Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-10-13 Tuesday

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Democracy Now! Tuesday, October 13, 2026

From New York, this is Democracy Now. With the help of Almighty God, the armed forces carried out four qualitative operations over the past 24 hours, using a number of ballistic and winged missiles, as well as drones. The first operation targeted King Khaled Airport in Riyadh in three phases, starting the evening before yesterday, resulting in the disruption of air navigation at the airport and its complete closure. Houthi fighters from Yemen have targeted the Saudi capital of Riyadh, For the third time in recent days, on Saturday a Houthi missile strike at the Riyadh airport killed at least 12 and injured over 300 in the deadliest attack on Saudi soil in over a decade. President Trump's weighing whether to join the Saudi fight against the Houthis in Yemen.

We'll speak to Yemen's scholar Helen Lachner. Then is the world's richest man, Elon Musk, spends an astonishing 366. million dollars to help Republicans in the midterms will speak to Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney about his new nearly four-hour documentary Musk. It's one of the most controversial figures in the world. So I decided to make him the subject of my next film. But it soon became clear Elon would not participate. All that and more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. A leader of Yemen's Houthi movement is warned the U.S. will face a swift and painful response if it joins Saudi Arabia's attacks on Houthi-controlled territory. The warning came after President Trump said he's considering joining the Saudi-led counteroffensive aimed at ousting Houthi fighters from Yemen's Red Sea Coast and the strategic Bob El-Mandab Strait. Yemen's Saudi-backed internationally recognized governments as Houthi strikes over the past 24 hours killed at least five civilians and lucked over a dozen wounded. That includes an attack on a hospital in Yemen's third largest city of Thais, which is encircled by Houthi fighters. Residents there are reportedly rationing food and essential goods amidst growing warnings of a humanitarian disaster. Elsewhere, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said it had intercepted missiles fired by Houthi. towards southwestern Saudi Arabia and the capital Riyadh, where Houthi attacks on King Khalid

International Airport in recent days killed 18 people and injured over 300. The continuing attacks came as the U.S. embassy in Riyadh said U.S. citizens had been arrested for taking photos of recent events in Saudi Arabia, though it did not specify how many people were detained. Meanwhile, the U.N. reports at least 139 people. are dead and 84 others remain missing after an overcrowded boat capsized while sailing from Djibouti to Yemen. The International Organization for Migration said in a statement, quote, despite the violence in Yemen, migrants are still making the perilous journeys hoping to make it to the Gulf countries. This is UN spokesperson, Stefan Dujarak.

This tragedy is yet another stark reminder of the dangerous people face in search of safety in search of work and just in search of a better life for themselves and their families. Since the fighting escalated on Yemen's west coast, more than 217,000 people have been displaced from their homes. We'll have more on the violence in Yemen after headlines. In the Persian Gulf, the UK's maritime trade operations center reports an oil tanker was struck by a projectile while exiting the Strait of Hormuz Monday. All crew members are reportedly safe and accounted for. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took credit for the attack, saying it was the third ship that had struck in two days. Since the start of October, there have been at least 18 attacks on ships in or around the Strait of Hormuz.

In Ukraine, a Russian strike on a residential high rise in a Kiev suburb killed at least two people Monday evening, while Russian attacks on other parts of Ukraine killed another six people. The deadly strikes came as Ukrainian officials said Russia, continues to bomb energy sites, despite President Trump's insistence Saturday that Moscow and Kiev had agreed to cease such energy attacks. Both sides denied Trump's claim, though Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said he was willing to halt attacks on energy infrastructure if Russia reciprocated. Meanwhile, 11 sailors went missing in the Black Sea today after an apparent drone attack on two cargo ships off the coast of Bulgaria, one of which sank.

It was the second deadly attack of its kind in the past week and prompted Bulgaria to summon Russia's ambassador. This is the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Ruman Rada. We do not possess solid, clear evidence to level an accusation against any specific party. However, logic suggests that the outcome works to the advantage of the Russian Federation. For this reason, I am summoning the Russian ambassador for a meeting today. A bipartisan group of senators is calling on President Trump to reverse plans to purchase diesel fuel from Russia as part of effort to lower fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections. In a statement, the senators wrote that Trump is violating a 22 law that explicitly bans Russian energy imports, adding, quote, the United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians.

The administration must immediately reverse course, unquote. Four Republican senators sign the statement. Susan Collins of Maine, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, Tom Tillis of North Carolina, and John Curtis of Utah. On Monday, President Trump defended the Treasury Department's waiver allowing Russian fuel imports through next April, writing on truth social, quote, I made the right choice for the American people, always America first, Trump wrote. Federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided the Washington, D.C. home of Democratic Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota Monday.

