Elon Musk’s Pivot from Online Troll to Political Machinator
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Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has once again involved himself in a geopolitical dust-up. This time, it's in a political crisis unfolding in Venezuela, where strongman Nicolas Maduro has held onto power after an election that has been widely condemned as both undemocratic and rife with fraud. Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

In the election's aftermath, Maduro has accused Musk of leading a cyberattack on Venezuela's electoral council. And though the claim is unsubstantiated, Musk's ability to manipulate geopolitics seemingly on a whim illustrates the power that the South African billionaire has come to wield in recent years

New Yorker staff writer John Lee Anderson joins us today to discuss Musk's brewing feud with Maduro and what the conflict illustrates about the outsized role that Musk has grown to wield both domestically and abroad. You're listening to The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker. Hey, John Lee, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks, Tyler. Great to be here.

I'm wondering if you could start off by giving us some details on the situation that is developing in Venezuela right now. Sure. On the 28th of July, elections were held. These were the first agreed-to elections in some time. And what happened was that the incumbent, Nicolas Maduro, who's a populist left-wing president who inherited his power from the late Hugo Chávez,

of the Bolivarian Revolution, had agreed finally to hold elections. This was after negotiations with the US in which they agreed to lift some sanctions on the country's oil production in return for free and fair elections. The country's most popular politician, that according to polls, is a woman called Maria Corina Machado,

But a month or so before the elections, the electoral tribunal in the country deemed her incapable of standing. It was something the regime has done before to get rid of people it sees as viable competition for the government. And so in a rather clever way,

twists. The opposition got behind a 74-year-old former diplomat that nobody had ever heard of called Edmundo Gonzalez, and he basically was her avatar. So, Edmundo Gonzalez went out on the hustings and stood in the elections on the 20th of July against Nicolas Maduro. And lo and behold, according to the electoral tribunal, just after midnight that night,

Nicolas Maduro had won by 51% and Mr. Gonzalez had only gotten 44% of the vote, but exit polls had shown him winning by a huge majority, almost three to one. And in the hours that followed on the 29th and 30th and to the present day, the government has refused to show its tallies of the results showing that 51% win, whereas the opposition

produced what they claim to be 80% of the actual paper tallies, showing that he had won by something like 60% to Maduro's 30%. Demonstrations have followed. The government has cracked down. Both González and his partner, María Corina Machado, are sort of in hiding, occasionally pop up in demonstrations. But the regime has doubled down.

on its win and claim that there was a cyber attack on the electoral system directed out of North Macedonia by none other than Elon Musk. And that this was all part of a Western plot to get rid of them in power. Forces of fascism were at work. So the present situation is one of a pretty ugly standoff. And it's one in which the name Elon Musk has come to the fore because

Although there's no proof, of course, that he directed some kind of cyber attack on the electoral tribunal. Most observers tend to believe that's a story to have an excuse as to why they haven't shown the results themselves. He nonetheless engaged in a kind of back and forth with Maduro, you know, calling him a dictator, a clown.

And Maduro has taken it even further by banning X for 10 days and essentially going to war with social media itself, mostly Western-owned social media.

I mean, I get why Maduro would go after Western social media companies in the West in general, but I guess I'm wondering why he would single out Musk specifically, given that the accusations he's making against Musk and X seem to be unsubstantiated. Why Musk?

I mean, we're speaking the day after Musk hosted presidential candidate Donald Trump on his forum for two hours. And only a few weeks after following the assassination attempt against Trump, Musk fully endorsed Trump and has sort of lost his libertarian status as a political champion of recent years to come out full bore with Trump. Now, Trump, of course, is seen by

Maduro and company as a major enemy. It was Trump that put Venezuela under major sanctions. So they know he is their biggest enemy. Not that the Democratic administration, whether Obama was before or Biden since, have been particularly friendly to him, but they have engaged in negotiations with him.

