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All right, Alexander, let's talk about the argument between Musk and Trump, the argument that took place over social media.
Trump using truth social, also speaking to reporters.
Trump did talk about how he would have won Pennsylvania.
And he talked about Musk's resistance to the BBB, the big, beautiful bill.
and he said that he was disappointed.
And Trump, this he told to the media with Mertz visiting the White House.
And then he took it to Truth Social.
Musk also took it to Truth Social.
And things escalated very quickly to the point where Musk was supporting some sort of an impeachment of Trump and J.D. Vance becoming president to the point where Musk said that.
that Trump is not releasing the Epstein files because he's somewhere in the Epstein files.
Things really got out of hand.
The latest reports are that the Trump White House is coming from Politico.
They're trying to set up a call between Trump and Musk so that they can make up.
But you're also getting reports I read from the New York Times, I believe, saying that the White
House is also preparing for a longer battle with Musk as well.
What are your thoughts on everything that happened?
I'm getting, first of all, say that I think Elon Musk needs to basically shut up and focus on his business.
I dare think he's going to win this battle.
There is absolutely no conceivable way that he could win this battle.
What is the point of all of this?
I think as a businessman, he should see that because he's arguing.
now over policy issues when he's just returned to his companies and is no longer a member
of the administration.
And I think that's an extremely unwise thing to do.
And I think if he continues with this, he will finally and completely antagonize Trump,
who I think wants to remain at a certain level his friend.
Trump was much more restrained in his response to Musk than Musk was in his response to Trump.
So I think that in his own interests, I think Musk needs to dial it down and dial it down very, very far.
And should remember that, as I said, it was Trump ultimately, who made Musk a member of the administration,
gave him control of Doge for a few extraordinary weeks.
I think that Musk implying that Trump owes his presidency to Musk is unwise and probably untrue
and, of course, greatly underestimates Donald Trump's role.
But whatever the truth of that, that's the past.
Trump is now president.
Musk is a businessman again.
I don't think it ever makes any sense for a businessman,
even one as rich and as powerful as Musk is,
to talk in this sort of way about the president of the United States,
who he might want to keep as a friend in his own interests.
I think what has happened is simply this.
I think that Musk, through all his energies into Doge,
I remember he was doing programs about this,
and we were saying that Musk, sorry, was trying to do
too much. He was clearly neglecting his own businesses by focusing overwhelmingly on Doge. He
pursued Doge, he conducted the Doge operation extremely aggressively for several weeks.
An awful lot of information, enormously interesting information, which historians are going to
write about for a very, very long time came out of all of that. But, um,
attacking the entire federal bureaucracy head on in that way was always going to be a massively
challenging and difficult thing to do. And I think what happened was that Musk eventually lost momentum.
He began to quarrel with people in Trump's cabinet. Trump eventually had to distance himself from
Musk. Trump is a politician in a way that Musk is not and can never be.
I think what's happened is that Musk has had to leave Doge.
The work there is clearly unfinished.
Perhaps it will never be finished.
He's had to return to his businesses.
I think he feels extremely angry and very, very frustrated.
I think some of this anger is with himself.
And I think he's boiling over and taking it out on Trump.
And I think he needs to calm down, take the call from Trump,
and they need to sort it out between them.
And that is what I would advise Musk.
If Musk continues with this, he will damage himself and perhaps his businesses.
But he will not dent Trump at all.
And the MAGA, this needs to be said, much of MAGA was never that keen on Musk in the first place.
Yeah, I think you're right about this.
I do think that Trump, that Musk feels a bit particular.
I think you can see it in the messages that he's putting out.
He feels betrayed.
Doge started out with a lot of momentum, a lot of speed, and it has fizzled out.
And I don't even know what the effects of Doge are going to really be, the impact of Doge.
But you could see that Musk feels very betrayed in that Doge has fizzled out.
And now Trump is looking at other people.
He's looking at other companies like Palantir.
He's doing other things with other billionaires.
And he's looking at the big beautiful bill, which I feel Elon Musk feels that he should have had some input in or some say.
You know, Musk is, it's like you said, he's the richest man in the world, extremely powerful.
