DERANGED Elon Musk CRUMBLES In Shocking Interview

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: all right guys friend of the pod elon musk sat down with uh zannie minton beddoes editor-in-chief of the economist what a british name i know she's she's good in this interview yeah uh it's an extended interview and wow is he mad and delusional uh we are going to play you guys some clips of what musk had to say about the impact of destroying usaid his reputation generally and why he is loathed is the word she uses uh the his obsession with portraying this dystopian version of europe in london in particular and then his unnerving take on our ai future very fun uh lovett and john have seen some but not all of these so get to enjoy their real-time unvarnished reactions uh the interview starts a little weird let's watch this piece right at the top it just scales across a wide uh just kidding that's from a qualcomm product demonstration earlier this one that was not elon [00:00:58] Speaker 2: musk i was my fault i was hoping um you would keep the part right after where they they throw like a tarp over the robot they throw a tarp over like it's a dead body like we don't want anyone to see [00:01:09] Speaker 3: the look there's children in the audience there is something happening now where the the more the these robots emulate how humans move when they go down their bodies flail like people like the way [00:01:21] Speaker 2: that beyond the arms kind of like oh yeah he sort of like put his hand up i don't know why i'm [00:01:26] Speaker 3: gendering him yeah yeah it's 2026 john uh terrible robots that are coming for our jobs can be women [00:01:32] Speaker 1: anyway we're gonna get to uh musk in a second but if you like stupid like that and also incisive political commentary please subscribe to pod save america on youtube it's free and look we got range here uh all right let's start with the first clip of elon he's talking about usaid it's a fun one [00:01:45] Speaker 4: do you regret getting so involved in politics do you think it was a good thing to do [00:01:50] Speaker 5: i think i think i got a little too involved in politics got carried away frankly the way you [00:01:54] Speaker 4: shut down a whole bunch of programs probably in fact certainly caused unnecessary suffering i mean no [00:02:00] Speaker 5: no no you you don't buy that it's it it caused a lot of complaining you don't so you don't buy the [00:02:07] Speaker 4: idea that anybody and to put it really crudely and simply any kid in africa died because of the [00:02:12] Speaker 5: suddenness with which zero i just don't think that's right when funding is stopped for a fraudulent organizations or for something do you think they're going to say do you think they're going to say well please keep funding the fraud or do you think they're going to come up with a sad story that sounds sympathetic in order to get the funding restored obviously it will be the latter and that's exactly what they did but zero died because well that's what i that's what i would that's what [00:02:41] Speaker 1: i would take issue so we cut that down a bit it's the full answer is longer but the in the full answer he says the usaid cuts didn't cause any suffering but foundations could have stepped in and should have stepped in like bill gates or like mr jeff bezos's ex also the funding didn't stop it was just moved to the state department and then he ends with the accusation that they just came up with that sad [00:03:04] Speaker 2: story so he's just all over the place yeah none of those explanations uh really make sense even put together especially put together um usaid was spending somewhere in the range of uh 32.5 billion dollars in 2024 uh gates has over 80 billion dollars in his ngo so if you like liquidated that it would get you about two years yeah of what usaid funds no organization in the world could match what [00:03:29] Speaker 1: a government can do also when we cut our aid budget a bunch of other countries followed suit like in [00:03:33] Speaker 3: the uk it combines a couple things one is uh what would happen if you slowly eliminate usaid over time and ask other people to step in and fill what you've cut even if filling it requires less money than what you were spending if you if there is some waste involved right then there's what happens when you abruptly and chaotically shut down a bunch of programs and then expect other organizations to have what instant analysis of where this these these various projects were and then there's another part of this which is just an interesting thing to me about what elon musk is like now which is he is because of the internet and how it's broken his brain there's just no trade-offs right like there's no acknowledgement that uh i don't believe the u.s should be spending this money i think other foundations should step in it's not our responsibility we can't solve every problem in the world but there might be some cost if we reduce the spending there's just no acknowledgement of [00:04:26] Speaker 2: that kind of thing there's also just like a logic problem to his own answers which is if zero people were hurt or died and there was no suffering then why would other organizations have to step in none of [00:04:38] Speaker 1: it makes sense none of it makes sense so i interviewed nick christoph at the new york times he went to a bunch of places in africa he walked through the names of specific individuals who died because of usaid cuts he met their caretakers he met their families like they're human beings that exist elon denying them it it's it's disgusting it shows how much this bothers him so everyone should [00:04:58] Speaker 2: keep asking about this it's like go to go to africa go with nick christop go to some of