And I think he sees the world of social media as the medium through which all things are won or lost. This is a regime that's pretty much closed down traditional media in the country. Venezuelans have an extraordinarily high user base.

if that's a word, on social media. What's up is another major means by which Venezuelans communicate. And in the days since the election and since he came out against first Musk, he also said he was breaking up with what's up, which is, of course, owned by Mark Zuckerberg and kind of doubling down on this idea that

that the West was out to get him via these propaganda means, you know, and effectively is saying we're under full-fledged attack by the fascist West and we need to break up with Western social media. So he's urging Venezuelans to cancel their WhatsApp accounts. He's blocked X and also Signal, another U.S. encrypted messaging service, and encouraged Venezuelans to use either

WeChat, which is Chinese-owned, or the Russia-aligned Telegram messaging app instead. It's a bit Cold War. What has Elon Musk's involvement in the rest of Latin America looked like? Well, you know, going back actually several years now, Musk has tended to be very critical of left-of-center leaders.

going back to about 2018 in a kind of slanging match with then President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who again is a friend of Maduro, of Ortega, of the Castro regime in Cuba. I forget what Evo said to him via X, but Elon Musk basically said, we'll do all the coups we want, mate, something to that effect. You know, a bit roguish, a bit sort of

tech bro. But in the years since then, he's gotten much more explicit about

And over the past year, with the arrival of Javier Millet to power in Argentina, a self-described anarcho-capitalist, he and Elon Musk have had a full-on bromance. And they have met several times. And they typically meet and pose for selfies with the double thumbs-ups. And when Millet spoke at Davos, essentially calling for a resurrection of Western values and a reduction of the state,

Elon Musk famously tweeted, if you can still say that, a picture of a naked couple, the woman straddling the man, and the man basically with his arms behind his head watching on a laptop.

Javier Millet's speech being given in Davos. So they love each other. And of course, it's not been lost on observers that Argentina is the world's fourth greatest producer of lithium, which is very needed in electric cars, which of course, Musk is a major producer of with Tesla. So there's that happening. There's this break with the left, this idea that the state is small.

him swerving and getting fully behind Trump. It's Musk now as the owner of X using it to free it up for, as he describes it, unrestricted free speech. But the people that have tended to benefit from this are people like

Well, Javier Millet or in the States, Alex Jones, Tommy Robinson, this anti-Islamist activist here in Britain who was seen as sort of inciting the mobs in the recent race riots here in Britain.

And Musk also intervened on that day during the race riots, basically saying via X, which he owns, civil war is inevitable. You know, again, seen as really sticking his oar in on the side of right-wing populism, issues such as anti-immigration and in favor of, you know, very small states and very big corporations. That seems to be the Musk we're looking at today.

I mean, it's interesting because it seems like there's a difference between, you know, at least for most people, between churning out provocative content online and then exerting real world influence. But in the case of Musk, because he's so powerful, one sort of leads to the other. And so when he makes a comment about how civil war is inevitable, that's different than if I were to tweet that.

And so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the extent of his power and why he presents such a unique problem for foreign leaders and governments. Given that people in the U.S., I feel like when they see Musk's posts, I mean, I feel like we're kind of inclined to not necessarily take them so seriously. And so you're just sort of like, oh, he's just posting weird memes or he's talking about something in Australia that he doesn't really understand. But then it's actually really crucial what he's doing and really consequential. Yeah.

Sure it is. Exactly, Tyler. And I mean, look, it's not lost on anyone in the world that Elon Musk is, depending on the day of the week,

is either the richest man in the world or the second richest. His degree of wealth is unlike, it's beyond the imagination of most people, including leaders of various countries. And so, you know, just as the U.S. has long cast itself a big shadow in Latin America and around the world and not always been cognizant of that, Elon Musk is aware of his power and is using it. And Musk now is the owner of,

of Twitter, now X, seems to be doing the same thing. The guardrails that were put on Twitter before he bought it have all been taken away. And we are seeing in every other way in recent years, we've realized that social media has a huge downside and it has a contagious, addictive and deleterious effect. We saw it during the rise of ISIS. We've seen it with pornography. We've seen it in so many ways.

And so now you have the richest man in the world using it and basically taking the gloves off and saying whatever he likes. He may have been seen as like this, you know, stoner with money before the states. And he may still be seen that way. But, you know, today he's he's joining the ranks of the Alex Jones's, the Donald Trump's and the others who are demanding that the world be changed.

