Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist? with Max Chafkin | What Now? with Trevor Noah Podcast

Trevor Noah 0:00 [upbeat music] I think people sometimes take for granted that a scam artist doesn't necessarily fail, right? You know, talking to one of my producers earlier, and we're like, "10 years ago today, Elon Musk said, he was like, 'In 10 years, we will be on Mars.' He's like, 'I'll do it. We're gonna be on Mars.'" [imitates robot] We're still here, baby. You know what I mean?

Speaker 0:23 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 0:24 Okay, Trump's a simple one. What did Trump say? Ne- never forget. He said, "Day one, we're gonna bring down the price of eggs. They're coming down, folks. We're gonna bring it down."

Speaker 0:32 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 0:32 "They've done nothing. They've done nothing." Eggs have only gone up since he came into power.

Speaker 0:37 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 0:37 And now what's his story? "Biden left me with bad egg prices."

Speaker 0:40 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:41 You said, "Day one." You said, "Day one."

Speaker 0:44 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 0:44 And you said you're gonna do this thing. Not only have you not done it, it's gotten worse. The stock market is taking tanks like you've never seen.

Speaker 0:50 [laughs] [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 0:56 This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 1:07 Max Chafkin, welcome to the podcast.

Max Chafkin 1:09 Thank you for having me.

Trevor Noah 1:10 You know what I love about what you do is, I mean, you, you're deeply ingrained in the world of reporting around, you know, finance and business and, and tech and everything. But I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm oftentimes amused and, and enthralled by people who seem to be in a place where they were well ahead of something before other people saw it, and I wonder sometimes if it's luck or if it's them having, like, a premonition. You host a podcast called Elon, Inc. Right? And I remember the first time I saw the podcast, I was like, "Huh." I was like, "Wow, is there gonna be enough-

Max Chafkin 1:46 [laughs] Material

Trevor Noah 1:47 ... material?" [laughs]

Max Chafkin 1:48 We had the same concern. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:49 Oh, you did?

Max Chafkin 1:50 I mean, to some extent, yeah, or there were definitely people around it who wondered. Um, but of course, you know, it's turned out, it's worked out, like you said. Like, Elon Musk is everywhere right now. Um, even before he was, you know, involved with Donald Trump, we were making this argument like, "No, you don't understand. He's this, he's this big cultural figure."

Trevor Noah 2:09 Yes.

Speaker 2:09 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:09 Yes.

Max Chafkin 2:09 "He's, he's a mega billionaire. He has more influence than maybe anyone on the planet."

Trevor Noah 2:13 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:14 Wow.

Trevor Noah 2:14 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 2:14 And then, of course, he became, you know, obviously very closely linked to Donald Trump, became his number one campaign donor-

Trevor Noah 2:21 Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 2:21 ... and de facto, you know, senior advisor-

Trevor Noah 2:23 Right

Max Chafkin 2:24 ... or however you wanna think of it. It does feel, yeah, like we're ahead of something. On the other hand, I think even people who have been following this man for a really long time, and I met him, I think for the first time in, like, 2007. So I've been covering him for many, many years. Um, even so, it's been very surprising to watch, uh, the kind of transformation, uh, over the last couple years and then what's happened over the last, you know, four or five months.

Trevor Noah 2:51 Right. The reason I, I really wanted to have you on so that we could chat with you today is because I think it's easy to make the conversation about Elon Musk and for us to, like, hyper-focus on it because it's happening right now.

Max Chafkin 3:03 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 3:04 But what I think you, where I think you're uniquely positioned is because of your expertise, I think you can help us paint a picture that, that gives us a larger idea of what we're experiencing. Because you also wrote r- many people argue, like, the definitive, um, biography on Peter Thiel, right? And now m- I've learned a lot of people, you say, "Peter Thiel," they're like, "What's that?"

Max Chafkin 3:27 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 3:27 Like, a lot of people.

Max Chafkin 3:28 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 3:28 You say, "Peter Thiel," and they go, "What, what is that?" And then some people really know the name, and some people don't, and the people who know it sometimes will say, "Oh, forget Elon Musk. Peter Thiel is the puppet master who's running all of this"

Max Chafkin 3:42 Mm.

Trevor Noah 3:42 So I guess to set the scene for this conversation, when we talk about the technocrats or the tech elite or the tech, like, who are we actually speaking about? So it's, like, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel. Who would you count in that echelon?

Max Chafkin 3:57 Uh, I would add Mark Zuckerberg,

Max Chafkin 4:00 Jeff Bezos, um, and then I would throw in some other investors. Marc Andreessen, probably a name that is less familiar to people, uh, but the founder of Netscape, who's now a major venture capitalist-

Trevor Noah 4:12 Mm

Max Chafkin 4:12 ... also advising Trump, um, right now. And then there's this kind of, like, larger, uh, universe of guys who are connected to Thiel who are involved in politics at the moment. David Sacks, who's, like, running Trump's AI and crypto initiatives.

Trevor Noah 4:28 Yeah.

Speaker 4:28 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 4:28 Um, and, and, and it's sort of a list of venture capitalists and so on. What, what actually made this kind of helpful in investigating it is that Thiel and his cohort, you know, call themselves the Paypal Mafia. They, they actually, like, like-

Trevor Noah 4:42 They gave themselves a name

Max Chafkin 4:43 ... they self-identify-

Speaker 4:43 [laughs]

Max Chafkin 4:44 Yeah, as an influence network. And, uh, Elon Musk, he started a company in the dot-com, during the dot-com bubble, and then started a company that merged with PayPal, effectively became, like, a co-founder of PayPal. So he was in that PayPal Mafia, although he and Thiel were kind of, like, rivals, sort of friends, frenemies. Uh, over, over a number of years, Thiel invested in his companies. Musk invested in Thiel's hedge fund. There's a lot of sort of, uh, you know, back-scratching or whatever going on in this world. And the way I see it, you know, Thiel was a prominent backer of Donald Trump in 2016. He was kind of the first tech guy to back Trump, to say, like, uh, "Yeah, this, this is the guy." Uh, he, he spoke at the RNC, the Republican National Convention. He donated a little more than a million dollars in October of 2016. That was after the Access Hollywood thing.

Trevor Noah 5:38 Wow.

Max Chafkin 5:38 And then joined the Trump administration, uh, or joined the transition anyway, with this idea of attacking the, quote-unquote, "administrative state," the, which is really similar to what Elon Musk is trying to do right now.

Trevor Noah 5:52 With DOGE.

Max Chafkin 5:53 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5:54 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 5:54 When I wrote that book on Thiel, he had kind of all these secret connections with various, like, right-wingers, and, and Thiel was operating kind of behind the scenes, and you're, you're looking at, like, oh, did he, did he consort with this extremist or that extremist? And, and he was sort of playing footsie with the far right.

Trevor Noah 6:11 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 6:12 Musk is just supercharging it, right? And so it's just this kind of, like, dramatic- ... acceleration of what these tech guys have been up to for a very long time.

Christiana Mbakwe 6:22 I- I'd, I'd like to go back before you started the podcast. Why Elon? Why did you s- what, what made, what made you feel that this is the guy to dig into?

Max Chafkin 6:31 I mean, so just at the most basic level, he is, I mean, he's either the world- depending on the day, right? He's now far and away the world's richest person, but at various times he's been, like, top two, top three.

Christiana Mbakwe 6:41 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 6:41 He's one of the wealthiest people on the planet. He owns two very important companies. Um, Tesla Motors. Well, he's, he's the, he's a significant shareholder in Tesla Motors, CEO, effectively controls the company. Tesla is the most valuable car company. It is, um, you know, the leading player in electric cars, so in, in certain ways, you know, the leading player for the future of-

Christiana Mbakwe 7:04 Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 7:04 ... of cars. He also owns this gigantic defense contractor, SpaceX, which is the leading provider of rocket launch services [laughs] uh-

Christiana Mbakwe 7:13 Mm

Max Chafkin 7:13 ... to, to satellite players a- and to the US government. And he's got a bunch of other little companies.

Christiana Mbakwe 7:18 Mm.

Max Chafkin 7:18 And then he has this, as I said earlier, like, this, this cultural impact. It's not just that Musk is rich and, you know, controls a lot of people's livelihoods. People are really into him. I mean, he has a story that has captivated to, to some extent the world, right? There's, like, a lot of young people who look up to him and wanna be him. And then you layer on top of that, of course, his penchant for being weird.

Christiana Mbakwe 7:42 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 7:42 He's, he's, he's, he has, he has crazy beliefs. He has this complicated, very c- very complicated and involved, uh, personal and romantic life or whatever as a, as a father of, you know, 14 children that we know of. Maybe, you know, who knows?

Christiana Mbakwe 7:56 Mm.

Max Chafkin 7:56 Perhaps more.

Trevor Noah 7:56 Yeah, maybe more.

Max Chafkin 7:57 Um, [laughs] and he's always been, you know, right at the edge of doing what is reasonable. People who are coming to it fresh are like, "Well, what happened to Elon Musk?" And people who have been covering Elon Musk for a long time are like, "Well, like, let me tell you. Like, when he, like, fake acqui- like, did a fake private offer and had a huge fight with the SEC, and then, you know, uh, sort of kinda told the SEC to suck Elon's cock," and, like, you can kinda go back. Like, he's always been this incredibly, I don't know, for, like, a better word, like, edgy figure.

Christiana Mbakwe 8:27 Even as far back as 2007 when you first met him?

Max Chafkin 8:32 Yeah. And I think that's part of why, I mean, there are all sorts of reasons, like, why he became successful, but I think like Donald Trump, he has a knack for, um, like, authenticity and for, and for being willing to sort of say things that seem transgressive, and then using that to his advantage. Just like Trump, I mean, he rails against the media all the time, but he got incredible media coverage because during those years, like, if you were a reporter, he would, you know, he talked to everybody, and he would say crazy stuff. He would attack his enemies. He would-

Trevor Noah 9:08 Yeah

Max Chafkin 9:08 ... now, now back then, his enemies weren't, like, George Soros. They were just, like-

Trevor Noah 9:11 It was, like, BYD.

Max Chafkin 9:12 It w- or, no, it was, like, the cars columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

Trevor Noah 9:15 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 9:15 [laughs]

Max Chafkin 9:15 Like, somebody, you know, um, but so it'd just be, like, somebody, you know, some random-

Trevor Noah 9:19 Yeah

Max Chafkin 9:19 ... blogger or whatever he'd be mad at. And, and so he was always, you know, he's always saying provocative stuff, and, and I think that, you know, contributed to his rise.

