And the first thing I thought of was what happened in Russia with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, where it looked like a fair fight. Hey, this is going to be great. And it was not fair or close at all. It was over almost instantly. And there are, thanks to Kirsten's reporting and others, there are some obvious things that if you were going to assign your Justice Department to go after Elon Musk, you would start looking into immediately. And for the CEO of a public company, even Tesla, where Tesla's board has been incredibly permissive with Elon Musk relative to any other CEO, if he were start to be investigated for some of the things that it seems like he could be, they would have to remove him from the company, and that would be the end of Tesla's stock right away. So there's just immense damage that can be done here. So I think either Elon sobered up or realized what he was doing, or somebody persuasive got to him and said, listen, I know how angry you are, but you have got to stop this. This is just suicide.
- [07:22]
Kirsten Grein
All right, Kristen, what about from the polling point of view and the attitudes toward him because Elon had had negatives.
- [07:28]
Kara Swisher
Correct.
- [07:29]
Kirsten Grein
Higher than Trump had had.
- [07:31]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
Yeah. So going back to the inauguration, Donald Trump and Elon Musk's sort of overall brand image was actually fairly similar, but under the hood, it looked very different among Republicans. Donald Trump has always been more popular with Republicans. We actually, in our data, we segment Republicans by whether they think of themselves as Trump supporters first and foremost or as Republicans first and fore. And even when you look at it that way, both of those groups like Donald Trump more than they have liked.
- [08:00]
Kara Swisher
Elon Musk since the beginning.
- [08:01]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
Since the beginning, he's been viewed as sort of a curiosity, like, okay, well, welcome to the party. But you know, what is it that really brings you here? And I think the blow up was so interesting because to me, I think I described it as like the reheated leftovers of Tea Party fights of old, where, you know, a decade ago you had a segment of the Republican Party that would fight against the establishment and say you are not doing enough to cut spending. You are not doing enough to hold the growth of the administrative state in check. It is only us who we are here, the outsiders representing the true view of true conservatives who want to hold all this in check. Interestingly, Donald Trump comes onto the scene in the Republican primary and doesn't really even try to pretend to be Mr. Limited Government and wins, which I think was an interesting wake up call for the actual appetite for limited government within the party. You fast forward to now and the argument that you see Elon Musk trying to put forward on Twitter about the big beautiful bill and why he hates it really do sound like echoes of Freedom Caucus circa 2013, which that side didn't ultimately win. You know, Donald Trump wound up winning not the quote, unquote, kind of Ted Cruz section of the Tea Party. The other thing to remember is that that dynamic, to the extent that it was politically viable for the tea party 10 years ago, was because they were the outsiders against an establishment of, you know, the John Boehners of world, et cetera. Do Republicans think of Donald Trump as the establishment? I would argue that he very much is. He is the literal President of the United States. He's the unquestioned leader of the Republican Party, but he still has a little bit of that outsider iness. And so rather than it being an outsider versus establishment dynamic that I think Elon wanted, I don't know if you can out outsider Donald Trump.
- [09:52]
Kirsten Grein
No, not at all. But let me follow up on that. There are four things that set him off. According to Axios, the Trump tax bill that got rid of the electric vehicle tax credit. The White House didn't extend his role as a special government employee, passed the 130 days allowed by law. The FAA declined to use Starlink for air traffic control, and Trump withdrew Jared Isaacman, which we referred to before as his nominee for the NASA administrator. Rick, does that capture the full story from your perspective?
- [10:18]
Henry Blodgett
I don't think so because look, everything in A White House is intimately personal and it's intimately competitive. These are people who are always shuffling and jockeying and stabbing one another in the back to become closer to the president. And this is in every administration, not just Trump, but particular, particularly so in Trump. And I think other people rose in credibility and power with Trump. Scott Besant in particular, he and Elon seemed to have had a real beef. And so I think that Elon was worried on one hand that Doge had been a sort of a, you know, had landed with like a wet plop instead of a big explosion. It was not trillions of dollars of savings. He did not reveal vast government fraud, so it looked like he had oversold. And that gave people who do not like Elon, particularly Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, who does not like and has never wanted Elon around Trump. You know, she works very much in the shadows behind the scenes and was putting as many knives in him as she could. And I think Elon recognized he was in a more tenuous position with Trump, you know, in terms of the one thing he was assigned to do, which was go do Doge, you know, produce all these savings, reveal the deep state and reveal the fraud of government, and he just didn't do it.
- [11:30]
Kirsten Grein
Kristen, could he peel off any soft Trump supporters or younger men who liked him? Does he have a constituency in the Republican Party?