But no matter how much money you have, you're never going to have what the politicians have.
Absolutely.
Which is real power.
They can enforce that power.
They can enforce that power with police, with intel, with guns, with military.
They may have no money.
They may be completely broke.
They're not.
But they could be completely broke.
But the power that they wield is something that the musks and the Zuckerbergs or the Bill Gates,
all these people, no matter what.
what ideas they have, no matter what impact in it and influence they have, they'll never
obtain that type of power. And I think Musk got close to that power. He understood what it
means to be in the government, to be able to shut down USAID or go after NED or whatever, whatever
he did with Doche. And now that's been taken away or that didn't give any results.
And now Trump's moving on. He's looking at other things. And I think there's a type of feeling
of betrayal and how do I go from the government and transition back to the business world,
knowing and seeing everything that was there with the government.
I got to look on the inside, the real inside, and how do I go back to being the CEO of
Tesla and SpaceX and all these companies that are amazing?
Absolutely.
He's been the most successful in businessman in the United States.
States since some, well, Steve Jobs basically.
I mean, I don't know of anybody else who's achieved as much as Musk has done.
And that is a colossal achievement.
His mistake was that he thought that he could take all of that enormous achievement
and bring it and apply the same methods to the federal government and the political system.
But he is not a politician.
And he doesn't understand the politics and federal bureaucracies function in a different way.
And I think he did actually, I think he did do some pretty remarkable things.
I'm not going to say that it was a complete failure.
I think learning as so much as we did about USAID and what it was up to was an important thing in itself, and that will endure.
I think that is something that, you know, even if USAID is reconstitute it and starts all its work again, which is very likely under a different name, we now have the.
record, we have the information about what it was all about. And as I said, one day that will no
doubt be useful and it may be very, very important. But what I think Musk thought was that he
wasn't just going to be the president's enforcer, but that he was going to become almost the co-president.
That was never going to happen. I mean, you can't, the political system of the United States,
the constitutional system of the United States, recognized.
only one person as president, and that is Donald Trump. It is not Elon Musk. Elon Musk forgot that he
serves at the president's pleasure, as every other official of the government does. And I think that,
as you correctly say, it's very difficult for him now to go back to the mundane but very important
work of his businesses and to forget all of the work and the exciting, incredibly important
work that he did as head of Doge.
But that is the reality and it's the reality that many people who serve president's face.
Yeah.
Just a final thought on all of this.
Do you think that Musk is going to be able to be able to.
to find his way back with Trump now?
I mean, do you think this is, this is, the argument was okay up to a certain point.
You could say, okay, they'll be able to make up, but then Musk veered off into, let's say,
Epstein territory, right?
I mean, can this stuff be repaired now or did Musk just go, you know, a bit too far there?
I think a lot too far there.
Yeah.
I think that Trump, contrary to what many people think, is actually somebody who can be pretty
forbearing. And I think he's worked out who Musk is and understands him very well. And I think
Trump is not somebody who is without feelings of gratitude. And he does remember the fact that
Musk was there throughout his own trials. So I think that if it were up to Trump, they could
patch things up. I think the person who may find that very difficult to do is Musk. He comes across
to me. It's very bitter, feeling very betrayed, very much the victim, very angry. And people who
have this set of emotions often find it very, very difficult to put them to one side.
Again, I've had to advise many people who like that, and I found it was very difficult to do.
Occasionally, you could bring them through.
Sometimes you can't, and I would have thought it would be difficult, very difficult with Trump,
with Musk to do that.
Final question, do you think that Trump could have handled Musk's phasing out his exit a bit better?
I mean, Trump is not the smoothest of diplomats, right?
Do you think he could have perhaps handled it better?
Do you think there may have been a bit of betrayal there?
From the standpoint that, okay, you know, look, Musk did help Trump get elected.
There's no doubt about that.
I'm not saying that Trump got elected because of Musk.
But Musk did support Trump.
X did provide a platform for free speech.
You know, Musk bought X and he saved to a certain extent.
he did save a lot of social media with his purchase of X.
So Musk definitely played a role, especially in the election, especially in the
beginning of Trump's presidency.
You know, perhaps Musk's time had run out.
