Becoming Elon Musk, Part Two
Added 2025-03-25 14:22:37 +0000 UTCIf there's ever been a Know Your Enemy subject worthy of two episodes, it is Elon Musk—currently the world's richest man, CEO and leader of several pathbreaking companies, ringleader of the Department of Government Efficiency, and (for now) Donald Trump's co-president. In other words, to understand what's happening in the United States during the second Trump administration, it's essential to understand Musk: what shaped him, his enduring preoccupations and personality traits, how he made his vast fortune, and why, in unprecedented ways, he decided to go all in on Trump.
In this second of two episodes on Musk, Matt and Sam bring his story up to the present. After offering a few concluding details on Musk's various romantic and familial entanglements, they chart the course of his political derangement, especially focusing on his seeming addiction to Twitter—the social media platform he eventually bought and renamed "X," which also is the name he gave one of his young sons. Musk's purchase of Twitter is treated as a case study in how the billionaire now tends to operate, from his penchant for making wild claims and impulsive decisions, to the way he manages people, tasks, and money. The discussion concludes with a theory of why Trump made such a show of buying a Tesla at the White House, and how to understand what Musk is up to with his erratic, ignorant work at DOGE, with plenty of eyebrow-raising details along the way.
As mentioned: Join Matt and Sam and Jamelle Bouie at Dissent magazine’s fundraiser on April 8 in New York!
Listen again: "Becoming Elon Musk, Part One"
Sources:
Kate Conger & Ryan Mac, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (2024)
Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (2023)
Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (2015)
Ella Yurman, "Vivian Jenna Wilson on Being Elon Musk’s Estranged Daughter, Protecting Trans Youth and Taking on the Right Online," Mar 20, 2025
Kylie Cheung, "World’s Richest Man Allegedly Refuses to Pay Appropriate Child Support," Jezebel, Mar 21, 2025
Faiz Siddiqui, "Elon Musk is worth $270 billion. He’d buy Twitter with an IOU," WaPo, April 22, 2022
Theodore Schleifer & Maggie Haberman "Elon Musk Seeks to Put $100 Million Into Trump Political Operation," NYTimes, Mar 11, 20225.
Eric Lipton, "Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts," NYTimes, Mar 23, 2025.
Jessie Blaeser, "DOGE shared its receipts — and some of them don’t match," Politico, Feb 22, 2025.
Hadas Gold, "Trump says he’ll buy a Tesla to support Elon Musk, whose companies are struggling," CNN, Mar 11, 2025.
Sam Adler-Bell, "Capital without Borders," Commonweal, Feb 8, 2017.
Comments
re: relationships with father figures and Donald Jr., I remember reading somewhere that after his parents divorced, he really hated his father because it was DJT's infidelity that broke up the family (the section on Wikipedia about this cites Ivana's book from 2017 so it's not exactly an unbiased source). Clearly Jr. eventually reconciled with his father, I suspect for financial reasons. But it's possible that he saw how showmanship and a projection of wealth were enticing to voters in the US and that he could use them to accrue political power conveniently. So he now performs the boisterous, combative Trump son on TV for personal gain. But who knows? The whole family is very intentionally dishonest in public, so I am never sure what conclusions can be accurately drawn from the evidence we have, besides their collective vindictiveness and capriciousness.
Alex
2025-03-31 14:02:59 +0000 UTCMore creators I know have finally gone from insisting they “have” to be on X to dumping it. I hope KYE does so too!
Axel Herrera
2025-03-30 21:04:36 +0000 UTCI acknowledge that what I'm about to say is annoying, so bear with me, but why are you guys using the social media website that's overrun with Neo-Nazis? I look at threads Sam posts and all I see are hundreds of vicious white nationalists calling him a traitorous Jew. Sorry, big fan, etc.
Georges Simenon
2025-03-29 17:55:44 +0000 UTCThe ability of Musk to spend his whole life hating his father who mistreated him, in part, because of Elons failure to be the masculine South African man, and then turn around and disown his daughter because she isn’t the masculine man he wants her to be. Transmisogyny looks a lot of different ways but it is clear that many men violently hate the idea that women could choose to pursue something other than a masculine ideal.