- [11:37]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
I think to the extent that there's gonna be anybody who sort of follows Elon, I don't think that, at least in terms of elected Republicans, you're likely to see many of them follow him. The big, beautiful bill faces a number of hurdles before it gets across the finish line. And I definitely think Elon Musk giving voice to the same concerns that folks like a Rand Paul have been voicing for a long time doesn't make it easier for the bill to get passed. But I do think that if you force these elected Republicans to say, you have to choose, Are you with Elon Musk? Are you with Donald Trump? I think 100% of them will pick Donald Trump in that fight these days.
- [12:17]
Kirsten Grein
Yeah.
- [12:18]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
In terms of actual voters, I still think that the preference among Republican voters is more for things like tax cuts than it is for actual deficit reduction. And so to the extent that this big blow up is coming because Elon Musk is saying, you're not doing enough about cutting spending, you're not doing enough about the deficit, come follow me. I'm the one that's right on this. We've asked in surveys where we've pressed voters, you've you. You get to pick one of the three. You get to rank them. Would you rather have lower taxes? Would you rather have a lower deficit, or would you rather protect programs you care about from cuts? And for Republicans, when you force them to choose, they choose lower taxes, not lower deficits. And so that's why I think if anybody is viewed as, oh, you're standing in the way of the big, beautiful bill, I just, I don't think that's politically tenable for elected Republicans. And I don't suspect there's a huge constituency out there in the Republican voter base for what Elon Musk is promoting. It may give more voice to some of those who already hate this big, beautiful bill and are looking to cause trouble. But I don't know if, in the end of the day, it's actually gonna change anybody's vote on it or change the Republican coalition's makeup.
- [13:32]
Kirsten Grein
Right. So, Henry, how is Silicon Valley thinking about their collective decision to embrace Trump these days? He got rid of Biden's AI safeguards. He embraced crypto. There will be no regulation. Trump's tariffs are causing them headaches. Obviously, this immigration crackdown is a threat to the tech talent pipeline. And as Elon pointed out, Trump's tax bill balloon the deficit. Did Elon Tweet what tech CEOs are saying in private, or are they too afraid to say out loud what are the implications of this fight for them?
- [14:01]
Kara Swisher
I think a lot of the tech support for Trump was aligned with Elon, and I do think it's the people that I'm talking to have gotten quieter, put it that way, about what's happening. And there was tremendous enthusiasm about Doge Fair public predictions, the trillion dollars or $2 trillion that Elon's going to cut treated as a done deal. And we are, in fact, headed incredibly rapidly in the other direction. There seems to be no focus on that. So I think that is one area. I don't think it's a big group of voters, but I think it is a powerful constituency that is probably worried that Elon was the real glue there. But as we just talked about, I think that ultimately, President Trump's still the alpha here, and I think everyone will stay aligned with him. But that's the other thing that I think Elon realized here, is that he had completely alienated his strongest base, which was the environmentalists on the left who loved Tesla and everything else, enraged them, and didn't build enough of a constituency on the Republican side to come out of this with a strong constituency.
- [15:11]
Kirsten Grein
Rick how do you look at this where tech? Because they really moved in hard.
- [15:16]
Henry Blodgett
Yeah. I mean, you mentioned this the other day. The agonies of the all in podcast boys and the David Sacks of the world.
- [15:24]
Kirsten Grein
Right.
- [15:24]
Henry Blodgett
They're in a real weird no man's land now. These were all people who wanted eventually to be in on the SpaceX IPO and all these other things that were driving this alliance and allegiance to Elon in the Valley. I think Trump has harmed himself with the Valley people because they thought it's all transactional. But it's not just transactional. With Trump, you're in a relationship of fealty, like he's a king. And they're not accustomed to that world. But I think there is a real division now. I think there are a lot of people who were brought around into the process by Elon, and they're looking at Jared Isaacman and saying, oh, this could be me next. You know, and you've seen Elon friends and frenemies and enemies all having sort of similar perspectives on, you know, how the mighty have fallen. I don't think he's gonna have a lasting footprint of people in the government. I predict most of these Doge kids will be out of there in days, not weeks. I don't think they're gonna let an army of Elon sleeper agents stay behind inside the government.
- [16:23]
Kirsten Grein
So, Kirsten, you've reported essentially on Elon's drug use. To what extent do you think the drugs are aff him and his status in the Trump administration? How important was that? And obviously, just to be fair, he's denied all this stuff. I say I'm Team Kirsten on this one because so many people have talked to me about it also. So talk a little bit about the repercussions of your reporting and then to what extent did it affect what's happened here?