I mean, it was time for him to go back to his life, right?
And it was time for him to exit politics and the power, all of the power that comes
with politics.
Do you think Trump could have handled it differently?
Well, perhaps.
Just your thought.
Just your opinion.
I'm not saying you.
I'm going to say this.
I think Trump went out of his way, actually, to try to be as careful and gracious, if you like, with Musk as he possibly could.
I mean, he called him in.
They were seen together.
He said, oh, I'm absolutely sure that Musk will be back in the administration again one day.
He didn't seem to be shutting the door.
I think in Trump's own mind, I think he was very fair and very generous to Musk.
It's difficult for outsiders to understand what an utterly ruthless business politics is.
You can't allow feelings of gratitude such as Trump might feel towards Musk to take complete control of what you do.
because otherwise what you're going to end up doing is you're going to give Musk everything that he wants
and eventually Musk becomes a more important person than you are. And in the meantime, the administration
itself becomes destabilized and disrupted. And I think Trump is enough of a politician by now.
In fact, I think in some ways Trump is a very skilled politician. People underestimate he's skill to realize that it just,
the point had come when he just had to let Musk go. I think he tried to do it in as gentle a way as
possible. But, you know, it's not unsurprising. It's humanly very understandable that Musk himself
feels angry and bitter about it. But that's the reality of politics. And it has been so since
the beginning of the beginning of history, basically. It's always been this.
way. I just want to wrap up the video. My thoughts on this is that, okay, it's very difficult
to understand how ruthless politics is for us. It's also very difficult to understand for us
what it must feel like, what it must be like to be worth $200 billion as well. I mean,
I imagine that changes your brain in a significant way. But my point on all this is that,
you know, maybe Trump did make some errors in the way he was constantly hanging out with Musk.
constantly with Musk, constantly going on trips with Musk.
It did seem like Musk was his right-hand guy in a way.
I mean, you saw Musk with Trump more than you see Vance with Trump.
I mean, do you think that might have been very quickly?
And we'll wrap up there.
Do you think that might have been a bit of an optics mistake to be so closely tied in with Musk,
at least to the public, to always be with Musk walking with him,
walking with him, hanging out with him, buying a Tesla, going on international trips with him,
taking phone calls with Zelensky.
Let's not forget that Musk was on the line at one point in time with the phone call with
Zelensky.
Musk was there with him on that call.
I think Trump went much too far.
I mean, it may have had some effect on the public, but the people that would have affected
were two groups of people.
Other people within the administration and the federal bureaucracy, they would,
have been very, very jealous. I mean, again, I have worked in government, and I know how that works.
I mean, you know, they say to themselves, you know, is the president is basically under the control
of this man with the $200 billion. And he's shutting us out and it's Musk is really running things
and there will be anger and there will be frustration and there will have been complaints to Trump about
this. Again, it's difficult to...
overstate how important those issues tend to be in government. I mean, you know, the jealousies
and the intrigues that this sort of thing provokes are enormous. And I think probably Trump doing
that fan the fat, fan the flames. But I think it also did something else, unfortunately, which is that
it made Musk feel much more powerful than he really was. He never understood that he was just
ultimately serving because Trump wanted him to serve, that he was there at Trump's pleasure.
The fact that he was always there at Trump's side, the fact that he was taking international calls,
when Trump was taking international calls, Musk was there, the fact that Musk was basically given
free hands to attack the federal bureaucracy with Trump's standing approvingly beside,
made Musk feel that he was perhaps more important and more essential than he really was.
And one of the arts of management is never to let yourself be put in that position.
To maintain a kind of distance, you know, you want to be close to the people you manage,
but you want to be appear to be distant from them as well.
I don't want to convey the impression that you have favourites which will destabilise your own team
and create inordinate expectations on the part of the person who is or believes themselves to be your favorite.
And I think here Trump perhaps did fail and did get it wrong.
And I think that he's now paying the price for that.
The price that Trump can afford to pay because he's going to remain president, it will
be Musk who will be hurt as a result of all of this if he continues with this feud.
Now, let's not forget that Musk was never a government employee.
He was an outside consultant as well.
Exactly.
Exactly.
All right.
Okay.
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