Trevor Noah 9:29 Okay. Help me understand this, though. Have we missed something in Silicon Valley's shift? Because it, it seems like there was a time when Silicon Valley was the bastion of progressivism and liberalism. You know, it was, Elon Musk himself, he's got, like, tweets where he's out there proudly being like, "And that's why we have LGBTQ"-

Christiana Mbakwe 9:52 Mm

Trevor Noah 9:52 ... "uh, protections of our workers, and we believe in this, and we..." Silicon Valley seemed like that place. It was the place where people came together and said, "We want the world to be a better place." I remember when Uber was launching, and they were like, "Hey," and it was correct. They were just saying like, "Yeah, now if you're a Black person or a person with disabilities, this car will pick you up."

Christiana Mbakwe 10:10 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 10:10 "You're not gonna now get driven past." And it, it, it felt like this utopia crew that was trying to make the world a better place, and so because of that, they were often at odds with the people they're in bed with now.

Christiana Mbakwe 10:23 Mm.

Trevor Noah 10:23 You know what I mean? They-

Max Chafkin 10:23 Yeah

Trevor Noah 10:24 ... they were the ones who were like, "We don't like Nazis. We don't wanna see swastikas on our websites. We're gonna ban you, and we don't want racism, and we don't want people separated." Like, did we miss something? Did Silicon Valley shift, or was this something that was always there that is now rearing its head? I, I don't know which way to look at it.

Max Chafkin 10:42 Um, it's both. So going back to the beginning of the industry, Silicon Valley, people talk about the military industrial complex. That, that phrase, like, that is Silicon Valley. That's what Silicon Valley was. It was a bunch of companies that were making technology to help the United States win the Cold War. And like, so, so you, you know, you rewind the clock, like, way back, and this was, like, a conservative place. This was not a place, um, full of progressives. It was, it was a place that it, it, you know, in a lot of ways was kinda like, you know, pro-military and so on.

Trevor Noah 11:14 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 11:15 And I think that strain has always been there. The, the, the, like, kind of conservative or even kind of borderline reactionary strain, um, has always been in, in this part of California. But of course, there's also the counterculture, and those two things sort of swirl together. There was a moment during the, like, 2000s when, like you're saying, like, Silicon Valley seemed very closely allied with the, the Democratic Party, and in particular Barack Obama. Um, you know, I listened to your podcast about Elon from September.

Trevor Noah 11:44 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 11:44 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 11:44 And Trevor, you said, and I think you were kidding, like, "Obama did this to us."

Trevor Noah 11:48 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 11:49 [laughs]

Max Chafkin 11:50 And I think you're, I, I think you were right, uh, although not exactly. I wouldn't, I would tell a different story, which is that Obama, I'd say more than any politician, maybe more than any cultural figure, is the one who gave us that story about Elon Musk in particular.

Trevor Noah 12:08 Oh, small.

Max Chafkin 12:09 The, so, so, like, El- Obama, you know, this vision of kind of a centrist, forward-looking- Progressivism that embraces tech and the future.

Trevor Noah 12:22 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 12:22 He really embraced Elon Musk. He embraced clean technology.

Trevor Noah 12:25 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 12:25 Tesla nearly went bankrupt during the financial crisis. Elon Musk got a big loan from the Department of Energy, uh, effectively was saved from bankruptcy by Elon Musk's own admission by Barack Obama, by the, by the Obama administration.

Trevor Noah 12:37 Can we just pause there for a second and, and say this is, this is probably one of the things that I find I'm most amused and frustrated by.

Max Chafkin 12:45 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 12:46 Is how many times these guys' stories are littered with them being helped by the government-

Max Chafkin 12:53 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 12:53 ... that they are telling people they need to dismantle because it helps people.

Christiana Mbakwe 12:56 Fancy welfare.

Trevor Noah 12:57 It's, it's the craziest-

Christiana Mbakwe 12:58 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 12:58 ... thing ever. Like, l- listen, literally listen-

Max Chafkin 13:00 Yeah

Trevor Noah 13:00 ... to what you said. To me-

Max Chafkin 13:01 There's more. I mean, SpaceX, his rocket company, I mean, basically all of its money early on came from the government, and SpaceX, like, their big breakthrough was signing this contract with NASA to, uh, provide, uh, launch services to the International Space Station, also an Obama era thing. Um, you know, when you add up the, the amount of money that they've taken from the government over the years is, it's enormous. But it wasn't just that. I mean, Obama put Musk kinda at the center of, of, like, what, of, like, his idea for what the future should look like.

Trevor Noah 13:34 Huh.

Max Chafkin 13:34 And I also think Silicon Valley, these, these venture capitalists, these guys who are thinking about the future, they are really good at picking up the vibes. And so, like-

Trevor Noah 13:45 Mm

Max Chafkin 13:45 ... they saw that a lot of people were excited about Barack Obama, that he was filling up stadiums, that young people were excited. Like, that's their game, and they, and they said, "Oh, you know, let's, let's move there." And I, I think something kinda similar happened this summer with Donald Trump, where, where they sort of sensed that this is where the vibe was headed and-

Trevor Noah 14:03 I mean, they also have data that we can't dream of, right?

Max Chafkin 14:06 Yeah, it's true, although I'm always skeptical, like, how good the data actually is.

Trevor Noah 14:10 Really?

Max Chafkin 14:10 And how... Yeah, I mean, they definitely, they're definitely people who are driven by data, but I think these guys make decisions pretty much the same way the rest of us do. Um, although when they, like, turn

Max Chafkin 14:20 back and tell the story, they maybe use a little more data.

Trevor Noah 14:22 Oh, they'll try and wr-

Christiana Mbakwe 14:22 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 14:23 Okay. Okay. Okay.

Max Chafkin 14:24 So, so yeah, and, and, and, you know, after the election, after this last election, you know, and we had the inauguration and, like, all these tech guys had better seats than, like, the governor of Florida.

Trevor Noah 14:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 14:35 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 14:35 And, like, a lot of the guys who are associated with Trump now were associated with Obama. Some of the, some of the same people who were at the inauguration in, you know, 2024 were at the 2008 inauguration.

Trevor Noah 14:44 You see, this is so funny because-

Max Chafkin 14:45 Mm

Trevor Noah 14:45 ... look at some of the conversations-

Christiana Mbakwe 14:46 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 14:46 ... we've had on the podcast.

Max Chafkin 14:47 I know, right.

Trevor Noah 14:48 Like, where Josh says as a joke, but he says it as a real thing. He goes, like, "Trump is white Obama."

Max Chafkin 14:54 I know.

Trevor Noah 14:54 And he goes, like, "No, that's-"

Christiana Mbakwe 14:55 Very controversial comment from him. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 14:55 Yeah, a very controversial comment, but it's like, yeah, but you, you, you see, like, we, we talk about the overlapping voters. Now you've just thrown in another piece of the puzzle where it's like, oh, the fact that these are the same guys sitting in both... These administrations could not be-

Christiana Mbakwe 15:11 Further apart

Trevor Noah 15:11 ... further apart from each other.

Christiana Mbakwe 15:14 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 15:14 You tell me any world you know better than-

Christiana Mbakwe 15:16 Mm

Trevor Noah 15:16 ... anyone, like, think about in African countries. When they switch a regime-

Max Chafkin 15:20 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:20 ... you will definitely not see the same people-

Christiana Mbakwe 15:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:22 ... sitting behind the new leader because that's a signal that, like, no, no, no, these are my people and these people.

Christiana Mbakwe 15:28 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 15:28 But, like, the fact that they've done that either tells us that there's an overlap in the Trump and Obama-ness that they can resonate with, or it tells us that, that they're masterminds at getting into somebody, but they weren't sitting with Joe Biden.

Max Chafkin 15:43 They hated Biden, and I think-

Trevor Noah 15:46 Why?

Max Chafkin 15:46 And I think to some extent the feeling maybe was mutual. I mean, Biden, unlike George W. Bush, Obama, and even Donald Trump, did not embrace Silicon Valley and didn't... I mean, he did because he's a politician and they have, like, the most money-

Trevor Noah 16:03 Yeah

Max Chafkin 16:03 ... in the world. Like, but, you know, his, his politics was the politics of organized labor and, you know, American manufacturing, and, like, when he-

Trevor Noah 16:11 He's an Amtrak man.

Max Chafkin 16:12 He's an Amtrak man.

Christiana Mbakwe 16:13 Mm.

Trevor Noah 16:13 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 16:13 Exactly, and he actually, he sensed, like, correctly to some extent that there was a backlash against these tech guys, um, and Trump, too, right? Like, Trump was threatening to throw Mark Zuckerberg in prison.

Trevor Noah 16:26 Yeah. [laughs]

Max Chafkin 16:27 Uh, like, just a few months ago.

Trevor Noah 16:28 And shut down Google.

Max Chafkin 16:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 16:29 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 16:29 Yeah, yeah.

Max Chafkin 16:30 Um, Biden was, you know, was, was more skeptical of the tech people, including Elon Musk. And, you know, when Biden was promoting EVs, he made this very concerted effort to promote, you know, GM and Ford, the, the, the two big-

Trevor Noah 16:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Max Chafkin 16:46 ... American companies. They have union labor. Um, and that, like, really offended Elon Musk.

Trevor Noah 16:53 So I've always wondered. D- are you familiar with the story?

Christiana Mbakwe 16:56 Part of it. Tell it again.

Trevor Noah 16:58 I've often wondered if this is part of the reason we have the Elon Musk we have today, because Biden holds a summit at the White House, an EV summit, and he invites all the big car manufacturers to the White House, but he doesn't invite Elon Musk.

Christiana Mbakwe 17:16 Ooh.

Trevor Noah 17:17 And I don't care what you say about-

Christiana Mbakwe 17:19 Was, was it a deliberate slight, do you think?

Trevor Noah 17:21 I mean, come on. It, how can it not be?

Christiana Mbakwe 17:23 Okay.

Trevor Noah 17:23 But, and if you look at, I don't care what you say about politics, all right? Let's even, let's go back to that time. I think that is a terrible move because say what you want, Elon Musk has done more to push EVs-

Christiana Mbakwe 17:38 Yeah

Trevor Noah 17:38 ... than any other human being, right, in terms of, like, that, that position that he's in.

Max Chafkin 17:42 Yeah, yeah, but certainly more than, like, the CEOs of Ford and GM who were up there.

Trevor Noah 17:45 That's what I mean, than the CEO of Ford and GM.

Christiana Mbakwe 17:47 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 17:47 And so it was strange to me that he did that, but I, I often wonder if that was the moment, 'cause I remember seeing a shift after that where Elon went from being the guy who's like, "I, I don't, I don't get involved in politics."

Christiana Mbakwe 17:58 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 17:58 "And I, I, I just think that it's good for us to look at both sides."