- [16:51]
Rick Wilson
Sure. So, as you said, Kara, I've kind of been on this drug beat a little bit now. So my former Wall Street Journal colleagues and I extensively about his drug use last year. Um, more recently, only about a week ago, it seems much longer. What we, my colleague Megan Tuohy and I reported at the Times was that his drug use was much more intense than he had said, especially his Ketamine use. And it has been causing side effects such as bladder issues. In addition, he's been carrying around a pillbox with drugs that have the marking of Adderall. And all of this to say it's sort of the volume and mixing of the drug. And specifically in this time period, while he was on the campaign trail, so not necessarily while he was in the White House. So of course, though, our big question was what was happening once he was in the White House. And we of course posed this ahead of time to Musk, to SpaceX, because we also learned through this reporting that he was getting advanced warnings for drug tests at SpaceX. You know, as a federal contractor, SpaceX has to maintain a drug free workplace. And we didn't get a response from the White House on this or anything. And so after the fact, it's been kind of interesting to see how much this drug use may or may not have played into what has happened. At first, you know, Elon was, was really upset to be asked about it and kind of pushed off a question at the Oval Office press conference we've spoken about. Then he denied it, which is his normal thing to, to deny everything on X. But he contradicted himself. Last year he told Don Lemon in an interview, you know, he was taking a small amount of ketamine every couple weeks. Recently. Now he said he hasn't done anything in years. Meanwhile, Trump, you know, at first didn't really say anything and now recently has said, I don't know, you know, I hope he hasn't been doing drugs.
- [19:02]
Kirsten Grein
Yeah. What he said is, Let me just in private, apparently he called Elon a big time drug addict. Apparently, yes. But in public, he said on Monday, I really don't know. I don't think so. I hope not. When asked if Musk had drugs in the White House, wasn't exactly a denial. It was sort of a, I don't know, I didn't see him do it kind of thing, but it wasn't, he didn't do it, which Elon was putting out as if he supported Elon, which he didn't. Very explicitly, actually.
- [19:30]
Rick Wilson
Right. And here, here's the other thing I would just point out about this whole thing and why this reporting is so incredibly hard. It is not like, you know, Elon is doing this very much privately. This is a private matter. It's not like, especially in recent years, he is out in public, you know, doing something like this. And so it would have been surprising to me if Trump had actually witnessed anything like this. That would have been extremely surprising.
- [20:00]
Kirsten Grein
Henry, are there any repercussions from a business point of view? It was kind of buried in there that he had gotten advanced knowledge of his drug testing, which I was sort of flabbergasted at. Why has there been no pushback by the companies? Henry?
- [20:13]
Kara Swisher
I think that there is I mean, this is so easy to turn against him. It's such an obvious thing. I mean, Trump actually speaks with a lot of authority here. The whole fentanyl thing and his own family. This is something that he could get actually very angry about and turn against Elon so fast. But Elon is so important to his companies. The value of Tesla, if you really try to break it down, a huge percentage of that value is. Is Elon Musk, if he leaves, it is going to crater. And at this point, I think that's in part why you're seeing these public denials. It's not true. He can't do what he probably wants to do, which is, yeah, hey, I take drugs. Some people take drugs. Sometimes it's okay, not a big deal. Can't say that he has to deny it, otherwise the companies will be forced to do something. And, yes, that is quite a detail that he got tipped off in advance about drug tests, if that is in fact.
- [21:04]
Kirsten Grein
Yeah, but in that regard, does that hold as Tesla continues to decline, the business continues to decline. There any point where this board will act, like an actual board of directors, or just not with any of his companies?
- [21:16]
Kara Swisher
No, I think we started to see it, I think that about a month ago, just before Elon started to phase himself out or was phased out of the government and sort of said, yes, I will refocus, there was a story in the Wall Street Journal saying the board is actually going to open a search for a new CEO.
- [21:34]
Kirsten Grein
Yeah. Which they denied again, but.
- [21:36]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, that's right. Right. But I think that was the board putting Elon on notice, basically saying, we have to act. You're putting us in a position where we're all going to lose our reputations for not lost. So I do think if. Yes, but look at what the stock has done since. Even though the car business has been destroyed by Elon's involvement here and what's happened with his reputation, the stock has recovered. It's extraordinary. And it's all about the fact that Elon is back and they're going to be robo taxis and AI and robots and everything else. This amazing future that he is so gifted at selling and people are so excited about that. So Tesla is doing extraordinarily well from a stock perspective, but all that would vaporize if Trump and the Justice Department in particular, started to suddenly investigate him. For example, the use of illegal drugs.
- [22:30]
We'll be back in a minute.