The raid came less than a month before the midterm elections. The Justice Department has traditionally tried not to take public investigative actions involving a candidate in the 60 days before a primary or general election. In a statement, Congress member Omar said, quote, for 10 years, Trump's targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced, she said. Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia, came to the U.S. as a child. She became one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress in 2018. Trump has repeatedly attacked her and Somali Americans as garbage. Over the weekend, President Trump signaled he'd push for the federal raid of Omar's home. He said, quote, she comes from Somalia. J.D. Vance and our people are looking at it very strongly, he said.

Trump also posted on truth, social, quote, the Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back. Minnesota, fight back. If you need the federal government, will come to your rescue, he wrote. Trump's apparent call to violence drew condemnation from religious and interfaith leaders. This is Abdullahi Fahra, an imam at a Bloomington, Minnesota mosque, which was bombed by a far-right militia in 2017. Instead of bringing Minnesota together to find solutions, President Trump chose to make sweeping accusations against my Somali American community and telling people to fight back. Fight back against whom? What exactly is the president asking people to do?

These words are reckless, they are dangerous, and they have consequences. The richest man in the world, far-right trillionaire, Elon Musk, has quietly funneled $276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July to boost the GOP in the midterms. that's according to reporting by the New York Times. He gave $158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund to help Republicans hold on to the Senate. It's one of the largest political donations in American history. It's more than the Democrats raised from all of its donors that quarter for its efforts in the Senate. In total, Musk has given Republicans $366 million in campaign contributions during the 2025-26th election. cycle. Meanwhile, corporations that have benefited from the Trump administration's cancellation of

federal enforcement actions have given more than $210 million in contributions to MAGA Inc. And other Trump-aligned super PACs, according to public citizen. The group tallied the Trump administration's cancellation of 22012 federal enforcement actions involving 205 corporations. We'll be speaking with the Oscar-winning filmmaker, Alex Gibney, about his new almost four-hour film called Musk later in the broadcast. Republican Senator Darlane Graham of South Carolina, the sister of the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, sparred with her Democratic opponent, Annie Andrews,

for their first and only debate on Sunday, likely. The GOP Senate Leadership Fund is directing $5 million into the contest, signaling surprising Democratic strength in the race. The polls have tightened in recent weeks. Graham defending Israel at the debate. I fully believe that we need to stand with Israel. The same people that want to hurt and attack Israel want to come after us. The terrorists that were close to getting a nuclear weapon will come here.

So we need to stand with our strongest ally in the Middle East where there's a lot of unrest. Meanwhile, Dr. Andrews blasted Graham for her support for the U.S. Israeli war on Iran. My opponent is the only one on this stage who had the opportunity to vote to end the war. But three times in a row, she voted to continue it. And several days after one of those votes, she had the audacity to walk out onto this stage and admit that national security isn't really her thing. South Carolina, if your surgeon said that appendectomies aren't really his thing, would you still hand him a scalpel?

No. So why would we hand Darlene Graham a full term in the U.S. Senate? unsurious and unqualified. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces today raided the offices of several Palestinian NGOs in the courtyard of the Palestine Medical Complex. The NGOs raided include the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees, the Ademir Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association in Ramallah. Israeli snipers were also reportedly dispatched around the entrance.

to the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah. Meanwhile, in Gaza, at least four Palestinians, including a four-year-old trial, were killed in Israeli attacks Monday. Since last October's so-called ceasefire, Israel's killed over 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed Israel's Attorney General and Domestic Intelligence Chief to identify the soldiers and officers who appeared in the award-winning, investigative documentary Naza and to bring charges against them for allegedly damaging Israel's security interests. The Israeli government has also attacked Naza filmmakers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Soar, threatening to strip them of their citizenship. In a statement,

The Guardian, which produced the documentary, said, quote, these moves are all attempts to distract from the urgent questions the film asks about the mass killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, journalists should be free to pursue public interest investigations without threats or harassment, the Guardian said. Meanwhile, Haarets is reporting after the October 7th attacks, the Israeli military drastically loosened its rule for confirming and targeting Hamas members, allowing strikes to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians to target even low-ranking members of Hamas. For example, on October 31st, 2023, IDF war planes dropped 2,000 pound bombs supplied by the United States on the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza

in order to kill one Hamas commander. A veteran of the IDF told Haaret's quote, I remember being stunned that we were bringing down several densely populated buildings, killing and injuring hundreds of people to kill a battalion commander who just a few weeks earlier hadn't even been someone we were supposed to gather intelligence on, unquote. And the Israeli academic and independent analyst, Ory Goldberg, has died at the age of 50 after a long struggle with colon cancer, a frequent contributor to Al Jazeera English. He also spoke on democracy now, writing and commenting on Israeli politics, Israel's regional security plans and most recently Israel's reaction to the documentary film Naza.

