Leer en Español
Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk was interviewed on a podcast Monday in which he lambasted the Biden administration and confessed that he will be voting Republican this year.
While discussing the Twitter buyout and the obstacles that have temporarily paused the deal with the company, Musk was asked by one of the All-In Podcast hosts his thoughts on the Democratic administration.
The businessman, who admitted to having voted “overwhelmingly Democrat” in the past, said President Biden and the ruling party are “overly controlled by the unions.” Referring to the extent to which political factors “control” the White House, Musk said “the real president here is whoever controls the teleprompter.”
“It’s hard to tell what Biden’s doing, to be totally frank,” the businessman responded, jokingly. “The real president here is whoever controls the teleprompter. The path to power is the path to the teleprompter.”
Musk went on to compare the Trump and Biden administrations in terms of effectiveness, “This administration, it doesn’t seem to get a lot done. The Trump administration, leaving Trump aside, there were a lot of people in the administration who were effective at getting things done. So, this administration seems just to not have the drive to get shit done. That’s my impression.”
Earlier, while discussing the “far left bias” that dominates Twitter, Musk said that President Biden is “simply too much captured by the unions,” as is the Democratic Party, which he understands is under the control of “trial lawyers, particularly the class action lawyers.”
He also made the comparison between Biden’s administration and that of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, whom he referred to as a more “reasonable” president.
“In the case of Obama, he was quite reasonable, and I think he took more of a view that obviously he needed to take consense with the unions into account, but there are bigger issues at stake, and unfortunatelly Biden doesn’t do that,” the Tesla leader said.
What does Musk think about inflation?
When hosts asked Musk for his opinion on the tweet exchange between Jeff Beezos and Joe Biden, the SpaceX owner explained the administration’s responsibility for inflation, and compared its policies to those that drove countries like Venezuela into misery.
“The average reason for inflation is that the government printed a zillion amount of more money than it had, obviously,” Musk said of Biden’s policies. “The government can’t just issue checks far in excess revenue without there being inflation. If the federal government writes checks, they never bounce. So that is effectively creation of more dollars. And if there are more dollars created, then the increase in the goods and services across the economy, then you have inflation.”
The billionaire suggested that the inflation issue “is not super complicated,” and that you simply cannot issue immense amounts of money without that degenerating into inflationary processes and “basically turn the dollar into something that is worthless.”
“Various countries have tried this experiment multiple times,” Musk added. “Have you seen Venezuela? Like the poor, poor people of Venezuela are, you know, have been just run roughshod by their government.”
Twitter’s “far left” bias
During the more than hour-long conversation, Musk insisted on his intentions to buy Twitter to provide access to a “digital town square” to express beliefs freely, and stated that, despite considering himself politically moderate, one of his concerns is the left-wing bias that governs the platform’s rules.
“The reality is that Twitter at this point has a very far left bias,” Musk said on the matter. “I would class myself as a moderate, neither republican nor democrat. In fact, I have voted overwhelmingly for democrats historically. Overwhelmingly. I’m not sure, but I might never voted for republicans, just to be clear. Now, this election I will.”
He explained that what he intends to do with Twitter is not a “right-wing takeover” of the platform, but rather a “moderate-wing takeover, an attempt ensure that people of all political beliefs feel welcome on a digital town square and they can express their beliefs without fear of being banned or shadow-banned.”
The businessman expressed that freedom of expression “matters more” when “you have someone you don’t like saying something you don’t like,” since that is a sign that one is free to express one’s ideas.
“I get trashed by the media all the time, that’s fine, I don’t care. Do it twice as much, I couldn’t care less,” Musk said as an example. “But it’s indicative of the fact that, even though I have a lot of resources, I do not actually have the ability to soft the media from trashing me. And that’s actually a good thing.”
The deal between Twitter and Musk was “temporarily on hold” given inconsistencies in the platform’s reporting regarding the number of fake accounts and bots. According to Twitter’s documents, only 5% of the total number of users corresponds to bots or spam. However, Musk fears that the real figure could be closer to 25%.