- [22:44]
Kirsten Grein
We're taping this on Tuesday morning, and so far, the Trump must cease fire is holding. We don't know if it's temporary or permanent. Rick, you're on the record saying that Trump has more to lose in this fight. Henry, you said that Trump would have beaten Elon if the feud continued, although Trump reportedly told people around him, including J.D. vance, not to pour gasoline on the fire. What about with voters? Is it a topic that resonates with voters, do you think?
- [23:05]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
Think?
- [23:06]
Henry Blodgett
I think the thing that we've underscored here is that Elon has full control over one of the two major normative forces in the Republican Party today. He controls Twitter. The other is Fox News, which, you know, we will put that aside for the moment. And he has shown, Elon has shown he's willing to boost his own messaging on Twitter and to suppress other people's messaging. Deboosting is an ugly word. So it's just a bad, bad, bad English. But I think Elon has more power here than even maybe he knows. There is a real function in American politics today, in the elite class of politics today, of what's happening on Twitter in the MAGA world in particular, really drives a lot of their decisions, a lot of their behaviors. I think Elon could suppress that. He could switch that or turn it down and stop boosting all the crazies and the people, you know, the Laura Loomers, the Charlie Kirks of the world depend on that ecosystem to push Trump's message, to push Trump's agenda. Trump's own people depend on it. You know, truth social is a sideshow. It's the dollar store of social media platforms. There's no there there. But if Elon chose behind the scenes, doesn't even have to say anything about it, doesn't have to make a public deal about it. It just to turn down the engagement on Trump's messaging on the big beautiful bill or to elevate more content, concerned about the deficit, the debt, the stinking things inside the big beautiful bill.
- [24:34]
Kirsten Grein
Right. The tariffs, whatever he wants.
- [24:36]
Henry Blodgett
He has a lot of power here that I'm not sure he has the clarity of mind to use, but it's certainly there if he does, right?
- [24:44]
Kirsten Grein
Henry, now you said that Trump has the upper hand.
- [24:47]
Kara Swisher
I think Elon does have a lot of power. I think that's true. And Twitter is certainly one piece of it. But I just, the Justice Department, FBI here, they're knockout punch. And if he were starting to use Twitter in a way that the Trump administration, Trump personally felt was actually intended to hurt, he would act immediately. And I don't know from the outside, I'm Not a Donald Trump expert, but from what I'm observing, I think that he would relish the opportunity to subtly show everybody, look, this is what happens when you cross me. And one of the things very striking to me about the way the breakup happened was it was not Trump was actually being quite quiet. It was Elon who suddenly went out and as Trump said, went crazy and went after him. And even for a day or two, it seemed like Trump was almost letting it roll off of him, which he almost never does. He's quick to throw the punch. And it was like over the weekend. And from my perspective, you could see Trump saying, what is going on here? I mean, this guy crazy? You gotta be kidding me. And that's when he started to say there are gonna be some serious consequences. And again, Trump is so ready to use the Justice Department in a situation like this, and there's such an easy route to use it and that you get, what does that involve? Could it involve seizing assets like SpaceX? Could it involve seizing Twitter or doing something with Tesla that cripples the company? The way this admin acts is do it get sued, and then three years later it'll be sorted out in the courts. And so I don't think it's a question of whether they actually have the legal authority to do these things. And so to me, that is just such a huge bazooka against a business. If I were Elon, I would sit up and say, okay, keep quiet.
- [26:35]
Kirsten Grein
So in that regard, Kristen, Trump did threaten very serious consequences if Elon donated money. The Democrats, for example. Apparently free speech has its limits. If Trump followed through on his threats and went after Lane, how would Republican voters react? Cuz he's also anti tariff too. He has a lot of things that he believes in. It would look like pretty blatant authoritarianism. The President would go out using the federal government after explicitly threatening to do that. Is that a bridge too far or are they just fine with that?
- [27:05]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
Yeah, I think it would be much smarter of Trump to try to say, I'm the one trying to be the peacemaker here. Elon Musk, he's the one that has had this heel turn. But I'm still the face to use in wrestling parlance. And I think there are ways that he can try to make Elon seem small and influential with, and even he's making these threats. But I do think that it would be a mistake for him to actually try to turn the power of the administrative state against Elon Musk personally in.
- [27:41]
Kirsten Grein
A very big way, because it would.
- [27:43]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
Look petty or I think because you still have. Even though Elon Musk is not as popular among Republicans as Trump is, he has still become quite popular over the last couple of months. I think that's why you see in the online conversation the folks of the sort of tech right or you know, who have been so pro elon saying, we want this to end peacefully, please everybody turn down the temperature. I think they realize that there is a way for this to be a.