He was one of the few critical voices from Israel willing to speak to international media. Here he is on democracy now just before of the so-called U.S. ceasefire in Gaza. There are Israelis who, especially religious ones, who celebrate overtly the killing of Palestinians. and they, of course, are disappointed. They wanted a total victory. They wanted Hamas destroyed. But the great majority of Israelis enable the genocide and support the genocide by not talking about the genocide. To see his interviews on Democracy Now, go to DemocracyNow.

And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. Coming up, we'll speak with Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning director of the film called Musk. But first, Houthi fighters are continuing to attack the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Back in a minute. Goh has a sorrow by Mohawk artist, Daniel French, part of the new Contra-Ice compilation album for immigrant rights across the country. The song is a cover of Violeta Pada's original indigenous rights anthem of the same name.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman in New York with Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Houthi fighters from Yemen have targeted the Saudi capital of Riyadh for the third time in recent days. On Saturday, a Houthi missile, strike. on a Riyadh airport, killed 13 people and injured over 300 in the deadliest single attack on Saudi soil in over a decade. The Houthis have hit the airport at least four times.

All flights out of the airport are currently suspended. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has not been seen publicly in a week, is reportedly shutling between palaces with heavy security and bunkers. Riyadh is 500 or so miles from Houthi controlled areas in Yemen. This is Houthi military spokesperson. Yehya Assyria, speaking Monday. With the help of Almighty God, the armed forces carried out four qualitative operations over the past 24 hours using a number of ballistic and winged missiles, as well as drones.

The first operation targeted King Khalid Airport in Riyadh in three phases, starting the evening before yesterday, resulting in the disruption of air navigation at the airport and its complete closure. In Yemen, a leader of the Houthi is also known as the Ansar Allah movement, warned the U.S. It would face a swift and painful response if it joined Saudi Arabia's attacks on Houthi control territory. The warning came after President Trump said he's going to look at joining the Saudi-led counteroffensive aimed at ousting Houthi fighters from Yemen's Red Sea coastline and the

strategic Bab al-Mandeb straight. In September, Reuters reported Houthi leaders met secretly with U.S. officials in Oman and assured them U.S. ships in the Red Sea would not be targeted, even as a blockade was underway on Saudi-linked ships. Yemen's Saudi-backed internationally recognized government says Houthi strikes over the past 24 hours within Yemen, killed at least five civilians, and left over a dozen wounded. That includes an attack on a hospital in Yemen's third, large city of Tice, which is encircled by Houthi fighters. Residents there are reportedly rationing food and essential goods amidst growing warnings of a growing humanitarian disaster. Meanwhile, the Yemen Data Project reported more than 250 Saudi air raids on Yemen last month, the highest number since 2022, killing at least 66 civilians and injuring 90. For more, we're joined by Helen Lackner,

author of several books on Yemen, including Yemen in crisis, The Road to War, and Yemen, Poverty and Conflict. She's been involved with Yemen for over 50 years and live there for a total of more than 15 years between the 70s and the 2010s. Her next book on Yemen will be out next year. She's joining us from Oxford, England. Welcome to Democracy Now, Helen Lachner. Thanks so much for being with us. Do you see what's going on here? Saudi Arabia. has been at war with Yemen for over a decade as kind of Saudi Arabia's, you know, U.S. war in Vietnam. And talk about who the parties are in Yemen. Who is the internationally recognized government in Yemen that's supported by Saudi Arabia? And who are the Houthis? Well, thank you for inviting me. Do you want me to start with the Houthis or with the government? Your choice.

Right. Well, the internationally recognized government is the descendant of what was the government of Yemen until 2014 when the Houthis took over the capital, Sana. And since then, the government has been based mainly in principle in Aden, which is a major city on the southern coast, and also some of its main leaders, and usually the presidents have been based in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, and various other people have been all over the place. The basic issues to do with the internationally recognized government is its failure to operate as a functioning operational government and in particular of having a united and effective military. Its military are composed of different groups which are largely rival to each other and have different commands and they have been unable to operate as a single unit. And that is really one of the main reasons why the Houthi offensive last month that took over Mocha and the Bab al-Manda succeeded so quickly, basically because the people opposing them were far too disorganized.