Max Chafkin 18:01 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 18:01 "And Tre- Trevor tries to find us in a space where we, we're, we're not exactly looking at, at, like, what has hap..." And he was that guy.

Christiana Mbakwe 18:06 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 18:07 Biden doesn't invite him to the White House. This man went full Trump. I mean, he went, and I, I, you watch it intensely. So as a casual observer, do you think that that was a seminal moment in the Musk that we get today?

Max Chafkin 18:21 I think that is, that was- ... kind of the beginning of this version of Musk. And of course, there are other stories. Like, a- again, the story that you all talked about, uh, about Musk's, you know, trans daughter-

Trevor Noah 18:33 Yeah

Max Chafkin 18:33 ... and Musk's own, like, sort of his pers- I think all that also applies. But in terms of if you're looking for, like, a political act, that was it. I mean, that was the moment.

Christiana Mbakwe 18:42 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 18:43 And I, I do think all of those other personal things, on to- also COVID restrictions, you know, Musk got really mad-

Christiana Mbakwe 18:49 Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 18:49 ... about the, uh, closure orders, it was affecting his bottom line, played into it. Um, you know, I do understand why Biden did not invite him. But the thing Biden was trying to do was bring the rest of the auto industry into EVs. And in certain ways, that was what Musk was trying to do, you know, way back in the day. There was a version of Elon Musk, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, who would've looked at that and said, "Oh my God, that's great." Like, "I have achieved my goal. It's, it's not just Tesla, it's everybody." And-

Christiana Mbakwe 19:20 Oh, so you felt that was, like, an ideological impulse that was maybe environmental. He really believed electric cars are better for the planet.

Max Chafkin 19:28 That's, that, if you had asked me, yeah, like 10 years ago-

Christiana Mbakwe 19:31 Okay

Max Chafkin 19:31 ... that, I mean, that was the i- that was his ideology-

Christiana Mbakwe 19:34 Wow

Max Chafkin 19:34 ... to the extent that he had an ideology. It was, it was bringing electric cars and, and bringing the, the industry along with him. And, uh, you know, at times he had actually been kind of friendly with people at GM, 'cause GM, of course, had also done some electric cars. They actually released an electric car in the '90s and then killed it. I think Biden was trying to... I mean, and this is the account that the Biden people have given in explanation to, to sort of defend themselves from the argument that you're making, which is, you know, there are definitely a lot of people who, who agree with you. Which is, like, "Listen, this was about, this was about Detroit and everything."

Trevor Noah 20:06 I don't believe that.

Max Chafkin 20:06 But, yeah. I mean-

Trevor Noah 20:07 I'll be ho- I'll be honest with you, I don't believe it. I think, I think Biden's people were going, "We're gonna put you in your place, and we're gonna show you that this industry's gonna move on without you. And so we're gonna bring all these people in to go like-"

Christiana Mbakwe 20:18 Yeah

Trevor Noah 20:18 ... "We got this." And then Elon Musk, if there's one thing I've seen from Elon Musk, and w- what I've heard about, yo, let me tell you something. That man does not take slight well.

Christiana Mbakwe 20:26 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 20:27 We're gonna continue this conversation right after this short break. [upbeat music] Maybe we should talk about that a little bit more, to like, t- take a step out of the Elon of it all. I know the world has often been populated by w- you know, you always call them the thin-skinned powerful men.

Christiana Mbakwe 20:48 [laughs] Yeah.

Trevor Noah 20:49 I don't know that we've ever been in a time when the men have had this much power and their skins have been-

Christiana Mbakwe 20:55 And this much wealth. Like, this is an-

Trevor Noah 20:57 Yes

Christiana Mbakwe 20:57 ... unprecedented amount of wealth to accumulate. It just wasn't-

Trevor Noah 21:00 Yeah

Christiana Mbakwe 21:00 ... this much money to be hoarded by one person, right?

Max Chafkin 21:04 Yeah. I, there's an unprecedented-

Trevor Noah 21:06 One sensitive person.

Christiana Mbakwe 21:07 Yeah. [laughs]

Max Chafkin 21:07 Yeah, unprecedented wealth, and kind of an unprecedented, um, cultural impact and control.

Christiana Mbakwe 21:14 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 21:14 I mean, Musk ha- I used to talk about this with Mark Zuckerberg. You know, Facebook, you know, it's the, it's the biggest media company in history. Um, you know, but, but that always felt a little bit hard because clearly Mark Zuckerberg wasn't, like, going through his mentions, like, trying to suspend people who were mean to him.

Trevor Noah 21:31 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 21:31 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 21:32 At least, not as far as I could tell. Whereas Musk definitely seems to be-

Trevor Noah 21:35 Oh, he does

Max Chafkin 21:36 ... doing that. [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 21:36 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 21:36 Yeah. And so, like, that feels, at, like the combination of, of, like, power and control over our cultural lives, and money, like, yeah, that feels new.

Christiana Mbakwe 21:47 Yeah. And how much do you think this is fueled by his ketamine use?

Trevor Noah 21:52 [laughs]

Max Chafkin 21:53 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 21:53 I'm, I am, I mean, he's kind of known. That is, don't come for me, Musk. I'm not rich enough to buy back.

Trevor Noah 22:01 Oh, man. [laughs]

Max Chafkin 22:01 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 22:01 But-

Trevor Noah 22:01 I didn't think you were gonna ask that.

Christiana Mbakwe 22:03 But, like, y- you, 'cause people are kind of, you read all these articles and it's always an anonymous source. He's like, "I've never seen him be- like this before. This is the most angry or erratic or," you know. The parade, when he went to the White House and he brings his kid. You know, like, he's doing things that even don't seem typical for somebody who has been known for being pretty eccentric and out there. How much do you think his rumored ketamine use is kind of fueling this behavior?

Max Chafkin 22:29 I mean, he's acknowledged his, his ketamine use-

Christiana Mbakwe 22:31 Yeah

Max Chafkin 22:31 ... as a treatment for, I, I believe depression.

Christiana Mbakwe 22:34 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 22:34 Um, I think he said he had a, has a prescription. I don't have any special knowledge about-

Christiana Mbakwe 22:40 Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 22:40 ... his substance use. I've actually never taken ketamine.

Christiana Mbakwe 22:42 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 22:42 So it's sort of hard for me to know exactly, like, is that, you know. But I do think that he is behaving erratically. And I, and-

Trevor Noah 22:52 For him.

Max Chafkin 22:53 [laughs] Um-

Trevor Noah 22:56 No, but you get what I'm saying? I'm saying is-

Max Chafkin 22:57 Yeah, I get what you're saying

Trevor Noah 22:57 ... do you think he's behaving erratically for him?

Max Chafkin 22:59 That's a quest- that's a question, 'cause he is, he's different. And so it's, it is a little bit hard to, to, to, like, parse. Like-

Trevor Noah 23:06 Yeah

Max Chafkin 23:07 ... well, how much of this is Elon in a dark place, and how much is this Elon, um, you [laughs] you know, how much of this is whatever substance Elon's taking, and how much of it is just, like, he's a, he's a unusual guy. And I'm not sure that anybody knows the exact answer to that question. Even, even Elon Musk. Um, I, I have to say, though, um, you know, the Walter Isaacson book that came out-

Trevor Noah 23:28 Right.

Christiana Mbakwe 23:29 Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 23:29 ... what was that, like, two years ago, there's a lot in there about his mental wellbeing. And a, and admissions from hi- hi- you know, himself and from his own, from people who are very close to him, who have been concerned at various points. So, like, I don't think it's totally wrong to, like-

Christiana Mbakwe 23:45 Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 23:45 ... to, to, to ask, because Musk talks about it himself all the time.

Christiana Mbakwe 23:50 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 23:50 I mean, he's somebody who, who is constantly talking about struggles with demons and darkness.

Trevor Noah 23:55 Yeah, he is.

Max Chafkin 23:56 And to me, uh, that makes him actually kind of relatable. I mean, that's, like a lot of us, you know, everybody struggles and to some extent with demons and darkness or whatever. It's just unusual that he wears it so on his sleeve. Even more so for me than, like, the, the rumored drug use or whatever, or the actual drug use. Like, he did once smoke pot on a Joe Rogan-

Trevor Noah 24:17 Right

Max Chafkin 24:18 ... podcast or whatever. Um, is just the, the hours he's keeping, right? Like, he seems to be tweeting 24/7. Like, it-

Trevor Noah 24:25 So, so it's funny-

Christiana Mbakwe 24:25 By the way, this man has 14 kids.

Trevor Noah 24:27 Yes.

Max Chafkin 24:27 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 24:27 So who's looking after the kids?

Trevor Noah 24:28 Not him.

Christiana Mbakwe 24:29 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 24:29 No, not him. Um, you, you, you know what it does-

Christiana Mbakwe 24:32 Yeah

Trevor Noah 24:32 ... bring up for me, though? You, you, you, we talk about unprecedented wealth. There's this idea that I, I, I've been playing around with in my head, and I, uh, because I'm not a clinical psychologist, I'll never say what a person is or isn't, but I find it particularly interesting that Trump, Kanye, and Elon all have very similar trends if you watch, like, how

Trevor Noah 25:00 they are. So they have moments where people go, "Oh no, they're lovely," and they, in person, they're charming and they're this and they're that. And then they'll have, like, these, like, sort of outbursts and all of them have 3:00 AM tweet rants.

Christiana Mbakwe 25:12 Mm.

Trevor Noah 25:12 All of them.

Christiana Mbakwe 25:13 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:13 All of them. And people are like, "What is happening right now?"

Max Chafkin 25:15 It's, like, almost manic.

Trevor Noah 25:16 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 25:16 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:16 Have you seen what Kanye's saying?

Christiana Mbakwe 25:18 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:18 Have you seen... And then Kanye will come and be like, "I'm sorry and I'm da, da, da, da." We also have very seldom been in a society where that d- that goes, like, unchecked.

Max Chafkin 25:27 Mm.

Trevor Noah 25:28 Do you, do you-

Christiana Mbakwe 25:28 Yeah

Trevor Noah 25:28 ... get what I'm saying? So let's talk about manic, right? I can talk about, like, my grandfather. My grandfather was bipolar. Everything like that Kanye does, my grandfather did, but my grandfather didn't have billions of dollars.

Christiana Mbakwe 25:41 Mm.

Trevor Noah 25:41 And I don't know what he would have done had he had billions of dollars because broke was the barrier that caught him every time, and then the family would be like, "All right. Come fetch your grandfather. He's at the supermarket lecturing people about blah, blah, blah." "I gotta go to supermarket, pick up Granddad," and then tomorrow he's a sweet, little peaceful... But he didn't ha- You know what I mean? There's a barrier that most people in society will experience when they have whatever it is. These men don't have that, so to your point, like, when Elon's, like, going, being erratic, when Kanye's being erratic, we don't know what erratic plus billion equals, and I think we might be experiencing it n- Do you get, do you-

Max Chafkin 26:16 Yeah

Trevor Noah 26:16 ... do you know what I mean?