these organizations go anywhere take a tour just like find some kind of information that is not in your [00:05:07] Speaker 1: twitter feed elon musk just in terms of stats 83 of usaid programs were canceled 94 of the staff were laid off some were hired back to the state department through an independent process but they destroyed everything and then they built a little of it back so we just wrong on the facts there um usaid saved 92 million lives since 2000 uh it cut deaths of kids 32 percent and overall 50 um and it was arguably the most effective agency in the us government and just for what it's worth i interviewed this former usaid staffer turned whistleblower named nicholas enrich he said that after they started cutting usaid when he finally got to meet with like the trump transition team and told them what they did on public health one of them said wow there really is so much that usaid does that we never knew this is the story that needs to get out there and then another said i had no idea you did all this as a republican when i think of what usaid does in global health i assumed it was just you know [00:06:00] Speaker 2: abortions that's what they said to him which is a sort of perfect encapsulation of what these people are really about right which is just and elon musk too it's just a recklessness and a carelessness and we're going to come in and you know he says somewhere else about like well it's just that you know we're paying more interest on the debt than we are for the defense department and this is why we need to cut money and so he just comes in he has convinced himself that foreign aid and other things make up a bigger part of the budget than they are he cuts everything recklessly people die and then he comes up with the story that people actually didn't die yeah yeah it's a real um like also the arrogance [00:06:38] Speaker 3: of it which is if the government is doing something good i'd know about it right i'd already know about it and by the way if if i cut something and nobody tells me it was a huge mistake i was right to do it so really we'll just cut everything and then we'll fix the things when it turns out we got something wrong here and there when reality just has no clue what the government's doing day to day just the worst also [00:06:57] Speaker 1: on this debt and deficit point we'll get to this later in the ai section but he basically argues that like money won't matter taxes won't matter because we'll have this ai abundance so it's like well then why did you care so much about doge but we'll get to that um so there's a conversation where they're going back and forth about how much power elon has specifically they talk about starlink where he can impact the war in ukraine by like cutting off access and by the way elon has done the right thing he's cut off uh russian access in the occupied territories like he's done good things here um but she also asked about his obsessive demagoguery of europe and so it culminates to this question where she asks him if he understands that some of the stuff that he posts like this is why people loathe him let's watch this reaction here i mean some people do love you yes some people do [00:07:37] Speaker 4: but do you understand why do you think what you're doing is helpful for western maybe maybe some [00:07:43] Speaker 5: people do love me i and that's and that's probably true i don't care um the uh but but the fact that uh as you pointed out a quarter billion people follow me is that i think a lot more people actually like me than don't and i think a lot more people hate you and the media uh more than you realize do you realize the media is despised do you realize that that journalists how with the view of journalists is is is like it's like the favorable view of journalists is like 15 i do know that in the united states so so the shoe is on the other foot they hate you they hate you far more than they hate me sure seems like he doesn't care huh like that's the guy who doesn't care again it just says so [00:08:32] Speaker 2: much is that like do you understand how much people hate the media yeah she can acknowledge that because she lives in the world of reality and can read opinion polls and understand facts do you understand how much people hate you no he doesn't he can't understand anything that's wrong with anything he's done anything in his personality any any any perception of reality is completely warped [00:08:52] Speaker 3: he's deranged it's a deranged human being it's also this like i i can't tell like is it just that his ego can't that he has adopted a kind of trump mindset where you can't acknowledge any weakness or flaw or a mistake or has he really he believes he's really imbibed his own feed to the point where he believes he is a a beloved figure except for the leftist detractors and think it's not just the [00:09:16] Speaker 2: feed it is all the people that surround him it's everyone who works for him it's all of his partners it's uh every party with rich people he goes to and every famous person he knows just just kisses his ass constantly he's a classical narcissist yeah i don't i don't think he's just yeah anyway no one tells him no no one tells him he's a bad person no one tells him anything he's doing is wrong yeah it's been like that and it's been like that for a decade it was [00:09:41] Speaker 1: pre-twitter as a point this is that this is a free feed i mean i'm sure it's made it way worse and he feels attacked but like clearly yeah what he's getting at there is the problem isn't me it's you the media is you know portraying me wrong and you're hated more than me therefore you're the bad one okay pot save america breaking news is brought to you by act blue with so much at stake campaigns need the right foundation