And it's also true that the Houthis are and were still the stronger military element throughout Yemen. So very briefly, to get into who the Houthis are, they are a group. that was initially created in the 1990s to oppose the rise of Salafi Muslims in the far north of Yemen. Their heartland is the absolute far north of Yemen, a city called Saada. And they were created, and they are a group of Zaidis are a branch of Shia Muslim, but they're not particularly different from Sunni Muslims in terms of theology. But the Houthis are very much a fundamentalist group, a very extremist group when it comes to their way of ruling and their ambitions. And many people tend to compare them with the Afrani Taliban.

And I think that comparison does have some validity. And for people who don't know Yemen well, it will give them an idea of what kind of group they are. They are extremely repressive. They are also very ideologically motivated. They've now for 15 years or longer been educating and forcing their ideology onto children throughout their school and education system as well as adults, but certainly we now have a generation of young adults who have known nothing else but who's the ideology. And at least many of them must be expected to believe them.

I think it's worth pointing out that Houthis now control approximately two-thirds of Yemen's population, if not more. So at least 20 million people are living under their authority. So although they only control about a third of the country's territory geographically, in terms of the population they control basically two-thirds approximately. So why? And Helen, Lachna, your history in terms of Yemen, goes back of five decades.

Most people are not aware that in the period after Yemen emerged from English protectorate or colonial status, there was actually a socialist government for a period of time in Yemen. Could you talk about that and how it devolved then into a dictatorship and eventually to where we are today? Yeah, well, I'm glad you're interested in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, because that's when I first went to live in Yemen was in order to help build socialism, which certainly sounds a bit, if not comical, certainly sad when we look at the world as it is today.

So indeed, you had a socialist regime, I mean, you had two states in Yemen. You had the state that emerged from the British colony, which was the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and you had the Yemen Arab Republic with a capital in Sana'a that was based on, that had previously, been the Imamate, and which was a republic largely in name, but basically was a military dictatorship for the vast majority of its period from 1962 until you had Yemeni unification in 1990,

when both states united into the Republic of Yemen. And after that time, I think one has to say that the socialist element that had been active in the PDRY really very very very very very very, The party, the socialist party, the Yemeni Socialist Party, really got very much weakened, partly by main civil war that happened in Yemen in 1994, but also very much because it was unable to maintain the support it had had because of the differences between the people who wanted to return to the pre-1990 borders and who basically wanted to separate Yemen into back into two states and those who believed in Yemen as a single state. So I think, you know, in terms of the history of socialism, although I think even today you

have people who think or wonder or are interested in what life was like in the days of the socialist period, it's really very much more of, you know, an imagination or hoping or thinking. And basically what people are interested in, what people are interested in, what people are. are missing very much are the basic social welfare and the basic social democratic aspects of that regime, which was the fact that it provided, you know, good health systems, good education systems, basic infrastructure, and basic salaries that people could live on, not in luxury, but they could live on them. And these things basically vanished largely, very rapidly after 1994 and under the Salé regime,

which was, you know, Sala had been president of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1978 onwards and he became and stayed president of the Republic of Yemen until he was ousted after the 2011 uprisings and that also gradually led to basically the civil war that started in 2014. I mean, I don't know if you want me to spend time discussing the 2011 to 2014 period or if you want to focus more on the current situation. Well, yeah, I'd like to ask specifically in terms of the ability of the Houthis to resist the military onslaught of Saudi Arabia. Most people are not aware that Yemen actually has a larger population than Saudi Arabia. What's been the impact of their ability to strike at the Saudis

and especially in terms of the power of Mohammed bin Salman? Yeah, I think it's important to remember that, Yes, the Houthis are attacking Saudi Arabia with air strikes. But there is now actively a real ground war going on within Yemen. And that is a far more relevant and important issue for the Yemenis and a day-to-day basis because they are now back into a full-scale civil war. And the Saudi intervention is, yes, it is air strikes. And the Saudis are supporting the government to some extent with material

and also, I suppose, you know, all kinds of other elements of technology, etc. But the fundamental war that's going on now is not a war in Yemen is not a war with Saudi. It's a war between Yemenis, between the Houthis and the government and basically what I would call the non-Houthis or the anti-Houthis. So the Saudi element is really for Yemeni, it's part of the war, but it's not the war. And, you know, the airstrikes at the moment by most Yemenis are considered airstrikes that are supporting them against the Houthis.