Lillian Scarbrough
2025-03-27 16:09:07 +0000 UTCTortoise media did a podcast miniseries called "Elon's Spies" about the pedi guy affair and Musk's other extensive uses of private investigators to go after people he dislikes. It's really quite insane + one of the only interviews of Unsworth out there where he talks about it.
Subodh Kafle
2025-03-27 13:45:01 +0000 UTCUnless I missed it, you guys still did not mention the Nazi salute. If you did, I'm sorry. But that's kinda THE thing that needs mentioning.
Garett Smith
2025-03-27 13:33:31 +0000 UTCThanks Andrew, I agree with you. I only included a brief mention of the litigation over Musk trying to get out of buying Twitter in the Delaware Court of Chancery, and off the top of my head I can't recall if the Tesla compensation package litigation came before or after the Twitter litigation—but yes, I did see that story you mention and thought of some of this. Appreciate you drawing attention to this! (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2025-03-27 12:51:52 +0000 UTCstefano harney talks about the consultant's power comes in their ability to claim access. they make a claim to belong anywhere. there's a power of having access, sure, but also of _demonstrating_ access. which seems like a relevant lens to view this guy
colin delargy
2025-03-27 12:29:43 +0000 UTCRick Perlstein (friend of the pod) has a 4-book series about just that :)
Addison
2025-03-27 04:41:25 +0000 UTCOne would hope, but the brain rot present in techno utopian weirdos is very very real. Elon reprimanding the one employee for not watching that birth means every other employee did.
Roflmaocopter
2025-03-27 01:46:54 +0000 UTCAlso, re: Tony Stark. Musk actually has a cameo in Iron Man 2.
Andrew Hoppe
2025-03-27 01:02:10 +0000 UTCFYI, one of the major driving forces of Elon and Tesla’s move to Texas was the Delaware Court of Chancery stalling and eventually striking down his attempts to have Tesla shareholders ratify his $59 billion compensation package. By reincorporating Tesla in Texas, he could (massive oversimplification incoming) circumvent Delaware law’s limitations on shareholder approval of compensation packages. In fact, the relocation was so significant that last night the Governor of Delaware signed into law some statutory revisions that constrain the Delaware Courts’ ability to police these kinds of things: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/corporate-capital-delawares-business-law-overhaul-explained
Andrew Hoppe
2025-03-27 00:52:04 +0000 UTCGreat episode! Thank you so much! You do the dirty work and bring us gems. One small point: don’t you think the “Emily in SF” tweet is parodic? I ask because I follow a Facebook page called “Did Silicon Valley Just Reinvent the Bus?” and people regularly share stuff like that. And others regularly comment, “It’s a parody.” The way to find out is to go to the source and get some sense of the context, which I can’t do because I’m not on Twitter. But this attitude begs to be parodied, so skepticism is in order. Thanks again for your great work!
Gabriella Gruder-Poni
2025-03-27 00:17:41 +0000 UTC(and having been a comics fan for a long, long time, i am dead certain those people are out there, just not with the insane amounts of wealth.)
Nina VanHeeswijk
2025-03-26 22:48:19 +0000 UTCok, yes, a *completely* different comic, but hearing y'all talk about elon's zeal to single-handedly "save the world" is like if the MOST insufferable nerd you've ever met read "watchmen" and their big takeaway was "y'know, ozymandias was REALLY onto something!"
Nina VanHeeswijk
2025-03-26 22:47:04 +0000 UTChttps://archive.ph/gzGpF There too
Kal
2025-03-26 20:39:19 +0000 UTCDammit! I suck at patreon commenting. I just posted a link to a threads/reddit that some reporters who tracked j6 folks organized re Elon musks educational bonafides and it’s I think a good addition to the fabulist origin story of Elon musk.