Max Chafkin 26:17 Also, I mean, there is this, like, ideological thing that we haven't talked about, which is that these guys, a- and you brought it up with Uber, but, like, they, they have been in various ways, and Thiel played a big part of this, but Elon has, too, have made this argument that sort of breaking the rules, transgressing, it- it's not just, it's not just acceptable. It's, like, a good thing. It's like, it's like a thing we need more of. That's their, that to some extent is their ideology. And like, and so Uber was, like, breaking the taxi industry or-

Trevor Noah 26:48 They broke every rule

Max Chafkin 26:49 ... or breaking the rules.

Trevor Noah 26:50 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 26:50 And it wasn't just, it wasn't just okay. I think a lot of people prior to this would agree that, like, it's okay if a small business doesn't, like, fill out every single form-

Trevor Noah 26:58 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 26:58 ... or whatever 'cause they're a small business. But, but these guys took it further to say, no, like, disruption, um, breaking things, kicking in the eye of, of the establishment, like, that's how progress happens. Like, that is, to the extent that any of these guys have really strongly held beliefs, that is the belief that kind of ties them, like, all together.

Trevor Noah 27:20 Let's, let's talk more about Peter Thiel. Who, who is this shadowy figure? Like-

Christiana Mbakwe 27:24 I find him very scary. When I saw, when I was, like, prepping for today, I was like, "This guy shut down Gawker." [laughs]

Trevor Noah 27:31 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 27:31 He's a scary kind of person.

Trevor Noah 27:33 But that's, like, who-

Christiana Mbakwe 27:34 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 27:34 ... who is Peter Thiel and why do some people consider him the ultimate puppet master for everything that's happening? And not, not, by the way, I'm not saying in, like, conspiracy land. I'm not saying, like, who is this mystery... No, I mean more, more in the way of, like, someone going, "Oh, yeah, this is how he helped Trump and this is what he's meant to Elon," et cetera.

Max Chafkin 27:53 Well, so he is, just to start, he is a famous investor. He is, he was the, um... He started, co-founded PayPal, became kind of, like, the big tech investor in the 2000s and 2010s. Um, many of these, many of his friends and colleagues, like Elon Musk, but also Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, the guys who started YouTube, they all worked together at PayPal. They all kind of went out in the world and, um, and did business together. And Thiel, in addition to all this, was a very conservative person, somebody who had been essentially one of these, like, college conservatives, really, like, before it became so cool.

Trevor Noah 28:37 Oh, okay.

Max Chafkin 28:37 So he, that, and that, that was really, like, his first, his first, like, entrepreneurial venture was this kind of right-wing newspaper at Stanford called The Stanford Review. And, you know, they would, like, rail against, uh, it's basically wokeness, but they, you know-

Trevor Noah 28:51 Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Max Chafkin 28:51 ... but back then they called it, like, political correctness.

Christiana Mbakwe 28:53 P- PC culture.

Max Chafkin 28:54 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 28:54 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 28:54 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 28:54 PC culture.

Christiana Mbakwe 28:55 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 28:56 And, you know, they would sort of, like, do something that is, like, right on the line of, of being racist or sexist or homophobic or, or maybe all three all at once, and then use that to, yeah, to their advantage. And, um, and Thiel kind of combined those two things, combine the, combined his, you know, conservative worldview with his, his business thing, and he's, he sort of bounced between the two and tried to use his political influence to, to benefit his companies, um, beginning with Palantir. And this is where some of these, like, puppet master theories start because Palantir, which is a, um, it's like a database company that does data mining for, for intelligence agencies and corporations.

Trevor Noah 29:38 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 29:39 And Thiel started the company in 2004 and, and it sort of grew in tandem with his, his political influence, where they were able to, you know, get government contracts and so on as, as he grew. And of course, Palantir, uh, uh, scares people because, because databases and data mining, you know, it, it, there are ways in which you can kind of, like, surveil somebody without actually surveilling them. I mean, you kind of-

Trevor Noah 30:03 Yeah. Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 30:03 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 30:03 And like I said, he became really the first tech guy to, to go, you know, all in on Trump.

Max Chafkin 30:10 Um, and as you, you-

Trevor Noah 30:11 What did he like about Trump? I'd love to know, like, what he connected to that... You know, because Trump seemed, people forget this now, but I, I remember when Donald Trump was running for president, he had no ally, right? So Trump-

Christiana Mbakwe 30:27 It was Steve Bannon.

Trevor Noah 30:28 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 30:28 That was it, right?

Trevor Noah 30:29 But, but Trump was the antithesis of the Republican Party as they saw themselves.

Christiana Mbakwe 30:33 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 30:33 You know, I remember, you know, whether it was the people running the RNC or whether it was- People who were running against him, they were like, "Oh, no, no. This guy is a pariah."

Christiana Mbakwe 30:44 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 30:44 "He's a joke. He does not represent our values." So the establishment Republican Party was not for Donald Trump. The media was not for Donald Trump, right? Uh, Fox News was also like, "Meh, who's this guy?" In that way. The Democrats were not for Donald Trump. Silicon Valley wasn't. So I would love to know, like, what did Peter Thiel see in Donald Trump where he's like, "No, no, no, this is my guy"?

Max Chafkin 31:07 Yeah, I mean, that was the mystery that I started with, like, when I got, started writing about him seriously and, and wrote the book, was just like, how does this, you know, he, he's like a, a gay immigrant tech guy-

Trevor Noah 31:19 Yes

Max Chafkin 31:19 ... get behind... You know, he's, he's born in Germany, um, uh, spent some of his childhood in, in modern-day Namibia, um, I think a short time in South Africa as well.

Trevor Noah 31:29 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 31:29 How does this guy, you know, embrace this, like, avowed Luddite? Remember, Donald Trump, like, proudly didn't use email.

Trevor Noah 31:36 Yes. [laughs]

Max Chafkin 31:36 And, um, you know, and, and is talking about this vision of the country that has nothing to do with Silicon Valley.

Trevor Noah 31:41 Yes.

Max Chafkin 31:41 And I think-

Christiana Mbakwe 31:41 He's talking about the miners, like-

Trevor Noah 31:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Christiana Mbakwe 31:43 ... bring back miners. [laughs]

Max Chafkin 31:43 More coal mining.

Trevor Noah 31:44 Yeah, we're bringing back coal, baby.

Max Chafkin 31:46 Yeah. And I think the answer was, well, there's, like, two things, one of which is this political correctness point. Like, Thiel really does believe left-wing ideas and tolerance and diversity were, like, holding back America, that that was, like, a significant problem with our country, and that all we needed to do was be able to say, you know, stuff, stuff that's, like, maybe borderline racist and get away with it.

Trevor Noah 32:10 [laughs]

Max Chafkin 32:11 And, like, that would make things better because then we wouldn't have to hold back or something. And, and I think the fact that Trump was doing that and getting up there and saying stuff that was edgy was a big, like, that was a big part of the appeal. And the other thing is these guys want to destroy the old order and, and, and build their new order and build a technological-

Trevor Noah 32:32 Yeah

Max Chafkin 32:32 ... you know, techno future. And Trump, maybe he wasn't super focused on the future, but he was saying, "We need to break a bunch of stuff."

Trevor Noah 32:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Max Chafkin 32:41 And I think, and so I think-

Christiana Mbakwe 32:41 Which is very tech, move fast and break things, right?

Max Chafkin 32:44 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 32:44 Isn't that, like, kind of the ethos of Silicon-

Max Chafkin 32:46 Yeah, that is

Christiana Mbakwe 32:47 ... Silicon Valley?

Max Chafkin 32:47 That, that slogan, um, is, you know, super associated with Facebook. Face-

Christiana Mbakwe 32:51 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 32:51 Mark Zuckerberg has used it and, and of course, Mark Zuckerberg was, uh, basically a mentee of Peter Thiel. His-

Trevor Noah 32:57 Mm.

Max Chafkin 32:57 Thiel's first big investment was an early bet on Facebook, s- like, one of the best venture capital investments, like, of all time. And so, and then I think the last thing is just these guys are opportunists, and Thiel saw... Uh, it's not that Thiel thought, "Oh, for sure, Trump is gonna win." He thought, "He might win, and if he does win," and I, I do kind of like him-

Trevor Noah 33:18 It's an, it's an investment.

Max Chafkin 33:19 Yeah, exactly.

Christiana Mbakwe 33:20 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 33:20 It's an investment. It's a-

Trevor Noah 33:20 He made an early investment

Max Chafkin 33:21 ... it's a high-risk, high-reward investment, which is exactly the kind of thing that these tech guys specialize in. But with Musk, I think it was the same thing. I don't think Musk knew for sure that, that, that Trump was gonna win, but I think he thought, "Look, I've already, I've already gone sort of, I've already been red pilled or whatever."

Trevor Noah 33:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Max Chafkin 33:38 "I'm already tweeting right-wing stuff every day. Um, what, am I really gonna harm my brand by, by putting a couple hundred million dollars behind Trump? Uh, probably not. If he loses, what have I lost? And if he wins, then I become the, you know, uh, the right-hand man of, of the most powerful person in the world."

Trevor Noah 33:56 [upbeat music] And now it's time for today's Self-Care Toolkit segment, brought to you by Amazon. Whether it's delivering medication to your door with Amazon Pharmacy or 24/7 virtual care with Amazon One Medical, thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful. You know one thing I always think about when we talk about self-care? Home remedies. I don't know what it was like in your house, but in mine, if you had a sore throat, you weren't getting medicine right away, never. You were getting a concoction and a prayer. Most of the time it was warm water, maybe with some salt, lemon, honey, ginger, and if you were brave, garlic. Yes, there was always the garlic. How sick are you? Bring out the garlic, because apparently, I guess, sicknesses and vampires have the same weaknesses. At that time, I hated it. I was like, "Please, just give me something from the pharmacy, please." But now, I don't know, I don't know what changed. Now I swear by it. First sign of a cold and I'm suddenly becoming, like, a backyard herbalist. [laughs] You know, it's funny how these things stick with you. And what's wild is how different they are. Like, depending on where you grew up, they completely change. My friend from India told me that he used turmeric in warm milk as a remedy when he was growing up, which honestly sounds like a latte now, but back then it was medicine. I've heard of people using onions in socks or, uh, steam tents with eucalyptus. People really do get creative. And the thing is, it's not an either/or. You can absolutely believe in modern medicine and still make your mom's mystery tea. It's all part of taking care of yourself, knowing what makes you feel better, even if it's just because it reminds you of home. [upbeat music] Well, we hope you gave you some ideas for your self-care routine. Today's Self-Care Toolkit segment was brought to you by Amazon. Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful. You know, we see this played out in a different way in developing nations, I find, so, because it's a lot more blatant and there, there isn't, like, like, a finesse around it. I mean, now it's become blatant in America if, I w- I would say. But, like, for instance, I grew up in a world where, you know the, and you know what I'm talking about.