So the fact that the, you know, that the world attention is focusing on a few air strikes on Saudi Arabia is not something that is the top priority for Yemen and Yemenis. The top priority for Yemenis is dealing with the, you know, the Houthi, anti-Houthi war. and the fact that after the defeats they suffered in early September, the anti-huthies have pulled themselves together to some extent, and now there is a lot of confrontations going on on a daily basis around Thais,

around the Babalmandab, around various other fronts, even in the far north, and around Maré benjof, and this is, you know, this is an ongoing war, the war that went on from 2015 to 22, interrupted for the last four years has now basically resumed. And where, Helen Lachner, do you see this going? We have these reports that last month, Houthis secretly negotiated with Washington in Oman saying they wouldn't target U.S. or Israeli ships in the Red Sea, only Saudi ships. And where you see this heading in the future with President Trump saying he's looking at

whether to get involved with this. Well, thank you for bringing this up because, you know, the basic Houthi slogan, which is shouted and it's known as the scream, you know, is, starts with death to America, death to Israel, curse upon the Jews. So the number one item is death to America. And the fact that the Houthis have made this deal with Washington, you know, demonstrates that ideology may be an important element for mobilizing people within Yemen, but it certainly doesn't seem to prevent them from being totally opportunistic when it comes to dealing with the US. The reason they've said this, I'm sure, is because there was a 52-day air series of air strikes last year in 2025 from March till May from the US against Houthi areas.

And although this ended with this apparent agreement between them to cease fire, it certainly did cause quite a lot of damage to the Houthis. But I think the problem about, you know, you're asking what happens next. I think, unfortunately, I think the war within Yemen, between Yemenis, is going to go on. I don't, and I'm very sad to say this, and I hope I'm wrong. But my belief and that of most other people I've heard and spoken to is that this restarting of the war, renewal of the war, going to last until one side or the other gets close to winning. And the Saudis are currently supporting the government,

and they are really in a very bad dilemma, because they know from previous experience, they did aerial bombing for seven years and it got nowhere. Trump did aerial bombing for 52 days, and they didn't really go anywhere either. So it's quite clear that pure, and it's been demonstrated elsewhere in the world, that air strikes on their own do not win a war.

Helen Lacher. And so the situation, the future for the Saudis at this point is they have to either decide to make a deal with the Houthis, which I think is increasingly difficult, even though they almost had such a deal in 2023. But I think the situation between then and now has changed, and particularly with the recent attacks, it would be extremely difficult for them to make a deal with the Houthis, or to continue with a war. I mean, I'm, you know, I haven't seen anyone who has found a solution for this, for this current situation other than a continuation of, you know, very considerable disasters at the humanitarian level. I'm really glad you mentioned earlier the, you know, the displaced.

And you also remember that the humanitarian situation for Yemenis in general is absolutely disastrous. and people have now suffered 12 years of war and things are getting worse by the day. So, you know, the future is unfortunately as far as I can tell. And again, I hope I'm wrong, is very bleak. Helen Lachner, I want to thank you so much for being with us, author of several books on Yemen, including Yemen in Crisis, The Road to War and Yemen, Poverty and Conflict. Coming up, the world's richest man, Elon Musk, spends an astonishing 300,000, $666 million to help Republicans in the midterms.

We'll speak to the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney about his new film, Musk. Stay with us. Araucal has a sorrow by Mohawk artist Daniel French. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. The world's richest man is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the November midterm elections in an effort to help Republicans hold on to their Senate majority. Elon Musk, the world's large, the world's first trillionaire, has reportedly funneled more than

$366 million into Republican groups and his own super PAC, according to the New York Times. That makes him by far the largest known donor to this year's midterms. Musk and President Trump have appeared together at three events over the past two weeks, praising one another after a very public falling out last year. And Musk is doing all this while overseeing a sprawling business empire that's benefited enormously from federal contracts. We spend the rest of the hour on a new documentary about Musk and the unprecedented. Precended power, he's amassed in business, technology, politics, and beyond. The epic nearly four-hour-long film by Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney is called simply Musk.

Gibney says he set out to answer two fundamental questions. How could Musk amass so much power? And why had we given it to him? This is the film's trailer. One of the odds that we are in base reality. Like we are in a simulation. Give it up for the greatest capitalist in history. Elon Musk is one of the most controversial figures in the world.

So I decided to make him the subject of my next film. But it soon became clear. Elon could not participate. Between what SpaceX has accomplished and what Elon has been saying they will be doing, there is a big leap. You got to build a city on Musk. When Musk says that the future of humanity is to colonize Mars, he is selling us dreams. That's not happening.

We started Tesla. He agreed to be the lead investor. What I learned in that process is there's no legal definition of founder. You could call yourself a founder. Really? Sure. The CEO performance award to our founder, Ivan Musk. This is a car that lies to you about what it's doing. As a result, a young woman lost her life, and a young man was forever injured.