for over two decades act blue has been the go-to platform powering democratic candidates across the ballot by providing the digital tools to fundraise organize and win in this year they've launched an organizing platform built specifically for the people doing the work act blue field tools this all-in-one platform handles texting phone banking and canvassing so your team can focus on what actually wins campaigns real meaningful conversations with voters act blue never sells your data or your personal information so you can stay focused on what matters most donating organizing and helping democrats win this november the elections could come down to just a few hundred votes the work that wins those races starts this summer and it starts with you get started at act blue dot com slash crooked um there's a long back and forth about uh his constant demagoguery of like the uk as a dystopian hellhole and a support for far-right parties in europe [00:10:55] Speaker 4: um let's watch that exchange you say things like popular quote civil war in britain is inevitable just a question yes i mean when were you last in the uk um a few years ago exactly well if if you have [00:11:11] Speaker 5: uh a large uh and growing rapidly growing a group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to western beliefs um at some point there will be a reckoning that they they will they will try to implement their views and those who oppose it will oppose it and that's what you call civil war and obviously this is the trend um and uh and and you absolutely do live in a cloistered existence and if you'd like we [00:11:44] Speaker 4: can go on a tour of britain sure i'd be very happy to come on a tour of britain is there anyone more [00:11:49] Speaker 3: cloistered i know it's amazing it's remarkable like imagine like even if he i i he had it's really quite galling to be like i think you're heading for a civil war when's your last visit it's been a while but but even if he does i was just there a couple years ago right but if you go even if elon musk what does it look like for elon musk to go to a place it's to to the nicest private jet private jet private hotel private security around a bubble engaging only with the people who are preset and part of his plan to meet uh so he has no real exposure to the world anymore and there's something so like uh i think it was like joyce carol oates who really got him once i'm just like i don't even does elon musk ever reveal any things that bring him joy photos with family books he's read meals he's made anything like that time with friends and i when you hear someone say like well if you have people that oppose one another it'll eventually be a reckoning that's called a civil war that that's just like read a book my man like that's just like a like that's just a guy that's not reading [00:12:47] Speaker 2: the articles or people can just debate those ideas that they disagree on also what are western beliefs and what are the beliefs of the people who are in uh he's talking about muslims yeah we [00:12:56] Speaker 1: will then we have a whole are you racist section in a second but just just a quick thing on his uh support for far-right parties in europe so there's a couple pieces of there's germany where he made a virtual appearance at a far-right afd conference in 2025 these are people that are so extreme that parts of german intelligence uh that have named them as like dangerous extremist group he told them to save germany and he told germans to move beyond their nazi era guilt so that's a good advice i did a conversation with alice vital from the afd forgive yourselves yes in that interview she said hitler was a communist not a conservative but rather uh communist and a socialist and elon was like chortling along uh in the uk he started as a fan of nigel farage who's this like anti-immigrant pro-brexit politician imagine like a cigarette butt in a beer it's like that's nigel farage as a human um farage wasn't right-wing enough for elon so now he likes a guy named rupert lowe who started an even more right-wing party called restore britain he's also supported this dude tommy robinson who's this violent criminal like soccer hooligan guy who's so hardcore anti-immigrant that even farage won't touch him but musk spoke at robinson's rally in 2025 and he told the crowd uh you either fight back or you die so it seems like he's fomenting civil war by the way robinson wants to forcibly deport half of britain's muslims which is about two million people and ban the quran and a bunch of other and then in france uh he said marine le pen is quote france's last hope she is from the national rally party national rally used to be called national front one of its founders was a literal nazi who was a member of the waffen ss so those are the parties and he's in the interview he's like oh but they're actually they're not far right says [00:14:28] Speaker 2: they're moderate yeah um i was looking the other day for something else about his uh his tweets just in the last year because we've kind of forgot about him once he got out of politics like he just this year one user said white people face a choice between being conquered enslaved raped and genocided while being called racist or reclaiming our nations and our dignity while being called racist he replied yes he also wrote whites are a rapidly dying minority he endorsed the conspiracy there's a genocide against white people and promoted a claim that white people would be quote slaughtered by non-whites if they become a demographic minority this is what he was like saying on twitter yeah the the like [00:15:06] Speaker 3: we've moved on past eon because he's not with trump every day but the like the one of the most powerful people on earth the richest person