Christiana Mbakwe 36:25 Mm.

Trevor Noah 36:25 There'd be, like, the, there would be this businessman who's about to go to jail, or their business is about to... There'd always be something that's happening. They're losing the mining license-

Christiana Mbakwe 36:33 Yeah

Trevor Noah 36:33 ... or something's happening, and they go, "Okay, I need to go all in on this candidate, otherwise my whole world is gonna come crumbling down." And then they would back them completely, and if the candidate won, they got more mining deals, they got more oil deals-

Christiana Mbakwe 36:47 Yeah

Trevor Noah 36:47 ... they got more everything. But if they lost- That was it for you. You read about it in, like, old Cold War Russia as well. It was like, "Okay, who's supporting Yeltsin, or who's going after Gorbachev?" It feels like that wasn't America's story. It feels like America was the place where people are like, "Yes, there's, you know, there's shaking hands between companies-

Christiana Mbakwe 37:07 Yeah

Trevor Noah 37:07 ... and businesses and government," but that's not what this country does. And now it seems like-

Christiana Mbakwe 37:14 It's very naked, right? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 37:15 Yeah, now it seems very direct. But this is, okay, this is what confuses me on, on, on, you know, we talk about Peter Thiel and one aspect. Elon Musk makes electric cars. Donald Trump keeps on smashing electric cars and going like, "People don't want these things. They're terrible."

Christiana Mbakwe 37:32 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 37:33 "Bring oil back, baby." I, okay, what am I missing there?

Christiana Mbakwe 37:37 Strange bedfellows. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 37:38 Yeah, but I, but I want, like, am I missing something?

Christiana Mbakwe 37:40 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:40 Does, does, does Elon Musk think ... The only thing I've thought of is Elon Musk goes, "If the car, electric car industry is destroyed, the legacy brands will die first in it, and they'll be the first to bail out because they'll, they'll panic."

Christiana Mbakwe 37:56 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 37:56 So Ford and all them will be like, "Okay, we're not making electric cars," and then Tesla will once again be, like, the only player. And so I think he's betting that he can weather the storm more than they can.

Christiana Mbakwe 38:07 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 38:07 And then he will have a monopoly in the space. And so I think for now he supports Donald Trump trying to, like, crush the industry, but I don't know what you think, because you're in it so deeply.

Max Chafkin 38:15 I think that the story you just told is, is more or less the right story. Like, Tesla has the market lead. So if Tesla has the best margins, if Donald Trump nixed every subsidy for electric vehicles, it'd be very bad for Tesla, but it would be worse, um-

Trevor Noah 38:30 Okay, yeah

Max Chafkin 38:30 ... for Tesla's competitors, which is kind of like what you're saying. I do think, like, what you were just describing is, like, an oligarchy, right?

Christiana Mbakwe 38:36 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 38:36 Like, the, the, these business people who are using, who are very powerful, using their business connections to, to, to, to influence politics and using that to influence their bottom line. I feel like that is what Elon Musk right now is trying to do, and people have described Musk and Thiel and Bezos as, as oligarchs. And I think there's, there's something to that, because the playbooks do feel very similar.

Trevor Noah 39:02 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 39:02 I don't think we yet know, like, we don't know how this story ends, and, uh, America, like, we may have some oligarchs or some would-be oligarchs, but we still live in a democracy, and there is, there's still the possibility-

Trevor Noah 39:16 [laughs]

Max Chafkin 39:16 ... or even the probability that this won't work, that, that Musk will not be able to, that, that, that yes, he, he is buying influence when he, um, when he donates $300 million to Donald Trump. But, like, how much influence is he actually buying? Can Donald Trump really just write him a check for, like, $10 billion?

Trevor Noah 39:38 Oh, okay.

Max Chafkin 39:38 And I think the answer, I, I think we're gonna learn, and maybe we already are starting to learn, that, like, the answer may be no, that Trump is not able because of Congress and because of all of these, you know, because of the countervailing forces, because of the fact that many people in the United States, including, you know, Donald Trump voters, do not want to live in that world. And so, so I think, so I just don't think we know yet what the payoff is.

Trevor Noah 40:03 So then maybe I guess for someone like Thiel it works out, because he seems like he's more on the ideological side of it. But Musk seems to be more blow with the wind, but really it's all about the money, just bottom line, bottom line, bottom line.

Max Chafkin 40:15 I think they're both, they're both about the money. Um, and, but, but Thiel is more ideological.

Trevor Noah 40:22 Okay.

Max Chafkin 40:22 He has more of an ideology than-

Christiana Mbakwe 40:23 So this, and maybe you can explain the psycholo- psychology of these guys.

Max Chafkin 40:27 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 40:27 How much more money do they want? They have so much. Like, because that doesn't feel like a satisfying explanation when we're talking about-

Max Chafkin 40:35 Totally

Christiana Mbakwe 40:36 ... the richest man in the world, and we're talking about somebody that made a venture capital investment that is unprecedented, will never happen again, what-

Max Chafkin 40:43 This is-

Christiana Mbakwe 40:44 ... after the Facebook IPO.

Max Chafkin 40:45 It, it's a great point, and it's, it's actually what some of them have said in, in sort of saying, like, how could this be corrupt? I don't need more money. Why would I as a-

Trevor Noah 40:52 Oh, interesting

Max Chafkin 40:53 ... we've seen David Sacks, who's a, you know, close friend of Thiel and Musk, say this. Like, why would a rich person be corrupt? They don't need to be corrupt.

Trevor Noah 41:00 Oh, brilliant.

Max Chafkin 41:00 And, um-

Christiana Mbakwe 41:01 I love that.

Trevor Noah 41:01 That's brilliant.

Christiana Mbakwe 41:02 [laughs]

Max Chafkin 41:03 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 41:03 It's despicable, but it's, like-

Trevor Noah 41:05 That's brilliant

Christiana Mbakwe 41:05 ... real thinking.

Trevor Noah 41:06 Wow.

Max Chafkin 41:06 Um, so yeah, maybe point taken.

Christiana Mbakwe 41:09 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 41:09 On the other hand, like, Elon Musk is worth, I didn't, I didn't check before I walked in. I'm guessing it's around 300 million.

Trevor Noah 41:16 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 41:16 $300 billion. That's not, like, 300 billion. That's not a giant stack of dollar bills. That's $300 billion largely in illiquid assets, uh, Tesla stock, stock in these private companies-

Christiana Mbakwe 41:28 Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 41:28 ... primarily SpaceX.

Max Chafkin 41:30 Um, these companies all do business with one another. So if one were to fall very quickly, then all, then all the others might, might fall. So it's not like ... Like, he is very rich, but it's not like his wealth is as, is, is totally stable. And-

Christiana Mbakwe 41:46 Are you saying he's low-key broke? Is that what you're trying to say?

Max Chafkin 41:48 [laughs] He's definitely not, he's definitely not sitting on a ton of cash. He's, um-

Trevor Noah 41:53 He's not, he's not Pablo Escobar rich.

Max Chafkin 41:54 But I mean, he, he, this is, this is not to say-

Christiana Mbakwe 41:56 Interesting

Max Chafkin 41:57 ... he's broke. He can borrow money, and this is, like, what he did when he bought Twitter. He, he basically can take some of this, some of these stock certificates, give them to a bank.

Trevor Noah 42:06 It's the biggest scam in the world.

Max Chafkin 42:07 And get money out of it.

Christiana Mbakwe 42:08 So he's kind of over-leveraged now, if, because-

Max Chafkin 42:10 He's-

Christiana Mbakwe 42:10 ... Twitter was not a good investment. We know that

Max Chafkin 42:11 ... he is, he just is not sitting on a pile of cash. And so if these, if some of these stocks were to fall dramatically, he'd still have enough money to, to have a plane and probably, and, and go after his enemies or whatever, but he just, he would not be mega rich the way he is now. And I, and I, and so I do think, like, they don't feel as secure as-

Christiana Mbakwe 42:34 Interesting

Max Chafkin 42:34 ... as we might think we would feel-

Christiana Mbakwe 42:36 Yeah

Max Chafkin 42:36 ... if we were in their, their shoes.

Trevor Noah 42:38 I'll say one thing to that. I've met a bunch of these men. I haven't met Elon Musk or Donald Trump, but I've met a bunch of, like, mega billionaire people, and I think we should never take for granted how much their drive is governed by just being invited back to the club. You know? I- I- it's whoever has the biggest yacht gets the biggest parking spot where, you know, you get to dock your boat. It's, it's ... There's a, there's something that comes with it that goes beyond, like, the money, and sometimes we think of the money because for most people, money is the thing that's governing your life. But once it gets beyond that, the money is just a number that determines where you are positioned now in life.

Christiana Mbakwe 43:22 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 43:22 So when you have w- half a billion dollars, okay, I'm sure there's, like, a lot of presidents who will take your call. When you have $300 billion, they're praying that you take their call.

Christiana Mbakwe 43:37 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 43:38 Money is now power. It's now having the ability to, what Max was saying, to shape the world now. Think about how many times we as people go, "Man, I wish they would..." No, no, no. These people don't wish they would.

Max Chafkin 43:50 They just do it.

Trevor Noah 43:51 They do they would.

Christiana Mbakwe 43:52 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 43:52 So they phone the Department of Education, the, you know what I mean, the Secretary of Education, and go, "Hey, this needs to change in schools." And that person goes, "I'll look into it." They go, "I don't like that the roads are like this." They go, "I'll look into it."

Christiana Mbakwe 44:05 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 44:05 You know? And I, I think, I think that's what we take for granted. But I, I would, I would love to know this about Elon in particular, and I know this is, like, a loaded sentence, but I, I keep feeling it, like, my spidey sense. Maybe I spent too much time in Africa. I don't know. It feels like a lot of Elon Musk is a scam.