Twitter is the place where Elon can tell his side of history. Somebody on Elon's side referring to us as the breeders. There's 14 that are publicly known. But people around Elon believe that there's many more. This is an order creating a department known as Doge. The conflicts of interest are shocking. USAID, the FAA. A lot of these agencies are the ones looking at him. He had told me, I can't be president, but I can help Trump beat Biden.

I say, I think we're going to win. He said, I have 10,000 lasers in space. I knew that hours ago. What are his actual motivations? Do we even know this man at all? We have one person who's this chaotic and has this much power. It's completely insane. The documentary traces Musk's early business ventures, the rise of SpaceX and Tesla, the role of government support for his businesses. It also examines Musk's acquisition of Twitter, which he renamed X, his political alliance with Trump and his role in the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, which eviscerated life-saving federal government programs like U.S. aid. Gibney also examines Musk's ambitions and artificial intelligence, including his company X-A-I and the reported integration of its GROC chatbot and other AI models into U.S. military networks. For more, we're joined by Alex Gibney, Academy Award-winning director, his new documentary called simply Musk.

Alex's previous films include Enron, the smartest guys in the room, going clear Scientology in the Prison of Belief and the Oscar-winning taxi to the dark side. Alex Gibney, welcome back to Democracy Now. Thank you for joining us from Maine. Why don't we start off by talking about the resistance to even getting this film out as it's being released in theaters around the country this week. The Musk Empire threatened to sue you. You had platforms saying they wouldn't run the ads. Explain what is at stake right now. Well, even before the movie was premiered at the Venice Film Festival,

Elon Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, threatened to sue us over something that they claimed was in the documentary, but it wasn't. In terms of the ads, it was really interesting. We produced the trailer, the trailer you just showed, and then we wanted to run ads for that trailer on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X, of course, X. All of those platforms denied our ads. We appealed. They denied again. We appealed again.

They denied again. They said that they were political advertisements. And on that basis, we were refused the ability to place them there. Then there was an article was written exposing this. And mysteriously, YouTube. and meta, said, oh, gosh, sorry, just a mistake. TikTok still won't run the ads and X claims they are, but so far as I know they're not. What it does testify to is this enormous sort of shrinking of political discourse because these massive platforms, which are controlled by tech oligarchs,

are limiting speech. And, Alex, what is it that got you to decide to do a film on Luska in the first place? It's a good question. Some people came to me and asked me to do it. This goes back to 2022, long before he had hitched his wagon to Trump. And I wasn't sure I wanted to do it initially, but I was convinced by a friend that it was about 21st century power. And so it was. I just didn't realize how much his economic power was going to fuse with political power at the time I started. what I found especially fascinating in the film is I like most Americans assume that what most people knew originally about Musk was of Tesla. And you tell a different founding story about Tesla than most people are commonly aware of. Could you talk about that in his battle with, was it Martin Everhard? Sure. I mean, it's interesting. Most people think that Elon Musk is the founder of, Tesla and also the prime inventor of the technology at Tesla. And that just isn't true. He was an investor, not an inventor. The real inventor was a man named Martin Eberhard. He and his partner,

Mark Tarpening, founded Tesla. They were the ones who came up with the original technology of the lithium-ion battery pack, which is the thing that gives Tesla so much torque. And they also had the original business plan of starting at the high end of the market and as people began to adopt the car driving costs down. Musk came in, invested in the company, and after a while, they had a falling out. And Musk engineered Martin Eberhardt's departure. Eberhardt sued for money he thought he was owed. And Musk only agreed to settle the lawsuit if Eberhardt agreed to say that Musk was what he wasn't, which was the founder of Tesla. I mean, this is unbelievable.

Which I find very interesting. I mean, to go to that. I wanted to interrupt for one second because I wanted to go to a clip from your documentary that goes to this. The documentary Musk describing the origins of Tesla. When Musk fired Eberhardt, Musk refused to pay him what he claimed he was owed. A lawsuit followed, and it was settled only when Musk was able to claim that he was what he was. a founder of Tesla. What I learned in that process is there's no legal definition of founder.