on earth involved in politics still all across the world is just actively promoting unadulterated unalloyed white supremacy over and over again with a huge [00:15:24] Speaker 2: algorithmic boost yeah someone tweeted white solidarity is the only way to survive he replied true what like what what definition of racism is there that does not include that okay tell me what [00:15:36] Speaker 1: racist is you know what elon was asked if he's a racist yeah i want you to tell me if you think [00:15:41] Speaker 4: this answer is convincing i mean people say that you're a racist people say that you're you know there's all kinds of things said about you which i'm sure you would disagree with um but i just don't understand [00:15:53] Speaker 5: what is the motivation for doing that my partner is is um she's half indian and my wife is and i have poor children with her i don't think there's any racism there are you anti-muslim um i am i'm i'm against uh having if if if people are coming to a country with antithetical views uh i i'm against for no antithetical to what i'm against uh the imposition of rules and laws that are uh contrary to what we've come to accept in the west guys i'm not racist some [00:16:40] Speaker 1: of my favorite estranged children aren't white that's basically his answer i'm against rape and [00:16:46] Speaker 2: murder and so he it sounds like there he has convinced himself that all muslims believe in that's what he's trying to get out there yes i think that's right i he's he he's not a racist [00:17:03] Speaker 3: because his views that certain people and cultures are inferior is true right exactly i i'm not indians [00:17:11] Speaker 2: are okay see yeah and i just hate certain rights i have problems with certain races some of and and each of these races and ethnicities and religions some are good yeah a few are good but not all of [00:17:21] Speaker 1: them most of them are not that's his belief he's arguing that there is a fundamental values problem with an entire religion of course right i mean he it's it's he's incredibly extreme but [00:17:32] Speaker 2: also really reveals himself in this ask ask grok ask your own biased uh chatbot because even grok would tell you that what you believe about sharia law and muslims is not true oh yeah that's what i'm saying like it doesn't if he wanted to know the correct answer if he wanted to seek truth he could do that even through his own biased chatbot he chooses not to do that it's this like sort of this [00:17:57] Speaker 3: he brought this like manichaean struggle that came from like we're gonna make tesla because we have to save the planet and we're gonna do these new technologies because that's what the future is and we have to like win and the it's it like either it really is like he internalized this this idea that like human beings will either leave the earth behind or will die on this earth that is like the great the great struggle ahead of us and it's inspiring to him personally and it inspired others around him to kind of get behind him in these these companies even when his promises were sort of far beyond what they could actually do in the amount of time he hoped he could do it but he took that same idea and he applied it to politics in this very kind of like puerile way and it's like either the person i like someone who's barely paid attention for a long time to politics comes in it's like oh my god if we don't win the world is over the world will end if my side doesn't win because these are the first elections i've ever paid attention to yeah that's very it's funny that he kicks this whole [00:18:51] Speaker 1: thing off by being like yeah maybe i got a little too involved in politics yeah how about we learn from that by the way that jacket he's wearing the black leather jacket it says grok on the sleeve it's just that bothered me okay uh finally let's talk about the ai part so the beginning of the interview is all about ai the companies he's working on all that stuff um watching this part of the conversation during this week when we have like this ai chatbot jailbreak from like a containment testing area and literally hack into another company was not confidence inspiring um we cut this down a bunch but this will give you like a flavor of what he thinks i think what we can and should try [00:19:26] Speaker 5: to do is to make sure that the ai has good values that it cares about humanity and that uh it wants [00:19:36] Speaker 4: wants us to be happy and prosper you're sure that humans will no longer be in control in 10 years time i think it is unlikely i think even last year you said i know where was it ted cruz's podcast you said there was a 10 to 20 chance of killer robots wiping out humanity yeah so you sounded worried then now you seem very relaxed about it have you changed your view i guess i've come to my my sort of philosophical [00:20:02] Speaker 5: conclusion is to look on the bright side all roads lead to acceleration of ai so then i'm like okay well you can just sort of be sad about it or join the club i suppose what what club the club what's in [00:20:18] Speaker 2: that club is that is that the club that protects you from the killer robots it's like his position on [00:20:23] Speaker 1: ai has gone from let's slow things down remember he's a signer of the letter it's like let's do a six-month pause to like hey let's just enjoy the ride which shows that he's gone from you never really cared about ai safety this was all about you know financial positioning and business competition he talks about love you like this he talks about how the universe ends when it just expands to the point where everything kind of cools and freezes right this is this is a time frame that is tens of billions of years if not trillions of