Max Chafkin 44:21 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:23 And I know that that is a counterintuitive statement, 'cause people will go, "What are you talking about, Trevor? Man, man is the richest man in the world. He's a company..." He's ... Every single time he's had a new event, he said full self-driving is ni- it's now, it's imminent. It's imminent, it's imminent, it's imminent. There is still no full self-driving. They, they... And now people are like, "But have you seen how they drive?" That's not what I'm saying. A lot of the stock price is tied to what he says will be done or is achievable. A lot of the valuation is tied to that. But it doesn't get done. And that's why I notice an overlap between, like, him and Donald Trump. Donald Trump, uh, I think it was Jeff Zucker who said this about him, who used to run NBC. Jeff Zucker, the ... Someone asked him once, they said, "Yo, why do you keep giving Donald Trump The Apprentice and why..." They're like, "This, this hack failed businessman who's, like, this goofy dude who's not even a billionaire who acts like a billionaire, why do you keep...?" And Jeff Zucker said, "Can I tell you something?" He said, "This man is a one-man re- one-man ratings wrecking ball machine." And he said, "Because he will go to press events, and the press will say, 'How do you feel about the ratings being down for this season on The Apprentice?' And Trump will turn and say, 'This is the biggest rated show of all time.' And the journalists would go, 'N- no, it isn't. It's lost ratings.' And he's like, 'No, you're wrong. This is the biggest show. It is watched by more people than ever before. The Apprentice is the biggest show.'" And Jeff Zucker says he'd never seen a human being who could take reality and just butt up against it and force... And then he would, he would create the reality that he now said existed.

Christiana Mbakwe 45:55 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:55 And I, I feel like Musk and Trump do a similar thing. So Musk goes, "It will work, it will work, it will work. It doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work." And then a version of it does work.

Christiana Mbakwe 46:04 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 46:04 And the people are like, "Aha." And then, thank you, 50 billion. You know, and I know it's, like, a, a loaded question. I'm obviously asking it in a blunt way.

Christiana Mbakwe 46:10 Yeah. I mean-

Trevor Noah 46:11 Is he legit?

Christiana Mbakwe 46:12 You're saying, Trevor, you're saying the tech emperor has no clothes.

Trevor Noah 46:15 Yeah. I'm saying, is he legit, genuinely?

Max Chafkin 46:17 You, you used the word, like, scam, and then the, what you described was, I think, what, like, a tech Silicon Valley people would describe as, like, a reality distortion field. And, and they, and they-

Trevor Noah 46:28 Oh, I love that

Max Chafkin 46:28 ... that's the phrase, right?

Trevor Noah 46:29 Okay.

Max Chafkin 46:29 And it was used memorably around Steve Jobs. People use it to describe Elon Musk, the, the tendency for these tech guys to, you know, kind of like bend reality to their will. Or to say something, and, like, then the fact of saying it somehow makes it real. Now, I'm not saying that the, the self-driving cars obviously are not real, and he's been promising that, as you said-

Trevor Noah 46:50 Yes

Max Chafkin 46:50 ... for a very long time, and he's-

Trevor Noah 46:52 And I'm not saying they'll never be real, by the way.

Christiana Mbakwe 46:54 Yeah, but they're not real now. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 46:55 Yeah. I'm just saying a lot of, like, the success is based on what people think is going to happen, when it is gonna happen, but it's not happening. But now the very thing that they got into the position for, they're failing at, but then somehow they spin it to not be failure. Do you know what I mean?

Max Chafkin 47:12 Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think that maybe that's something that's an insight that, like, Trump and Elon have about the world, that it works now or something. I know the way I've thought about it is more, like, as a, like a bullshit artist. A bullshit artist isn't necessarily scamming. They're just-

Trevor Noah 47:29 Oh, okay. I'll take that

Max Chafkin 47:30 ... they're just-

Trevor Noah 47:30 I like that. Mm

Max Chafkin 47:31 ... you know, they're just spinning a story or whatever.

Trevor Noah 47:33 Oh, I love that. Okay.

Max Chafkin 47:33 Elon Musk is, I mean, he is an amazing marketer. He's taken a ve- uh, it was a very difficult story, electric vehicles. Um, there were no electric cars really at the time he started doing it. There ... He didn't own any car. He didn't have any cars to sell people.

Trevor Noah 47:48 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 47:48 He managed to convince people to give him money.

Trevor Noah 47:50 This is what I mean, though.

Max Chafkin 47:51 To-

Trevor Noah 47:51 You see what I mean?

Christiana Mbakwe 47:52 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 47:52 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 47:52 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 47:52 I mean, like, the business model for Tesla was, "Okay, we're gonna make this very expensive car. You're gonna give us the money for it. Then we will go make it, and we will use the extra money left over to make another car. We sell that ahead of time." He sells all his cars ahead of time when there isn't one.

Trevor Noah 48:07 Right.

Max Chafkin 48:07 He's been, he's been basically selling products that don't exist for his en- you know, his entire career, and then hopefully most of the time eventually delivering them. And as long as people, you know, believe that something is, that it's coming, that there is gonna be this next thing, it, it, it kinda works. And, and I do feel like we're in this moment where we're gonna learn basically, like, how f- how, how far that goes. Like-

Trevor Noah 48:33 I think in another life, Elon Musk has the ending that Elizabeth Holmes had-

Christiana Mbakwe 48:39 I was about to say

Trevor Noah 48:39 ... with Theranos.

Christiana Mbakwe 48:40 I was-

Trevor Noah 48:40 'Cause-

Christiana Mbakwe 48:40 ... Trevor, get out my head. I was thinking, this is what, what they threw Elizabeth Holmes in jail for.

Trevor Noah 48:45 Yes. It's the same thing. Elon gets money to make a car that hasn't been made and basically says the thing is what it isn't and what, cool. Elon is the same guy who then, like, convinces one car manufacturer that he has gotten funding that he doesn't have, and then convinces the bank that the car manufacturer's in when they're not in. And then gets the deal done, but both sides came to the deal because they both had information that wasn't in fact true.

Max Chafkin 49:10 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:10 And Elizabeth Holmes is in jail. And I'm not saying she shouldn't be in jail, but I'm just like, "Oh, damn." With a bullshit artist, you just need one person to go to Bernie Madoff you, to go, "I need my money, Bernie." And then all of a sudden the whole thing falls apart. But if no one asks you for the money, Bernie Madoff could still be around as one of the most successful-

Christiana Mbakwe 49:29 Yeah

Trevor Noah 49:29 ... money guys because no one would ask him to, for the actual money.

Max Chafkin 49:33 Yeah, there's a fine line between, like, fake it till you make it and faking it, you know?

Trevor Noah 49:36 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 49:37 [laughs]

Max Chafkin 49:37 And, uh, when you look at him and, and you look at all the ways he's failed to, like, live up to these promises, there are ways that he has succeeded.

Trevor Noah 49:45 Yes. Yeah, that's true.

Christiana Mbakwe 49:46 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Max Chafkin 49:46 And, like, and, like, those ca- like, uh, and again, if, it, it, what's so weird and, and kinda maddening if you've followed him for a very long time is he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Like, he, he wanted to have a mainstream electric car. He wanted to make electric cars, have them everywhere, and now, and he has it. And, like, the, like, if you get an Uber now, like, it's probably gonna be a Tesla.

Trevor Noah 50:07 It's amazing.

Max Chafkin 50:07 Or many of them are-

Trevor Noah 50:08 It's amazing how many of them are Teslas

Max Chafkin 50:09 ... Tesla Model 3s, right?

Trevor Noah 50:10 Yeah, yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 50:10 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 50:10 It's like, it's like a Corolla or something.

Trevor Noah 50:12 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 50:12 But it's not enough, right? Maybe the thing that, that allowed him to get to where he is now, it's like he can't stop it or something, and he just has to keep-

Trevor Noah 50:20 Oh, damn

Max Chafkin 50:21 ... you know, now we're, you know, now we're doing the Cybercab or something. And at some point, you, you have to think he's going to, you know, write a check with his mouth that he can't cash. Um, and, and that is sort of like what every Elon, person who's skeptical of him, every critic has been waiting for. But-

Trevor Noah 50:36 I mean, that's where people have lost a lot of money bidding against him, right?

Max Chafkin 50:38 100%.

Christiana Mbakwe 50:38 Yeah, for sure.

Trevor Noah 50:39 A lot of people. That's what, that's what makes him a par- a paradox. You know me. I love electric cars.

Christiana Mbakwe 50:45 Mm.

Trevor Noah 50:45 Love, love, love, love, love electric cars. So for me, I've always been the guy who's gone, "Yes, go Elon, do the thing," because I, I love that, I love that concept. I love the idea of Starlink. I think too many parts of the world don't have internet, and this archaic idea of, like, a cable coming to your house and now you don't have it, and then infrastructure, last mile, it's too, it's too intensive. It's a fantastic idea. Yeah, it has downsides with satellites, I get that, but there's... You, you know what I mean. It's a fantastic idea. There's so many elements of Elon where I go, "Great," but I think what, what, you know, rubs me the wrong way is, like, the con man-y side of it. I'll tell you, like, the biggest one that got me with Elon was him lying about the video games.

Max Chafkin 51:22 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 51:23 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 51:23 Guys, I... No, no, let me tell you something. I've been offended by few things in my life.

Max Chafkin 51:27 [laughs] The video games.

Trevor Noah 51:28 More than I have been-

Christiana Mbakwe 51:29 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 51:30 Yo, let me tell you why. I'll tell you why. I play a shit ton of video games, right? And video games have always been, for me at least, the bastion of, like, where you are because nothing else, like, worked for you. We weren't good at video games because we were good at catching a ball. We weren't good at video games because we were the fastest. We weren't good at video games because we were the best looking. We weren't good-

Christiana Mbakwe 51:53 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 51:53 No, but that was the place.

Christiana Mbakwe 51:55 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 51:55 It's like my mage was at this level because I wasn't at that level in real life. And I don't know how to explain it, but that thing for me, it was so insignificant that I was like, "Why does he need to steal that thing as well?" I get it when you're doing stock market things. All right, yeah, I may not like it, but you know what? I'm sure a lot of other people do it in different ways. But when this man came in and stole the valor of video gaming-

Max Chafkin 52:20 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:21 ... and proclaimed himself one of the top 10 players in the world-

Max Chafkin 52:25 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:25 ... and talked about how he does it, yo, I remember watch- And then I felt like a hater because I watched it and I, I said to my friend, I was like, "That's impossible." I've always said b- like, my whole life, there should only be two modes in a video game, not easy and hard. It should be unemployed and employed.

Max Chafkin 52:40 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 52:40 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:40 That should be the mode you play the game in. Because if you are unemployed, you play the game at a different level. When you're employed, you can't get the levels that some of these people get, right? For me, that was the biggest red flag, and I don't know how to explain it.

Christiana Mbakwe 52:51 Not all the kids. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:52 Let me tell you something. I hear that stuff.

Max Chafkin 52:53 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 52:54 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:54 And I understand why. But Nick Cannon has a lot of kids.