And of course, I think there's a racialist component to this as well. It's, you know, there's a lot of dog whistling going on about immigration or about Kamala Harris, and they've learned what to say and what not to say.

It's always struck me that although Elon Musk is, of course, yes, he is a US citizen, but he was born and raised in apartheid South Africa. And it seems to me that he may carry some of those deeply embedded beliefs about race and race relations with him. It certainly seems to be coming out in his choice of friends over his social media property.

You know, he not only owns X, he owns Tesla, he owns SpaceX, he owns the Boring Company, he owns... I'm forgetting a few things here. But here's a man who seems to be paving the way to outer space. He increasingly controls or has a monopoly on satellite communications in the world. He has overweening power and involvement in a number of key fields that affect every country, pretty much every country on Earth.

And the power to make or break governments, that seems to be increasingly clear. His dust-up with Maduro is sort of funny in a way, only because Maduro's invocation of Musk seems pretty specious. But nonetheless, Musk's intervention on behalf of Milley against Maduro and in favor of people like

Donald Trump and Alex Jones, who it has to be said, should be discussed in the same breath, is, I think, troubling. John Lee, I'd like to talk to you more about the relationship between Musk and Trump. But first, we're going to take a quick break. We'll hear more of the political scene from The New Yorker in just a moment.

Every single aspect of a conflict...

has some kind of rationale behind it. You might not agree with it. You might not agree with the methods. You might not agree with the means. But you have to look at it as like a rational actor and make your analysis that way. And Pod Save America's Jon Favreau and Tommy Vitor. I don't think we're going to fact check our way to victory. Follow Wired Politics Lab for in-depth conversations and analysis to help you navigate the upcoming election. Mm-hmm.

So, Musk recently endorsed Donald Trump shortly after the failed assassination attempt on the former president. How important is that endorsement in the upcoming election?

I think it's something that is noteworthy when someone like Elon Musk comes out to back Donald Trump and give him two hours of airtime in a kind of back-clapping, back-slapping interview. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, you want to quit? They go on strike. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that's OK, you're all gone. You're all gone. So every one of you is gone. And you are the greatest. You would be very good.

He just gave him airtime. And we haven't seen that for a while. It's worth remembering that Trump was banned by the previous owners of Twitter. A president, a sitting president, banned from using a social media because he had used it to incite a mob. And now the new owner has blithely let him back on. This is political intervention in the modern context today.

of the most blatant sort. And I think that's why it's worrisome, because he does have such economic clout. It's, you know, it has to be said that we've seen stories, I think, in the New York Times and other places about, you know, unnamed senior American military officials expressing their

chagrin, dismay, worry about the fact that, say, Musk controls so much of the satellite space on which, for instance, you know, some of the prosecution of the Ukraine war and presumably other aspects of American military control.

power is generated, the idea that so much that used to be in the purview of the government state is now in the hands of a private citizen is... It's almost like something out of one of those early James Bond films, you know, with the villain who lived under the iceberg stroking a white cat and planning world domination. It is kind of history returning as far as in a way. So...

I guess that's why it's important. His voice does because he employs so many people, because, you know, he controls vast wealth and has a huge impact on economies and therefore on people who make political decisions to sway electors and to help influence people on behalf of the people he believes in. In this case, it's Donald Trump. I mean, in that case, ideally, should he have not endorsed anyone? I mean, it sounds like he's a private citizen who has...

way too much power and that any sort of political endorsement was always going to be sort of problematic, even if it's, you know, the endorsement of the candidate who you yourself are voting for. Sure. I mean, it's it's I guess it's it's worth noting that a good many of the other what do we call them? Plutocrats, oligarchs, our new extraordinarily moneyed class. I mean, another one is Bezos. Bezos has been

you know, more discreet about his beliefs. It's always been presumed he's a Democrat, but he's never actually come out and said so. There is a kind of

circumspection that is not something that's legislated. It's something that is a kind of ethical position, which people with huge economic power have generally adhered to in the United States. But as we've seen pretty much ever since the rise of Donald Trump, what we used to think of as the done thing ceased to be because he threw everything out. You know, it used to be that the first family wouldn't be involved in profiteering ventures when their

relative was in the White House, that went the way of the dodo when Trump was in office, because lo and behold, we discovered it wasn't against the law. It was just not done. So what used to be unseemly is no longer respected. And I guess that's what we're seeing with Musk here, is this kind of like, who cares anyway? I'll do whatever I want. That's the sort of new attitude, isn't it, in the kind of Trumpian era? It's