- [28:13]
Kirsten Grein
Lose, lose situation for everyone in that regard. So, Kirsten, Elon has, though, flirted with a third that he could attack again on the deficit. He could attack on tariffs. He's anti tariff. He called Peter Navarro a moron publicly when he was still in the administration.
- [28:28]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
Yes.
- [28:29]
Kirsten Grein
Also accurate, but often Elon's accurate about these things. So he flirted with starting a third party on Twitter. He did a poll about it during the week of crazy. He obviously has money to do it if he decided to follow through. Last summer, Kirsten reported how Elon decided to throw his money and celebrity behind Trump. Explain the process and whether you think you can imagine him doing that. What was that for? Was it just a late night kind.
- [28:54]
Rick Wilson
Of rumination or this creating of the political party? Yeah, I mean, I feel like he's already a little bit backed down from that. I saw on X, one of his users was sort of like, oh, what's gonna happen is, you know, this will just lead to the Democrats getting more votes or something like that. And he was, he sort of did his like smiling emoji. So.
- [29:17]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [29:18]
Rick Wilson
I sort of think, of course, I don't know for sure that he, this was another one of his throwing this out there while he's mad at Trump. But listen, I was, I am, I continue to be very surprised by this trajectory and the fact that he even went in with Trump to begin with. So will he start his own political party? I mean, maybe, you know, I could see him going down that road and then backing off. You never know what he's going to do next. But I think one thing we haven't really talked about here, where Elon is really, really at risk is with his federal contracts at SpaceX. And that was actually the part in the argument where I gasped when Trump threatened his federal contracts. SpaceX has 100 across 17 federal agencies, billions of contracts. But more importantly, SpaceX is holding Elon's real goal in life, which is to colonize Mars. Right. And we can debate whether that's actually going to happen. But he, you know, this is what he has worked his whole career towards. So if, if Trump touched any of that, started really pulling back on those contracts, especially with NASA, I mean, that would, that would be a really big deal.
- [30:38]
Kirsten Grein
Henry, first, what would happen in that regard?
- [30:41]
Kara Swisher
No, I was going to say I think that's a terrific call point, which is that, that. And that may be a much more palatable way of saying, dude, get in line, because this is going to happen. And I think something that everybody would understand. So it wouldn't surprise me if Elon Musk and actually other Silicon Valley folks who have, I think really enjoyed the idea of going to Washington and fixing the government. Hey, that sounds like a big fun thing to do. It's disruption. We're going to make the world better. Learning the very hard way that it is just different. And Elon Musk has been put through a meat grinder here often of his own doing. I wouldn't surprise me if he actually got interested in business again. He's done extraordinary things there with all of the different companies that he's created and somehow run and yes, space. And there's so many things to do that he can be interested in. So wooden shop me. If he sort of said, I'm going to focus on my thing and did everything else behind the scenes from now on, which is certainly the way Peter Thiel and others in the valley have.
- [31:47]
Kirsten Grein
Done, which is what he was supposed to do on the gold key. Giving. Right. Correct, Rick. He was supposed to sort of fade out.
- [31:52]
Henry Blodgett
He was supposed to discreetly walk out the door and behave nicely. I do want to say one thing about threatening the SpaceX contracts. That would be a real threat if there was a substitute for the orbital lift that SpaceX provides. And there is nothing else. ULA doesn't have it. Boeing can't do it. The Chinese, Jeff Bezos doesn't have it. There is no other company that provides that kind of orbital lift and reach. And Starlink for all that. It's an Elon product, is a brilliant product. It's deeply embedded across all sorts of government agencies, especially the military. If you've just said, tomorrow, tomorrow I'm going to ban using the Falcon rocket. We would not put anything into space. NASA, the Defense Department, nobody. And it would be. There would be a. There'd be. There'd be a very, very bad day at the Pentagon if that happened. It would be.
- [32:45]
Rick Wilson
And Elon knows that too, right?
- [32:47]
Henry Blodgett
Yes, he does.
- [32:47]
Rick Wilson
He of course, knows. He's holding the cards for sure.
- [32:50]
Kara Swisher
And he did.
- [32:51]
Kirsten Grein
Well, that's why he threatened the Dragon and then took it back. Right, of course, because he just was putting it out there. Kristen, this tax bill, did Elon's tweet calling it a disgusting abom do harm to it? Does it have continued? Which is what set off this whole commotion. They're using the protests in la, for example, to argue they need to pass the bill quickly.
- [33:12]
Kara Swisher
Has this made it easier or harder.