Kal
2025-03-26 20:38:08 +0000 UTChttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1593307541932474368.html
Kal
2025-03-26 20:36:25 +0000 UTCThanks for the reply Matt ❤️ I’m literally arguing semantics here, no hard feelings, your point totally stands. I’m VERY excited for the Covid retrospective ep!
Lisa M
2025-03-26 17:29:39 +0000 UTCMan, that Herman Blume line was running through my head up until it was mentioned…”best chapel speaker I have ever seen”
Parker W
2025-03-26 17:10:41 +0000 UTCGreat episode! Can anyone find that twitter quote from the person in SF with the “elite” friends who dislikes succulents?
Ben Rhiger
2025-03-26 16:08:02 +0000 UTCIt is genuinely disturbing at a root level. My heart goes out to you and all trans people just trying to live.
Garett Smith
2025-03-26 15:55:13 +0000 UTCSame, many of my coworkers at a home improvement store were surprised to be labeled "essentail" at the pandemic. So many large retail companies had ready made plans to deploy in case of a pandemic and Home Depot made out like a bandit.
Rhianna79
2025-03-26 14:39:42 +0000 UTCI remember his saying to not ride public transit b/c anyone could be serial killers. WTF? It's was around 2015.
Rhianna79
2025-03-26 14:36:36 +0000 UTCMy coworkers and I have been filled with dread over the thought of Elon looking into the US Postal Service and pretending to understand how the whole operation works, and this episode unfortunately did not help.
Peter Flynn
2025-03-26 13:34:15 +0000 UTCI remember vividly that him accusing the diver of being a pedophile was when I first started being like “maybe this guy is no good”
Tim Combes
2025-03-26 11:23:51 +0000 UTCThanks Lisa, I totally agree with your point and am sorry I seemed to suggest otherwise. In the context of my comment—the increasing use of social media during the pandemic and the rising value of Twitter stock in particular—I used "we all" pretty self-consciously to mean "people with keyboard jobs and some others who found themselves working from home," and wasn't trying to make a sweeping statement about literally everyone's experience of the pandemic. But I really and truly understand why such sloppy language would grate, and will try to avoid that in the future. Also, our next bonus episode is on the pandemic's fifth anniversary, and I hope we address some of your concerns! Thanks again for such a thoughtful comment. (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2025-03-26 08:53:32 +0000 UTCIncredibly grateful for these episodes as I want to know how to understand Musk, but sure as hell don't want to read books about him! Appreciate that you guys endured that so that I don't have to! As a Southern African unable to resist pointing out that the name Botha is even less intuitive to pronounce than Sam's valiant effort suggests in part one:)
Richard Marshall
2025-03-26 07:51:18 +0000 UTCLove the pod. Love the eps. Little bit of feedback here, and it doesn’t even have anything particular to do with this ep, I just heard Matt say it :P it irks me is when people who were stuck inside during the pandemic talk about how “we were all” stuck inside. I just don’t think that’s true. I don’t know what the numbers are, I’m going to have to go snoop around for some stats because Now I’m curious, but lots and lots of people were not stuck inside during the pandemic. I worked in a grocery store, and I’ve never felt more exposed or more socially used up in my life. Every day involved more interaction, more conflict, more interpersonal dynamics then any other time on my life. I think I’m not statistically alone in this. Lots of people in service jobs, health care jobs, factory jobs, transport jobs, we all still went to work every day. I just don’t think it’s true that we “were all stuck inside.” When I hear people say it, it always strikes a little resentful chord in me. I just always think, lucky you, you weren’t on the bus to work in your mask every day, but lots of other people were. Just some for thought :) Thanks for another fascinating ep.
Lisa M
2025-03-26 07:44:30 +0000 UTCThere’s no questioning of why these women who rely on him and have an insanely unequal power dynamics would perhaps publicly express sympathy or positive attitudes? For someone who is obsessed with his image, cannot deal with criticism and is abusive on so many levels? That doesn’t indicate to maybe dive in to some interrogation of his relationship to these women who are essentially enslaved to him because they all have underage children? I would encourage y’all to speak with non men, women perhaps who are experienced or experts in DV, coercive control, or the relationship between powerful parents who are able to control their partners who have had their children.