It's throwing out, you know, the old modalities of respect. Millet is a good example of that in Argentina. You know, he is very rude. If he doesn't like another leader, he calls them a clown, a thief. He even called, I think he called the Pope a thief.

I don't know if I can repeat it here, but yeah, you know, he called the Pope something pretty awful and then later made up with him, but in the same way as Trump. And so, you know, Musk is doing the same thing. The old Greek proverb, you know, the fish tends to rot from the top seems to be very true.

I totally agree with you that it seems like Musk doesn't really care about the old political norms and that he's sort of just thrown them out. But given that, I guess I'm wondering why it took him so long to endorse Trump and why he didn't just do it, you know, immediately right after he brought him back onto X.

You know, I think he seems to be a bit of a fanboy when it comes to at least the imagery of heroics and that extraordinary photograph that was taken of Trump just after the assassination attempt where it was almost like Iwo Jima. There he was, fist in the air, blood running down his face, the Secret Service all around him, him rising above, the flag behind. It

It must have spoken to Musk because I think he made his message right then.

You know, I don't think Trump was off the grounds of that place in Butler when Musk sent his message. It was all but like maybe a Swifty screaming, I love you to Taylor. There he was saying, you know, gosh, you know, wow, man, you are so cool. And I endorse you. You know, he's he's an adolescent in a lot of ways, just as Trump is in a lot of ways. You know, it's it's it's fanboy stuff. It's like, oh, wow, he's cool. He's

He's macho, you know, he's my guy. So I'd like to talk more about the conversation that Musk and Trump had on Monday night on X.com's spaces. As you mentioned, they were extremely, you know, sort of bro-y during the conversation. They were just both super complimentary of each other. I need an Elon Musk. I need somebody that has a lot of

And they talked about everything from immigration and the assassination attempt on Trump to the war in Ukraine and inflation. And there was even this weird part where Musk sort of tried to convince Trump that climate change was real. We do, over time, want to move to a sustainable energy economy because eventually you do run out of, I mean, you run out of oil and gas. It's not infinite. And I'm wondering if you could just give us your general sense of the...

that interview and what the point of it was. It was like two hours long, so I feel like I sort of, I started to lose the plot as it was going on. I think we all did. I think they did too. You know, there was another thing there, which was that Musk claimed that

they had been cyberattacked, right? Yes. And I think prior to that, Trump claimed his campaign had been cyberattacked. So in a sense, Maduro kicked off... From North Macedonia, yeah. Yeah, Maduro has kicked off a new trend in that if things go wrong, you know, they had a 40-minute glitch, I guess, in getting the thing going. But it just seemed that this was...

Musk's way of trying to accommodate Trump, bring him closer to him and make Trump feel that he had his backing. They were not natural allies. There were these slightly awkward moments, you know, like you pointed out about the difference, at least in political messaging over climate change and that kind of thing. But essentially it was

And now we're here together, we're allies, and I'm going to give you, this is a must to Trump, pretty much any airtime you need. You're back on Twitter here, you're back on X,

to say whatever you want. I don't know exactly, ultimately, what the importance of this is politically. Like you say, I think this particular interview falls into that realm of kind of shrug ho-hum in the American political zeitgeist at the moment because Kamala and Waltz clearly have the

the edge. It seems to be they have a dynamism going. There's a forward momentum. Trump has been flailing in the polls. A lot of the stories are about how he hasn't, you know, found his footing again. This was clearly Musk's attempt to help him in that. I'm not sure it did. I'm not sure how much Musk is beloved by the, you know,

by the people at large out there. But he certainly casts a big shadow because of his wealth and he has so many industries at his disposal. So he's someone I think that he's showing all the signs of someone who in some future, presumably Democratic administration, a good hard look will have to be taken at him with an antitrust lens, if you know what I mean. We'll have more with John Lee Anderson right after the break.