- [33:13]
Kirsten Grein
To get this done? And if it does have a problem, would this be the reason for it?
- [33:19]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
One of the big problems that's facing this bill is that the Republican coalition has a lot of different pieces to it that all want a lot of very different things. So you have some people who are upset about the bill because they're worried that cuts to Medicaid are gonna hurt funding for the rural hospitals in their district. You have other people who are upset about it because they represent blue states and the state and local tax deduction may not be big enough. And there are other people that are upset about it because they think it spends too much on stuff it shouldn't spend too much on. And then there are other people that are upset about it because they think it doesn't do enough on the deficit and so on and so forth. And so congressional leadership on the Republican side has an enormous problem trying to get this through anyways. And they've set themselves this deadline if we're going to try to get it through quickly. If, if anything, I almost think that this blowup just sort of puts the fire under them. Like, you just need to get this done because the longer this lingers and the longer this sits out there and marinates, the more opportunity for somebody like an Elon Musk to cause trouble, to sort of rally people against it. Like right now, there is not actually a ton of grassroots Republican opposition to this bill because for the most part, the folks who would be the rabble rousers are afraid of getting crosswise with Trump too much. You know, you have the Thomas Massie's kind of standing out there alone as somebody who's like, I'm not afraid to tick off Donald Trump. I'll survive. I've done it before.
- [34:43]
Kirsten Grein
The cheese stands alone.
- [34:44]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
Yeah, but I think that Republicans just want to get this done so badly because there are so many different pain points. Everybody just wants to like press through it so that they can say, we got Trump's agendas done, we got the tax part of it done. That they all really, really, really want to do. That's the big carrot for everybody. Get piece of this done. I think the Elon Rabble rousing just sort of reminds them like you need to press forward and get this done quickly because this coalition is fragile. Holding this together is not gonna last forever and ever.
- [35:17]
Kirsten Grein
Right. Rick, what do you think?
- [35:20]
Henry Blodgett
I think Kristen's right that this is a, there aren't any people willing to go and stick their head up above the trench and really say they hate it, except for Rand Paul Massie. But there are people, people look at the salt. If the salt deduction comes out in the Senate, you've got five or six Republicans from the Northeast who are going to have a really hard time voting for this. You know, Nick Lalota on Long Island. Even, even, even, you know, Elise Stefanik, there are a lot of people law Mike Lawler, there are a lot of people that are going to have a lot of trouble with it. There are also some things in the book bill that they claim, oh, I, I didn't read that. I didn't see that. I didn't know that was there. There are a lot of stinkers in this bill that I think are going to be much more front and center once the Senate starts to take it apart a little bit. The AI regulation ban is, is weirdly transpartisan right now. You've got Marjorie Taylor Greene on the one hand and progressive Democrats on the other all saying we can't walk away from any ability to regulate AI at all for 10 years. By that time, the robot overlords are all here. We can't pretend we can't do this. There's just a lot of stuff in the bill. I think that over time it doesn't smell any better. It smells worse.
- [36:36]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute.
- [36:51]
Kirsten Grein
All right, let's finish up on two more things. Let's assume that Elon will have no more influence on Doge or the rest of the federal government. What is Elon's Doge legacy? Kirsten, you start and then Henry and then Rick and Kristen.
- [37:05]
Rick Wilson
Well, I don't think it has been great. Mostly because he started out as he typically does with this very audacious goal, cutting 1 to 2 trillion. And then they lowered that publicly. And then meanwhile, my colleagues have like extended extensively reported on how all these cuts, you know, they were confusing millions and billions. They, you know, they were double counting contracts they had cut. So it's, it's sort of unclear, you know, what, what has actually happened and.
- [37:36]
Kirsten Grein
It could be costing us because of the IRS cuts.
- [37:38]
Rick Wilson
Yeah, right, right. Exactly. At the same time and you know, to give him credit, I think a lot of people on both sides hate federal bureaucracy. Right. And I think what he did do there is give that sort of sense of we cutting this like this is a big issue. Let's get in the mindset of, of getting rid of this waste. I think he was, he was not prepared for the federal government. It just turned out to be much harder than he anticipated. And something that no human or, you know, group of 20 something boys could pull off in like five months.
- [38:18]
Kirsten Grein
Do you think it does have any resonance? I don't, I don't think it will. I think he's made it worse and he sort of hasn't really found enough. You know, it's kind of government's a little better than we thought.