Christiana Mbakwe 52:57 And he's a red flag. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:58 Yeah, but I'm saying he's not a red flag for the world, for me. For me, Elon Musk lying about the video games and then acting like he didn't lie about the video games when he finally got busted, now being like... 'Cause when he sat with Joe Rogan, he pr- proudly professed how he... And he used it to, to, to prop up his aptitude, by the way. I think this is what part of the problem I have.

Christiana Mbakwe 53:19 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 53:19 He sat across from Joe Rogan, and Joe Rogan was like, "You play a lot of video game. You're one of the top in the world." And he's like, "Yeah, you know it, uh... They, they've actually shown, the studies have shown that doctors who use, um, like who play video games, actually they're, they're actually better. They got more-

Christiana Mbakwe 53:30 Yeah

Trevor Noah 53:30 ... more dexterity, and they're, they're better at, at using... And so yeah, I find it helps me, like, solve problems and-"

Christiana Mbakwe 53:34 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 53:34 And I can see someone going like, "Wow, he's also one of the best video gamers, which means his brain-

Christiana Mbakwe 53:38 Yeah

Trevor Noah 53:38 ... which means his brain." He gets busted. One of the top gamer streamers or whatever talks to him. He goes like, "Yeah, yeah, of course I get someone in China or wherever to play for me. That's what everyone does."

Christiana Mbakwe 53:47 But it shows that it's-

Trevor Noah 53:48 But-

Christiana Mbakwe 53:48 ... never enough for him

Trevor Noah 53:49 ... but that's what I, but that's what I mean. But I'm saying I can understand somebody who steals my car. I can understand somebody who steals my phone. But then there's, like, somebody who's gonna steal the box that my phone came in even though the two were separate, and I'm like, "There's a thief, and then there's a kleptomaniac." Do you get what I'm saying?

Christiana Mbakwe 54:13 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 54:14 For me, that's, that's the red flag with Elon Musk. If you can lie about that, and you've lied about the big things as well, what, what are the other things that we don't know?

Max Chafkin 54:25 I think you might be onto something, honestly. We're seeing this, uh, and I, I feel like this is something that the media was, like, a little bit slow to pick up on. You know, Musk has been saying all the, it's, there are these, there are these protests going on in front of Tesla dealerships and so on, and Musk is saying, "Oh, it's ActBlue. It's George Soros." Um, we don't totally know what's driving it. And I do think that the video game thing, both like you're saying, is this kind of like naked deception-

Trevor Noah 54:52 Yes

Max Chafkin 54:53 ... and one that was maybe particularly offensive to his, you know, universe of fans.

Trevor Noah 55:00 Yeah. No, I'm with you.

Christiana Mbakwe 55:00 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 55:00 To the-

Trevor Noah 55:00 No, I'm with you

Max Chafkin 55:00 ... to the young men who, like-

Trevor Noah 55:02 I'm with you.

Max Chafkin 55:02 And I think, like, Musk is becoming this symbol- Partly because of Trump and maybe partly for other reasons having to do with his extreme wealth and so on. Uh, and, and the fact that he did this, you know, thing that looked like a Nazi salute to, to many people. Like, uh, he's, he's become a symbol of something very bad for a lot of people. And I, I do kind of wonder if maybe like, maybe the video game thing was the, was the turning point of it. You're not the first person who said like, "Well, that's gonna be the thing that cooks him."

Trevor Noah 55:34 Don't go anywhere, 'cause we got more What Now? after this.

Christiana Mbakwe 55:37 [upbeat music] I'm really curious, 'cause we have a South African here, we haven't spoken much about his South African, your heritage-

Trevor Noah 55:52 Even, even there, by the way, 'cause Peter Thiel, I'm-

Christiana Mbakwe 55:55 Yeah, all of them have a S-

Trevor Noah 55:57 Yeah

Christiana Mbakwe 55:57 ... South African connection. Namibia, like all these guys

Christiana Mbakwe 56:00 have some Southern African connection, and it's particularly apartheid South Africa.

Trevor Noah 56:05 Yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 56:05 And white South Africans, and Trump's mission to help the re- very desolate, struggling white South Africans who need to be taken to America, 'cause of all the prejudice-

Trevor Noah 56:15 Right [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 56:15 ... they're facing in South Africa right now. What do you think about spending his formative years out there?

Trevor Noah 56:20 That was a joke, by the way, for anyone list- some people will be like-

Christiana Mbakwe 56:23 No, they're-

Trevor Noah 56:23 "Chris Geana believes it."

Christiana Mbakwe 56:24 Yeah, they're having a bad time.

Trevor Noah 56:25 They are.

Christiana Mbakwe 56:25 I've heard it's really bad for them.

Trevor Noah 56:27 It's actually funny. I was, uh, yeah, I was at a, a golf club talking to them about it, and I was like, "Eh, how are things?"

Christiana Mbakwe 56:32 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 56:32 And they're like, "It's really tough. It's really, really tough."

Christiana Mbakwe 56:35 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 56:35 I felt for them. All of those-

Christiana Mbakwe 56:36 I only have three cars-

Trevor Noah 56:36 All of those guys at the golf club

Christiana Mbakwe 56:37 ... and five houses. Um-

Trevor Noah 56:38 All of those guys

Christiana Mbakwe 56:39 ... but what do you make of, 'cause his father has kind of become like a-

Trevor Noah 56:43 Yeah

Christiana Mbakwe 56:43 ... there's all of these characters. You've got Grimes, you've got his eccentric mother. You've got like the woman that worked with him that has three children for him now. Like he, the, it's not just Musk for me-

Trevor Noah 56:53 Right

Christiana Mbakwe 56:53 ... 'cause maybe I'm into celebrity gossip. It's all the, like the parade of characters that come with him, and I think South Africa is the backdrop to a lot of that. What do you make of like spending his time there, how it informs his ideology, how it informs how he's engaging with Trump and some of the policies that he wants?

Max Chafkin 57:08 You know, I don't feel like an expert in the politics of like the modern day Afrikaner movement. Like, and I, and I don't, I'm not sure that Elon even is. Like I, I kind of think some of what's going on is he's just like drinking in the far right, you know, social media stream, and like there's some far right people talking about, you know, white racism or, in South Africa. But what you're saying though, I mean, the, there has to be some part of the South Africanness that is informing this. And I, I thought about this a lot with Thiel. He was born in Germany, family moved to the United States, and then he spent a couple years, as I said, first in South Africa and then in modern-day Namibia. His father worked at a uranium mine. If you're working at a uranium mine in Namibia, which at the time was like basically a colony, a, a, a client state of South Africa, an apartheid state, you are, like as complicit in the apartheid system as you could possibly be. You are making, you are producing, you're not only like dealing with a labor structure that is benefiting from apartheid, but you are trying to produce nuclear weapons-

Trevor Noah 58:14 Mm-hmm

Christiana Mbakwe 58:14 Mm

Max Chafkin 58:14 ... so that you can defend that system from the world that is trying to shut you down. And like all these guys who had family connections in South Africa-

Christiana Mbakwe 58:23 And they're all white, by the way, which I think-

Max Chafkin 58:24 White guys

Christiana Mbakwe 58:24 ... is very important

Max Chafkin 58:24 Yeah. And they went to American college campuses, and, and, uh, in Thiel's case, it's the 1980s, apartheid was like the cause on the left.

Trevor Noah 58:35 Oh, yes.

Max Chafkin 58:36 And I think what I think was a political statement by the-

Trevor Noah 58:39 Hmm

Max Chafkin 58:39 ... anti-apartheid activists, you know, at Stanford in the '80s, but you process it as a personal attack.

Trevor Noah 58:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 58:45 Attacking me and my family.

Max Chafkin 58:46 My family.

Christiana Mbakwe 58:46 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 58:46 And like I did some reporting, talking to people who went to college with him, and where he would get into these arguments. He, he's, he's denied, I should say, supporting apartheid or, or, or expressing pro-apartheid views, but there are certainly classmates of his who, who remember him doing so. And yeah.

Trevor Noah 59:01 Can I just interject and tell you something? And this is something that really plagues me. I, I have yet to meet someone who supported apartheid. It's really weird, guys.

Christiana Mbakwe 59:12 Are you being, is this, are you being serious?

Trevor Noah 59:14 I've, I have, I, I am yet to meet a person. It really worries me, 'cause it's almost like apartheid just happened by itself.

Max Chafkin 59:20 [laughs]

Christiana Mbakwe 59:21 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:21 I mean, no, everything you're saying here.

Christiana Mbakwe 59:23 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 59:23 Let me tell you something now. I have yet to meet a person anywhere in the world who was in apartheid, for instance, and who goes like, "Yeah, no, Trevor, I didn't want those Blacks and white."

Christiana Mbakwe 59:33 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:34 No. I have yet, every person I'll talk to will go like-

Christiana Mbakwe 59:36 Everyone wanted free Mandela

Trevor Noah 59:37 ... they'll go like, "I was totally against it." Then I'm like, "Huh, everyone was against it. Huh, so who was for it?" 'Cause it seems like there were a lot of people for it. Seems like a lot of people didn't want the thing to stop.

Christiana Mbakwe 59:48 A lot of people benefited from it.

Trevor Noah 59:49 It seems like a lot of pe-

Christiana Mbakwe 59:50 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:50 Huh. For a thing that nobody wanted to end. But anyway, I, forgive me. I just, uh-

Max Chafkin 59:54 Well, anyway, yeah. Uh, what's weird though is when I first started talking to Elon, he made apartheid part of the reason he wanted to come to North America. He said, "I, I left South Africa because I was so against apartheid." And, and like he, and he, he's always very careful.

Trevor Noah 1:00:12 Wait, how old was he when he left?

Max Chafkin 1:00:14 He was like 17 or something.

Trevor Noah 1:00:15 Okay.

Max Chafkin 1:00:16 That's the story he told. And of course, you know, the, he's, the story has, has shifted a little bit.

Trevor Noah 1:00:22 Oh.

Max Chafkin 1:00:22 I mean, his, you know, now he's very concerned as, you know, as you're saying, about the, you know, the property rights of the white farmers or whatever.

Trevor Noah 1:00:28 Yes. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Max Chafkin 1:00:28 Um, and, and so, so I don't know, like, what, what the truth of, what the truth of it is there, but I do think there might have been a sense of like feeling attacked and then-

Trevor Noah 1:00:37 Yeah

Max Chafkin 1:00:37 ... reacting, you know, in an, in a sort of extreme way.