years and then suggests that's somehow an argument for not [00:20:52] Speaker 3: being worried about the robots taking over like this decade yes a classic a classic key in the long run we are all dead yes and that is of course that is true i too worry about the heat death of the universe but between now and then i also have to pick up the dry cleaning there's there's this thing [00:21:09] Speaker 2: going on now with all the ai companies because they were honest right at first about how scary this could be and they were trying to somewhat be responsible and then everyone was like well now public opinion is very uh turned against ai and so now uh the the message has gone forth probably through a bunch of consultants to all these companies that now they have to emphasize the bright side so you've got dina powell putting out videos of of ai with meta and by like how it's wonderful and optimistic and then all the republican lobbyists who've clearly they've hired have been like this is a great story they're telling now they should have done this from the beginning and so now they've decided they're just going to lie to all of us so that they can get more customers and they can continue to uh just have [00:21:46] Speaker 3: this bubble be uh as big as possible i think we're going to look back on this moment and realize that putting all of these disparate technologies under the like one idea of ai has really been making things harder to have an honest conversation about it as it would have been if we said like will electricity be good right will computers be good it's like these are is it powerful varied technologies and like we just need to like this like even the term ai it's meant to evoke this kind of like a mysterious idea of intelligence which we don't we couldn't define for ourselves without the computers so uh uh i think that's why it ends up in this sort of like metaphysical notion of like uh like are we accelerationist are we is it sentient whatever it's like i'm sorry what does it do is that good is it safe right like they're like basic questions about what they're implementing and in dc it's all about are we [00:22:39] Speaker 1: winning or losing a race with china and then the companies all yell like oh no the chinese stole our models and broke them down and now they're repackaging them it's like well you guys stole the whole internet for to make your models so i don't know that i feel bad meanwhile he there at one point [00:22:53] Speaker 2: says like yeah i i fully expect china to uh leapfrog ahead of us at some point yes because they have [00:22:58] Speaker 1: more energy yeah um he also compares uh she's asked him about like what about work what about people like not only needing money but wanting work and he's like oh well you know ubi right will be the financial piece but she's like people like like to do things and he said he compares work to gardening and making dinner with tomatoes from your garden versus buying like perfect ones at the store and that you might find satisfaction in that i was like okay elon make a caprese i want to watch you make [00:23:25] Speaker 2: a salad this guy's life is work by the way he's like oh it'll be fine um this is what andrew yang told me for uh offline this weekend he was like um yeah i just think there will be three areas nurturing and caring for people artistic expression and physical fitness and wellness and maybe there can be like many economies within each of those three areas where you and like i was like this is wild [00:23:48] Speaker 3: but this is what i mean when they're like i'm sorry what are you basing that like what are you talking about like like that is such an abstract and grand pronouncement about the future based on what like these models can tell me what year the russian like tell me details about history quickly but also can make pictures of people like what are you talking about and also it's like the same people [00:24:11] Speaker 1: that like tore apart our society with social media feeds are now like that'll be fine we'll all just make tomatoes together and have universal basic income uh at one point he refers to a future where humans have agency quote uh in a small way so i mean like the robots let us have a small area of decision making and it's like this is that kind of is annoying when it's like sam altman like pontificating on the like you know lex friedman podcast or whatever like this guy was sitting in the white house like making policy on ai buddies with david sacks the nagus former now ai czar who was sort of letting these companies run rough shot on humanity it's like that doesn't feel good i feel like [00:24:48] Speaker 3: christianity is next for him i think he's going to become i think he's going to swing the other way he's going to find his way into a church and then he's going to start i think like like the the light of creation is the next topic for him that's my that's my little maybe there with his whole like [00:25:03] Speaker 1: i want to send the life of consciousness to the moon and to mars and blah blah blah but then he's like it's in my s1 for for spacex which by the way is down like 40 percent anyway uh that's it for uh this episode of pod save america on youtube only about elon musk um i don't feel great about it but no i don't either hope you all have a nice saturday but is he happy no no clearly not [00:25:24] Speaker 2: pod save america is a crooked media production our show is produced by austin fisher saul rubin mckenna roberts and faris safari with reed churlin elijah cone and adrian hill our team includes matt de groat ben hethcote jordan cantor charlotte landis kirill pelaviv david tolls mia kelman ryan young and naomi single our staff is proudly unionized with the writers guild of america east