- [38:28]
Kara Swisher
I don't think so. I think the way he approached it, he approached it as not just CEO, but sole owner of a company. The only way he could do what he did at Twitter was because he owned 100% of the company. It was not public, he was not answering to any board, does what he wants. Had tremendous criticism after he did it. And yet again, he took the view as fine, sue me, and the service didn't go down and he got control of it. And so I think that that looks like, hey, that's a viable way to cut costs at big organizations. And I think that even those who were behind the idea of, yeah, let's cut bureaucracy the way it was being done. And it seems so transparently political and anti woke and things that were not fraud and abuse, but we're just simply choices about how to spend money. And you may agree or disagree, but actually the way Marco Rubio started to talk about State, where you would look at the organization as a whole, you would actually do some real analysis. You would say, yes, we have to cut the budget by 10% or 20% over three years, here's how we're going to do it. That's the way you would normally approach in a very disciplined way, this kind of cost cutting. And I think that, so the way he did it internally and externally, I think he effectively shot the organization in the foot by doing it. So I don't see a future for it.
- [39:51]
Kirsten Grein
Rick.
- [39:52]
Henry Blodgett
Look, I think the legacy that we're going to see out of Doge, a lot of the cuts that were made to things Americans care about, they train wrecked Social Security, the faa, noaa, fema, all these things. But I think the biggest one that's going to be a lot of pictures in the future is usa because the reason Bill Gates is at the White House is because he cares about USAID correctly as a big element of American soft power. And we are talking about stopping vaccination programs and food programs in Africa and around the world. And the Chinese are coming in to take that role. If we don't and if they don't make it in time, there are going to be a lot of starving children this year. And I think that that weirdly is not something the ordinary voter will see, but I think it will show that the cuts were just, just made out of, you know, that seemed to be the one thing that Elon cared the most about when it came to Doge, was killing usaid a tiny, tiny agency, a drop in the federal bucket. But I think that one, in a weird way is going to be the legacy of this thing. And I think as a, as a.
- [40:59]
Kirsten Grein
Which Bill Gates pointed out.
- [41:00]
Henry Blodgett
Yeah, yeah. As a programmatic system, you know, if you want to reform the government, you go in with auditors, not with 20 year old kids named big balls.
- [41:09]
Kirsten Grein
Okay, that's a very good point, Kristen. From a perspective of voting with the Doge legacy, is it a tainted legacy here?
- [41:19]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
So voters will always tell you that they think we spend too much and then when it comes to what they actually want to see cut, that's always where things get more complicated in the polling. And so that's why consistently when we would ask people, you know, of the things Donald Trump has done in his first hundred days, the Doge stuff was never, never among the most popular things. And I think something that is a bit of a shame, especially if this Trump musk thing goes down in flames and Doge winds up flaming out, is that there was some actual, there was real potential there for Doge grew out of the US Digital Service. The idea that we can bring smart tech minds in to make government efficient. The GE in DoGE government efficiency, which doesn't necessarily mean you just go in and slash programs, but can you take outdated systems and make them work better? Can you actually use the positive things about a tech mindset to improve, which happened under Obama old creaky infrastructure? And I will be sad if that is ultimately a casualty in all of this. Is that like the idea of bringing in smart tech minds to make government work better kind of gets viewed as this toxic thing instead of something that really could potentially be valuable.
- [42:27]
Kara Swisher
Let's end with predictions.
- [42:28]
Kirsten Grein
Is this feud over? Is it just the first chapter in a drawn out fight between the two? And if there's more to come, how does it end? First you, Kirsten, Henry, Kristen, and then Rick, you get the Final word.
- [42:40]
Rick Wilson
I mean I sort of think, but I should preface this by saying I also thought the musk Trump blow up was going to happen in like week two. So I have not been correct in the past. But I do sort of think this kind of heated, you know, I'm going to call you a pedophile. I'm going to take away your contracts. That is maybe winding down. But what we might see more of is Elon being willing on X especially to criticize Trump in a way that he wasn't obviously while he was hanging out with him at Mar a Lago or in the White House. So I do think this sort of heightened fight is, is probably over, but I could be wrong, could flare up again.
- [43:22]
Kirsten Grein
Yeah, I think he can't help himself when it comes to tariffs or whatever the topic happens to be.
- [43:27]
Rick Wilson
He will definitely be more outspoken, I think about what he feels, whether it gets to this sort of point, you know, that we're all following it. 247 will be interesting to see.
- [43:39]
Kara Swisher
Henry, I think that, yes, I think that now we are in the behind the scenes. Are you on the team or not on the team? I'm on the team. I think going forward you see much less direct criticism of Trunk unless Elon goes crazy or goes on a bender or what have you where again, Trump will respond to that. And I think that he has made that very clear. I think he has sent a message to everybody on the team, be careful about how you exit the team going forward. So I think, I think we are in the status quo unless Elon goes crazy. And the chances of that they both are unpredictable.