You could call yourself a founder. It's nothing illegal about that. Really? Sure. Why not? You should be a good founder. I have with me the incorporation papers for Tesla Motors and you'll see his name is nowhere on them. So Alex Gibney, take it from there. It's really astounding. It is astounding. And what's astounding is that Musk would go to such lengths to sort of embrace this lie. And I think there were a number of reasons for that. One is he wants people to know or he really feels it's important for people to think that he's this polymath, this sort of Leonardo

Da Vinci-like figure, when in fact what he is is a kind of a ruthless businessman. With some talents, we should all admit, but not an inventor. And the other thing that's interesting, too, is that when it comes to Silicon Valley, being a founder is what entitles you to all sorts of money. And the ability downstream, even when your company's economic fundamentals don't justify a big valuation, to pitch people on the idea that, don't worry, we may not be making money now, but in the future, you're investing in this man, Elon Musk, who is a genius, he's an inventor, he's all these things, which, of course, he isn't. I wanted to go to the amount of government money, that's taxpayer money, that has gone into all

of these businesses, ultimately all of these companies, recognizing that they get involved with the military. He's running, what, the future of war for Hegset at the Pentagon now, that that's where the biggest bucks are. But go back to the beginning to how he positioned Tesla and then going into SpaceX and recognizing what would get him the money and what wouldn't. Well, it's interesting because particularly with SpaceX, I mean, Musk has always positioned himself as this kind of freewheeling entrepreneur who did what he did just by the dent of hard work and independence. But, I mean, SpaceX, for almost all of its existence, has been more or less a socialist enterprise. It had one customer, and that's the government of the United States.

Tesla benefited early on, particularly under the Obama administration, from a number of loans and subsidies for EVs. And also the state of California helped to subsidize Tesla early on. And so Tesla itself as a company would be unimaginable without those subsidies and never would have made it. The other thing that he's done, particularly at Tesla, is when he ran out of government subsidies and his ability to get money from venture capitalists, there was only one place left to go and that was the stock market. So he started making increasingly bold, outlandish, and really fictional claims about his company in order to get a high valuation. which is what allowed Tesla to, you know, prosper. And could you talk as well in the film you go into the various situations where Musk really almost practically pulled a scam on government,

the recharging of the swapping of batteries in Tesla that enabled him to be able to get a hold of all of these EV credits from California. Could you talk about that as well? Sure. I mean, you know, very early on, in order to get this money from the government, he had to engage in a series of elaborate cons. And maybe the first one is the most outlandish and the most interesting. He had this big demonstration where he claimed to solve the essential problem of the EV. And what is that essential problem?

It's range. Everybody worries about range, you know, because unlike a gas car, you can't pull into a gas station and juice up your battery. Musk held this big demonstration which said, oh, yes, you can. We have a thing called a battery swap. And he holds this big demonstration where something strange underneath the chassis of the car happens and he claims to be swapping out of battery. And that for that, because he did it once, he was able to get an extraordinary subsidy from the government of California. But the thing is, you know, he claimed that he was going to try to do that on a grand scale so that, people really could do this. He had one battery swap station. There was a journalist there who observed that it never happened. Nobody ever went in. Well, people tried to go in, but there were no battery swaps because you have to understand the battery in a Tesla is a thousand pounds, okay, and it's usually covered with sealant and stuff like that. But Musk, you know, sort of gulled the government of California into thinking it could be swapped out like AA batteries. So it's really

an outrageous con. What about the self-driving cars? What you describe here in this documentary, the information that Tesla would not reveal, the number of people who died explain what took

place in the settling of these lawsuits so that information would not come out. I think the thing that we have to understand about Tesla's attempt to you know, develop self-driving cars, was that it was always a stock market play, because otherwise you were just an ordinary car company. But for years, he was touting his technology. And his technology

was basically a camera technology. The cameras in the cars, you know, take stock of what's going on around them. It feeds data to the system. AI then, you know, teaches the car how to drive on roads. That's the theory of it, okay? But he also never put in the redundant systems that Waymo has radar and LIDAR and so forth and so on. So the problem came between the distance of Musk's hype and pitch and what the cars could actually do. There's a famous ad that they ran in 2016 called the Painted Black Ad from the Rolling Stone song that, you know, accompanies it, where you see a car driving itself and says, and it's touted as a technology that in fact exists.

But really, at the time, that technology couldn't tell the difference between a red light and a green light, which is a pretty fundamental issue that you need to sort out for safety in a car. And as a result, as you say, over 60 people lost their lives as a result of autopilot failures. and in the case of many lawsuits, they were able to be settled so that the information about all of this wouldn't come out. There was one very powerful lawsuit brought by a woman who died, who was a pedestrian, who was literally killed by a runaway autopilot Tesla. and one of the things that was discovered was that Tesla was effectively hiding evidence from them, which they were able to obtain with the help of a Russian hacker, which showed that Tesla knew very well how and why the car malfunctioned,

but they weren't sharing it with investigators. As a result, there was a rather large judgment against Tesla, the first one. And I think, you know, going back to the campaign contributions, if I may, I think that this issue of fraud at or alleged fraud at Tesla is one of the investigations that he was facing when he hitched his wagon to Trump. And I strongly believe that one of the reasons he's flooding the political campaigns with so much money now is he wants to avoid investigations in the future. This is a critical point. But I want to go back to your documentary, Musk, featuring rare interviews with people previously in Musk's Center Circle, including Ashley, Ashley, St. Clair, the former conservative influencer mother of one of Musk's kids, she says she was offered a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for financial support, but she chose not to sign it,