Lucy Sakiewicz
2025-03-26 04:10:48 +0000 UTCVery cogent analysis- and I've listened to quite a few , since it's so relevant now. Depressing too, since I think you are quite accurate about how appallingly ill suited he is for what he's attempting to do.
Sam D.
2025-03-26 04:09:37 +0000 UTCThat sounds quite plausible.
Sam D.
2025-03-26 04:06:53 +0000 UTCElon’s deep and abiding hatred for trans people scares me to my core. Now that he has weaponized X into a nonstop hate machine for people like me and my friends and loved ones, it’s very hard to not feel like we’re being crushed. Hard to describe to cis people, honestly. We’re a small minority, already ‘weird’ and aesthetically disturbing to the majority, with small and shrinking political sway, and the richest man on earth has us locked in his sights. The cruelty towards us and the language of dehumanization is terrifying. It’s a constant knot in your stomach, a headache, a fear of waking up in the morning to see what’s happened now. It is a real challenge to persist in ordinary life knowing that the powerful are working to make everyone around you hate you and ultimately remove you from existence entirely.
J English
2025-03-26 03:53:24 +0000 UTCThank you, Sam. Musk doesn't care about public service. I tell everybody that the same is true of Trump, and everybody yawns. Hardly Faustian, they say. A sense of public service is such a small thing to lack. Tell me, was it Reagan that brought us to this place? I always blame him, but I want to hear what you guys think.
David Gillman
2025-03-26 02:41:05 +0000 UTCYour ability to have empathy and compassion for loathsome people is of the great strengths of KYE.
erik w bjorke
2025-03-26 02:20:36 +0000 UTChere again. I think a possible motive for Musk's messing with federal agencies and programs is his special attention to eliminating programs for the most vulnerable people--it fits with a eugenics motive. You haven't discussed that side of him, but from what I read, it's there. Beyond just sifting out the weak as a theory, maybe the weak represent his own weak inner child and he needs to punish them in some twisted way.
Gussie
2025-03-26 00:58:39 +0000 UTCthe ways Elon and DJT operate seem remarkably similar. Both employing some kind of whimsical idea generation completely unfounded in facts, that they themselves actually believe is genius, because they know themselves to be universal geniuses...Then they use their huge media instruments to perpetuate their genius mystiques...
Gussie
2025-03-26 00:17:48 +0000 UTCNot particularly relevant to this episode (another great one, by the way) but I’ve just seen in that Trump has put L. Brent Bozell III up for ambassador to South Africa and I need somewhere to talk about this.
Zachary Roussie
2025-03-25 20:09:08 +0000 UTCI get a little thrill hearing The Ethical Culture Society mentioned on one of my favorite podcasts. My great, great Aunt Mabel was an administrator there for 30 or so years. My grandmother went to teaching college and then lived in NYC with Aunt Mabel and did her teaching practicum at the Ethical Culture School. If the event is held in the Mabel T. Burnham auditorium, raise a glass to my inspiring foremother!
Colette Katsikas
2025-03-25 19:19:33 +0000 UTCSo glad to have this part two. Cheers KYE crew!
Aric Rosenveldt
2025-03-25 19:03:40 +0000 UTCNew Contrapoints last night, this and 5-4 this morning, it's like Christmas in...late March. This episode finished strong. Plus we got a D&D reference. Nice. This is tangential but the closing words reminded me: seems like there's a lot more media lately with directives on how we're supposed to feel, like that's become a more central part of the rhetorical toolbox in American political discourse. Has there been an uptick in this, maybe related to outrage fatigue, or am I imagining it?
genrepunk
2025-03-25 18:16:33 +0000 UTCI refer you the character of Gerald Crich in the D.H. Lawrence novel, published in 1920, Women in Love. A prophetic version of Elon Musk, and pretty much every celebrity overachiever, in almost any field, in today's society. But you guys have yet to offer anything plausible that is better.
pslerner
2025-03-25 17:48:59 +0000 UTC