Trevor Noah 1:00:40 So I don't know that this is correct at all, but I've been trying to sit and figure out what it could be, and I, I think some of it is this. I think a lot of these people, a lot of these tech leaders who came through, like South Africa, and like were, you know, in and around apartheid at the time, they witnessed something that is very unique to countries like South Africa, and that is the proximity between business and government, and how the two work hand in hand to further each other's goals, right? So apartheid's not a free system Apartheid is not a world where the best company wins. Apartheid is not a world where the, the best speech is accelerated. No. Apartheid is a system where the government says, "Will you help us to turn coal into oil because we've been oil embargoed? Yes? You have the business. We will give you all the resources you need to give us all the oil we need." And then all the anti-apartheid companies, they left South Africa, right? But the system is set up in such a way where there's, like, a direct ... It's very, very similar to, like, Cold War Russia. You know?

Christiana Mbakwe 1:01:42 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:01:42 It's like you help the government, the government helps you. You help the government, the government helps you. And then these people come to America, where that's, like, frowned upon. It's almost like, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Church and state, things are separate here. You don't, you don't do that. But I think they still have this idea where they go like, "No, no, no. Hey, government. We help you, and you help us."

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:01 And they have the racism, too.

Trevor Noah 1:02:03 They, yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:03 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:02:03 And I think f- for instance, when you talk about ideologies, if you look at Elon's, like, plight against South Africa, again, I'm not sure this is perfect, but I saw it start when he wasn't able to launch Starlink in South Africa because in South Africa the government says they want to make sure that you have minority ownership when you launch a company. And the reason the government did this, and they haven't done it perfectly, by the way. I'm never gonna say it's the poster child. But what they were trying to do is they were going, "Guys, we've learned

Trevor Noah 1:02:30 that money gets closed off. So if we don't make sure that companies have representation in terms of who owns the companies, the money's never gonna go anywhere."

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:39 And when you say minority ownership, South Africa's m- a Black majority-

Trevor Noah 1:02:43 Yes

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:43 ... coun- sort of what-

Trevor Noah 1:02:45 No, no, what, what I mean is, like, sorry, now what we say minority here.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:47 Okay. Now what you say minority.

Trevor Noah 1:02:47 So, yeah.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:48 Just so I'm saying it-

Trevor Noah 1:02:48 So I'm saying, like-

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:48 ... clarify for the audience

Trevor Noah 1:02:48 ... Black, people of color. Yeah, yeah

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:50 People of color

Trevor Noah 1:02:50 People of color.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:50 So that explains the anti-D.E.I. thing he has.

Trevor Noah 1:02:52 Exactly.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:52 He's just like, "Oh, the plane crashed."

Trevor Noah 1:02:54 So Elon-

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:54 D.E.I.

Trevor Noah 1:02:55 So Elon, I think-

Christiana Mbakwe 1:02:56 Got it

Trevor Noah 1:02:56 ... there went, "You're not gonna let me open this," and not only did they not let him, they then banned Starlink. And then now Starlink, you can't use it in So- even though it's a satellite thing, they don't al- enable it in South Africa. And I think Elon now again was personally, he was like, "Oh."

Christiana Mbakwe 1:03:11 Okay.

Trevor Noah 1:03:11 "I'm gonna find a way to break the system." And one thing I've heard about Elon from everyone who's worked in and around his orbit is he is supremely talented at finding the right lever to pull, and he will pull it. It doesn't matter what he's trying to do, but Elon will go, "Oh, this is, that's the lever. I need to get people working harder. That's the lever."

Christiana Mbakwe 1:03:35 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:03:35 "I need to get these people doing this. That's the lever." To start businesses that break things and don't follow the rules, what do you need? You need the people who make the rules to lose some of their power. What's the best way to get those people to lose some of their power? You find the people who are the least happy. You find the people who have the most hate fomenting.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:03:52 Yeah, agreed. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:03:53 And you encourage that, and you grow it, and you nestle. And so what you, if, if it, essentially, I love that you said it in the beginning with Peter Thiel. These guys are essentially investing in disruptors all around the world.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:04:04 They're just so, they're very opportunistic.

Trevor Noah 1:04:05 They're seed funding.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:04:07 Okay

Trevor Noah 1:04:07 Everywhere. That's, they're using the same principles of, like, money. They go, "Christiana, tell me about your movement. Huh."

Christiana Mbakwe 1:04:13 Oh.

Trevor Noah 1:04:13 "You believe that governments shouldn't exist. And you know what?"

Christiana Mbakwe 1:04:15 They're giving me an idea now, Trevor.

Trevor Noah 1:04:15 "You know what? This sounds like a good company."

Christiana Mbakwe 1:04:17 I should get some money. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:04:17 Yeah. They go, "This is a great company. You know what? It might be a risky bet, but it's nothing in the greater scheme of things. I'm just gonna throw you a bone, and I'm gonna throw you a bone, and I'm gonna throw you a bone." And as we see it growing around the world, you just need a few unicorns for all your bets to pay off. You need a few billion-dollar companies to make up for every, like, $100,000 you've invested, and I think that's what he's doing there. I think that's what he's doing in Germany. 'Cause again, Germany, people forget this. People are like, "Why is Elon involved?" Which place makes some of the, like, most expensive and most important cars in the world? Germany.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:04:50 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:04:51 If Germany collapses, and if the German car economy collapses-

Christiana Mbakwe 1:04:55 Oh, gee

Trevor Noah 1:04:55 ... seems like there's a big winner somewhere.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:04:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:04:57 His name is Elon Musk. Places that he doesn't care about, it's because they don't in some way, shape, or form benefit him. Do you know what I mean?

Christiana Mbakwe 1:05:03 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 1:05:04 I think you're right. I think there's al- there's always an angle with him and, like, al- often a business angle. Like, I don't think he's ever ... I mean, he is, he does obviously have some ideology, but, but like you said about, um, the apartheid system and this, this idea of, like, of becoming sort of a client of the government or something like that, like, he has been so freaking good at getting the government to give him money.

Trevor Noah 1:05:29 Yeah, brilliant.

Max Chafkin 1:05:29 And finding, like you said, finding these levers. Um, and those levers can be, they can be, like, reaching regular people and saying, like, "Here is this awesome product," but they also are often and have often been, like, political levers. And, like, I, I agree. I don't fully understand the, the dynamics of German politics and what exactly he's doing with the AfD, uh, which is the far-right party-

Trevor Noah 1:05:53 Mm-hmm

Max Chafkin 1:05:53 ... in Germany, but it definitely, everything I know about Elon tells me there's an angle there, and whether it's, uh, something having to do with the auto industry. You know, he has union issues in Germany.

Trevor Noah 1:06:05 Mm.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:06:05 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 1:06:06 Or perhaps, you know, Europeans have a space, uh, agency. They compete with SpaceX. Maybe looking for more contracts there or whatever, but he's, he's trying to find an in, and, and i- it- it's just there, you know, there's obviously there's collateral damage sometimes when, when you're, when that's your, um, when that's your modus operandi.

Trevor Noah 1:06:26 I know we're gonna have to let you go, so it's a, it's a, it's a terrible question to ask you because we are finding you in the middle of a story.

Christiana Mbakwe 1:06:34 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:06:34 This is a book that hasn't concluded. But if you were to try and not necessarily predict what you think will happen, but maybe a more interesting one for me would be what do you predict their end goal and their aim is? 'Cause, you know, sort of to what Christiana was saying, they have the money, or they have the, the, the access to the money. They have the valuation. They have, you know, the power, et cetera. But what, what, what is, is there an end goal? Like,

Trevor Noah 1:07:00 w- does Peter Thiel rest when something is achieved? Does Elon Musk rest, rest when something is achieved, or are they, as you said, like a, like a fusion reaction that is now powering itself infinitely?

Max Chafkin 1:07:11 Uh, I think with Thiel- There is a more calculating approach. He has not gone all in with Trump, and there were a lot of people around him and in the kind of right-wing Silicon Valley world saying like, "Oh, what a huge mistake." I mean, he was, he was the, the earliest Trump supporter.

Trevor Noah 1:07:30 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 1:07:30 Like, why is he not supporting Trump? But I think, like, we are living, as you said, in that moment, and we're, and there has been, you know, as we're talking, like, this kind of high of, of Trump support and Trump's power, a- and that won't last. And, and I think Thiel has set himself well, set himself up well i- in case it doesn't last.

Trevor Noah 1:07:50 Hmm.

Max Chafkin 1:07:50 'Cause he has a, he has a very close relationship with JD Vance, who's Trump's, um, you know, Trump's vice president, and, and who Thiel basically, uh, helped him start his political career, was his, his main donor to, to Vance's Senate campaign. So if, if Vance, uh, you know, becomes the Republican candidate, uh, in 2028, as I think he's probably the favorite to do, Thiel has an in. Musk, I think, is somebody who needs this kind of endless crisis, a sort of endless series of, of, I don't know, like, games or something.

Trevor Noah 1:08:21 Mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 1:08:22 What he wants, his end game is he sells all the cars. He sells all the rocket launches. He's, uh, worth way more money. He's even said this, you know. He thinks Tesla, his car company, should be worth, you know, $30 trillion or something.

Trevor Noah 1:08:35 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Max Chafkin 1:08:35 Like, if that's worth $30 trillion, Elon is gonna be worth, you know, like, I, I don't know, like, 6 trillion, 7 trillion-

Trevor Noah 1:08:42 Yeah, yeah

Max Chafkin 1:08:42 ... more probably. So for him, it's, it's just, like, way more dominance, uh, being able to sort of-

Trevor Noah 1:08:49 A god king

Max Chafkin 1:08:50 ... essentially run the world.

Trevor Noah 1:08:51 Yeah.

Max Chafkin 1:08:51 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:08:51 God king, that's what it sounds like to me.

Max Chafkin 1:08:53 I don't think that is the l- most likely scenario. [laughs] Um, but, but I do think that is the, that's, like, what he is pushing for. Um, and I, and I think to some extent, you know, it's up to, uh, voters and democracy to, to r- try to restrain him. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 1:09:10 Damn.

Speaker 1:09:11 Wow.

Trevor Noah 1:09:11 Well, here's, here's hoping, Max. Here's hoping, and I say this, I hope you take this in the, in the best way possible. I hope that your podcast becomes less relevant-

Max Chafkin 1:09:21 [laughs]

Speaker 1:09:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:09:22 ... as time goes.

Max Chafkin 1:09:23 Fair enough.

Trevor Noah 1:09:24 And I hope the people who listen now are now just, like, interested in business-

Speaker 1:09:27 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:09:27 ... and, like, you know, and I, I, I hope it has, like, not as much of a broad appeal because right now, I think Elon, Inc., it is, like, the hub of everything. And so, um, yeah, man, thank you for taking the time and-

Speaker 1:09:38 Thank you, Max

Trevor Noah 1:09:39 ... coming and sharing a bit of the universe with us. Appreciate it.

Max Chafkin 1:09:41 Thank you both for having me. [upbeat music]