saying she felt a moral obligation to speak publicly about her experience. Musk has disputed her account of a $40 million offer with $100,000 a month. This is a clip from Musk featuring Ashley St. Clair. If you were to ask someone on the right what they think of Elon, he's. He's a free speech God and someone on the left, he's just someone who sends hateful tweets and he's lost his mind. Both are very comforting, but both are completely insufficient to the immense amount of power and influence he has. And this is Ashley St. Clair from the trailer for Musk. He had told me, I can't be president, that I can help Trump beat Biden.

I say, I think we're going to win. And he said, I have 10,000 lasers in space. I knew that hours ago. What are his actual motivations? Do we even know this man at all? So let's go to who spoke to you, Alex, and who wouldn't speak to you. I mean, Ashley St. Clair would not sign a non-disclosure agreement. And the fear of retribution that others had.

And then go to your point that you're making about, I mean, it goes to Doge as well, taking out the very agencies and. inspectors that would be investigating him if Democrats win? That's right. So I think that, I mean, look, I talk to hundreds of people or myself and my team talked to hundreds of people, many people off the record, some on background, but it was tremendously hard to get people to come on camera to speak. Over time, we were able to get some key people, Reid Hoffman, you know, who was part of the PayPal Mafia, knew Musk early on. Justin Musk, his first wife, Ashley Sinclair, you showed, as well as a number of people involved

in the origin of his companies. So, you know, it took some doing, but I think there was a tremendous amount of fear that Musk would either sue them out of existence or would launch sort of vitriolic attacks on them on X, which has a kind of ramification. Because one, Once you start the rage loop on something like X, all sorts of crazy people come out of the woodwork, and the next thing you know, you're being duxed or you're being chased, it can be a very scary thing. But some very courageous people were, you know, did come forward, and it was tremendously helpful in order to give dimension to this character. But I do want to, you know, a lot of people have gone to sort of the ideological underpinnings of Musk. And I think to some extent those are overdone. I think he's always behaved in a very pragmatic way.

I mean, when he needed money from Barack Obama, he was, you know, liberal. But then when he, you know, in 2024, when he suddenly hitched his wagon to Trump, it seemed like this is the guy I believe in. It's his ideas that are so important. Well, he was also facing a tremendous number of civil investigations into his companies for abrogating workers' rights, for pollution, for all sorts of other things, and a criminal investigation into possible fraud at Tesla. Now, once Trump is elected, Musk is put in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency,

which really had nothing to do with waste, fraud, and abuse. Its two goals, as far as I'm concerned, were, one, to destroy the regulatory state. And he starts first with the agencies that are regulating him. And then the next thing I think that, you know, was a kind of key goal for Doge for for, for, for, for, for, for, for us was the access of federal data, not only classified information, but also access on all of us from our social security data, our Medicare data, so forth and so on. You know, the Doge boys, which we all, who we are remembers, these callow kids from some of Musk companies going into going into federal agencies and literally knowing nothing about. them and cutting jobs here, cutting jobs there, a little bit like, you know, firing the pilot while he's flying the plane without any regard to, you know, how damaging or dangerous that might be. So you could say that they were reckless and what were they doing and it was crazy.

But actually, there was an ulterior motive here. All these kids were very savvy about how to access IT and data at these federal agencies. They had what's called super admin status, which meant that they could see data across the silos that are normally put in place, either to protect our privacy or to protect classified information. And I'm told by heads of IT at those agencies that moving that data to SpaceX, for example, would have been as easy as a drag and drop, you know, taking a computer file and putting it into a folder. So that's a really terrifying idea. Now, I can't prove that that's what he did, but I strongly suspect it is. Alex Gibney, we want to congratulate you on your film. Academy Award-winning director's new documentary is Musk.

We hope to do part two and post it online. Happy birthday to Miguel Negara and an early happy birthday to Juan Gonzalez. By the way, steal the story, please. The documentary about Democchanal will be viewable online for the first time in an exclusive special event starting tonight. at 8 p.m. Eastern. If you live in the U.S. and Canada, you can watch the film in your own home and be part of the post-screening question and answer with me and the filmmakers T.Lesson and Carl Deal, moderated by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mariana Hosa. Find out more at Steal ThisStory.org. Join us and help support the impact of this film

that celebrates the importance of independent media. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez for Democracy Now.