- [44:20]
Kirsten Grein
The next Kirsten story.
- [44:23]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
Kristen, I would be interested to see how much Elon continues to poke at this idea of a third party or the idea that now that he is perhaps not central to what the Republican Party is doing or what the Trump administration is doing, wanting to retain influence in the spotlight, but on his own terms, rather than thinking mistakenly that he can use Donald Trump as a vessel to his own ends. Trying to figure out how does he do it himself. I've done a lot of polling to try to figure out if there was going to be a third party in the U.S. what would it look like? Every piece of data I've ever seen suggests it's pretty populist. It's not necessarily this kind of elite centrism, fiscally conservative, but socially progressive, which would make it more complicated for someone like an easy Elon to be the leader and face of that movement. But how much does he keep trying to Chip away at this notion that like Donald Trump is, is the outsider versus the establishment. And he as Elon, he's the one that's outside and he's the one that's truly free to speak and is truly unencumbered. I'll be watching to see how much that thread keeps getting pulled out.
- [45:27]
Kirsten Grein
Does his loss in Wisconsin show that he doesn't have particularly good political sense?
- [45:32]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
I mean, I think there's a lot going on in that Wisconsin race, but I think he has now seen the limits of what he can do with a lot of money and showing up to rallies and giving out a check and that that's actually not how politics works.
- [45:44]
Kara Swisher
And so do you see him being.
- [45:45]
Kirsten Grein
An enduring figure the way he has been? And is that good for the Republican Party?
- [45:50]
Kristen Soltis Anderson
I don't know that I think he is an enduring part of the right because I think 1. What it means to be a Republican is always in flux. But I also think what Elon Musk. Elon Musk stands for and what he has put his name on and what he has said he believes has also evolved quite a bit. So these things are always moving towards us, right?
- [46:08]
Kirsten Grein
I could see him giving money to aoc. I could see him do almost anything.
- [46:13]
Rick Wilson
I could see him going back to the Democrats.
- [46:15]
Kirsten Grein
I can too. I can too, completely. Who knows what he's gonna do and what particular drug he's using at the time. Maybe if he does a more ecstasy, that would help. So, Rick, you get the final word. What is the legacy of, of this guy? Cuz he is. He is. They're not gonna let him too close to them anymore, I would imagine. They're not that stupid.
- [46:33]
Henry Blodgett
I think one thing we haven't really talked about, yes, the Epstein thing, that's a red line for Trump. But the other thing that Elon said was Trump wouldn't be president if it wasn't for me.
- [46:43]
Kirsten Grein
Right.
- [46:43]
Henry Blodgett
That is gonna be something that Trump can never forgive. His ego is so, so enormous. He can't let that go. But I will say this. I think we're gonna continue to see Elon because look, politics is an addictive story sort of thing. People enjoy being in the flow of that power, that sense of consequence, all those things. And while he screwed up Doge, and while he has been sort of booted out of the White House, he knows he has power on his platform. He knows he has a giant checkbook. And I wonder what happens when he suddenly realizes he can have more power. Not tweeting things, but making a phone call. To a senator saying, saying, hey, you vote for this bill and there's $100 million coming to your opponent in the primary and then in the general or whatever. I think he's got more power than he thinks, but I don't think he has the seriousness of mind to deploy it right now. I think he's still too caught up in whatever drama in his life and ketamine and everything else is sort of brewed up into his brain. He's not a guy who is displaying those things that you and I have both heard people in the Valley say. Even though he's a bullshitter, he's the greatest bullshitter of all time when he's on game. So I think he's not. We're not done with Elon by a long stretch. And by the way, the things he did with Doge, the Democrats can still use those. Even if he's out of the White House, he still did those things. So Elon is with us for a while yet. I don't know that he's gonna be as persistent as Trump, but he's gonna be with us for a while.
- [48:15]
Kirsten Grein
All right, on that note, we'll end. Thank you so much, all of you, of you. I appreciate it.
- [48:19]
Henry Blodgett
Thank you, Kara.
- [48:20]
Kara Swisher
Thank you.
- [48:21]
Kirsten Grein
Thank you.
- [48:26]
Kara Swisher
On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro, Russell, Kateri Yocum, Megan Burney, Allison Rogers and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Eric Lickey and Annika Robbins. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Track. And if you're already following the show, Elon will fund your third party candidacy. If not, there will be very serious consequences.
- [48:52]
Kirsten Grein
Go.
- [48:52]
Kara Swisher
Wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.