It's Madeline Barron from In the Dark. I've spent the past four years investigating a crime. Believe it or not, sooner or later we will kill some of these folks who need to be killed. A crime that for almost 20 years has gone unpunished. I heard an M-16. They went into the room and they were just taking shots. Me and Noor, we were under the bed. He get his rifle in the bed and start shooting at us.

I remember I opened a Humvee and I just see bodies stacked up. How did they not perceive that these were children? A four-year investigation, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents, all in an effort to see what the U.S. military has kept from the public for years. You know, I don't know what's to be gained by this investigative journalism. Season three of In the Dark is available now.

wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm curious what you made of the letter that the European Commission sent to Musk in advance of this interview, basically saying that X might face penalties and restrictions in Europe if he doesn't address the spread of illegal content on the platform. Because one of the things that I found curious about the letter is that the Trump interview seemed to be one of the catalysts for this warning, where it said that, you know, you're about to do this interview with Trump and it'll be accessible to X users in the EU. Right.

And then after receiving the letter, you have the CEO of X, Linda Iaccarino, saying that this is an unprecedented attempt to stretch a law intended to apply in Europe to political activities in the U.S. And so, you know, we've been talking a lot about Musk meddling in other countries' affairs, but then you now have the CEO of X arguing that the EU is meddling in American politics. And I'm just wondering what you made of this letter and, you know, the suggestion that this interview really was –

of concern, basically. Well, there's two things at play here. I mean, Iaccarino, on behalf of Musk, is, of course, arguing this point that has yet to be reconciled in law in the United States, which is, are these forums, whether it's X or Facebook or whatever they are, are they platforms? Are they just...

you know, enablers of content or are they publishers themselves? They've managed to evade censorship and taxes in some cases because of the argument that they're merely camels that packs are being loaded on, right? Yeah. And I think we all are aware there's a big argument yet to come on that. And that has to be reconciled in the courts of law. And then on the other hand, the other aspect of this, which is important, is that

The EU, the European Union, is a region of 20-odd countries, 28 countries, where you have seen a rise in right-wing populism.

During Trump's presidency, we saw this very antagonistic approach to NATO, to a degree to the EU as well. We saw him pick out certain leaders, usually the more authoritarian ones, whether it was Orban or Boris Johnson in his day, etc., as his main buddies, while essentially, in some cases, really arrogantly or rudely dismissing the others, talking ill of them.

And so there's this idea that Trump come back into office. I think this could happen again. I think the Europeans are very, they feel very insecure at the moment. While, you know, in France and in Britain,

And in a few other places, the right, the extreme right, which really means something in Europe. They're around. They've taken seats in parliaments. And in France, they nearly got into government. In Sweden, the current government there, right of center, has had to do a coalition with extreme right wingers and so on. So I think they're concerned. They're concerned. You have

you know, Orban, who is the saboteur within Europe, who is a constant worry for everybody because he seems to have a great deal of clout with the new right wingers, whether it is

Trump and Musk, Milley and the others. And there's this idea that there's a coalition forming that's boundaryless, that's international, that because of, say, Musk's extraordinary economic clout and, say, Trump's extraordinary international following in social media and political clones elsewhere, that this is something to be, you know, that's worrisome. You also have unreconciled immigration issues in Europe and

And violence can easily be fanned if social media decides, you know, people get on social media and decide to fan the flames, stick their finger in the wound. It could have serious consequences. And I think following what the Europeans saw in Britain here just two weeks ago, they're aware that this is very real. John Lee, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you, Tyler. My pleasure.

John Lee Anderson is a staff writer at The New Yorker. You can read his latest piece, Elon Musk's Surging Political Activism, on newyorker.com. This has been The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggin. This episode was produced by Sam Egan and edited by Gianna Palmer with mixing by Mike Kutchman.

Special thanks this week to Rhiannon Corby. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's head of global audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Enjoy your week, and we'll see you next Wednesday. My name is Madeline Barron. I'm a journalist for The New Yorker. I...

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