Money, Power, Politics: CEOs on Elon Musk

I grew up with Elon as like a mega hero it' be profoundly unamerican to use political power to the degree that Elon has it to hurt your competitors and Advantage your own businesses and I don't think people would tolerate that I don't think Elon would do it he is truly one of the great entrepreneurs of our lifetime I mean no ifs no ANS no butts Elon being on the phone call for Trump is being the richest by on Earth is far more important than anything else that you could be to him that's what he values

I it's no big deal Elon Musk was top of Mind At The New York Times dealbook Summit even though he wasn't even there but of course it makes sense that everybody was talking about him given his very very very close relationship with an ex president and that is where we're going to start in money power politics tonight with me now David G correspondent for Bloomberg host of the big Take podcast and Ron andana CNBC senior analyst and the CEO of ii. a all right David we saw Elon musk's influence over Donald Trump grow uh during

the election and now he's inside the administration what was your take on what all these CEOs had to say I mean glowing reviews do you think they were sincere or do you think they want to make sure they're on the right side of trump and that means be on the right side of musk well I think it's a mix and I think that they're curious like we are about how far this relationship goes and what it brings Elon Musk and all of his various companies and so you listen to Ken Griffin there of Citadel at

the top praising him as an entrepreneur and then you juxtapose that with Sam Altman of open AI I think you know those two have shall we say a history one that's tied up in courts now I think what's interesting about that is like Elon Musk of course is someone identifiable with SpaceX and Tesla he also has a burgeoning AI company of his own and what Sam was getting at in his comments is you know he's in a position now with Trump's ear and the influence that he has to potentially guide the government to favor companies

that he has in AI in other sectors and you know I I saw what I thought was a pretty genuine response there from Sam Alman believing that that he wouldn't exploit the power that he has the connections that he has I'm talking about Elon Musk here um I I noted that that came up with Jeff Bezos as well because of course Jeff Bezos has an interest in in space too he also very publicly at the conference today kind of doubled down on that as well thinking that you know there's no that Elon Musk would exploit

again these connections that he has to kind of benefit his own companies I I think that the jury's out on that given just how close they do seem to be Ron are we sure we're getting it right in terms of how close musk and Trump are let's talk about the job Trump gave him right he's the head of the department uh of government Efficiency do you know what that department does nothing they have no employees they have no mandate they have no power and not only is Elon Musk in charge of it he's only the

co- head right it's efficient except there's co-heads and now you've got the richest one of the most powerful men in the whole world Elon Musk and he's now co-heads with v ramaswami one might say I don't know he's close to Trump in theory or did Trump just punt him off to Siberia to talk a lot but maybe not have the power to do anything and not do anything unless the says it's okay well there there's that and and Stephanie he doesn't have the power to do anything period I mean the department of governmental efficiency does

not uh emanate from the US government it is outside the government it would require an act of Congress to change the spending to alter the budgets of of the United States government so it has the power to make recommendations uh whether or not has the power to persuade uh Congress and ultimately the White House to do every line item uh in their proposed $2 trillion reduction in federal spending is is an open question as you say and how tight is he with the president hard to say there have been a of memes that go around

that suggest you know Donald Trump may not for long uh enjoy the fact that elon's getting so much attention maybe sometimes more than the president himself David you mentioned Jeff Bezos I want to share a bit of when he was talking about the kind of things he's hoping to work on with Trump which to me were kind of like a yeah no duh watch he seems have a lot of energy around reducing regulation and my point of view if I can help him do that I'm going to help him because we do have too much

regulation in this country this country is so set up right to grow by the way all of our problems all of our economic problems like if you look at the the deficit and I mean you know the debt the national debt and how gigantic it is as a portion of GDP these are real problems and they're real long-term problems and the way you get out of them is by outgrowing them yeah and you know how we end up with Silicon Valley Bank blowing up and how we end up with a subprime crisis and payday lenders

destroying economically vulnerable people lack of Regulation David can we just or excuse me Ron can can can you help us with yeah of course he wants to be involved in deregulation that's like my kids wanted to be in charge of setting the rules in my house deregulation means let's get rid of the rules and let me run wild yeah look I don't think sorry Ron sorry DAV yeah yeah I don't look I don't think we want methane flaring you know that that contributes to additional you know greenhouse gases and and global warming I don't think

we want entire deregulation as you Apple said in the global financial crisis in my estimation was largely the fault of rampant deregulation uh in the lending community and created a problem that was almost unfixable so I you know I I would come down on a different side of this and and I would actually take issue with the notion that the size of the federal has anything to do with deregulation it has a lot more to do with you know rampant federal spending and in some instances very justifiable F federal spending during the covid crisis and

Beyond so I it's interesting for for someone in Jeff bezos's position to simplify this problem down to just that and having you know a onetoone relationship with the national debt that's just that's just not the way this economy works by any stretch Man by the way we do not have a lot of economic problems we have productivity boom Going On we're growing 3% inflation is down um it's interesting that people still characterize the economy this way when it's when it's fine uh Peter what about what excuse me I'm thinking about Peter Navaro David let's talk

about Peter Navaro we learned that he is coming back he was in prison he was in the last Trump Administration focus on trade policy he's going to do that again but last time the the last time around he was bouncing all over the White House stepen nin wouldn't take him in treasury Gary Co wouldn't take him with the National Economic adviser and he eventually ended up with Wilbur Ross because Wilbur was the least affected and not really paying back close attention Trump is really bringing this guy back why just because he's a super loyalist he

basically went to jail to stand with and by Trump yes he's he's newly out of jail and the president-elect praised his tenacity in the statement announcing his appointment today but you're right I mean you look back on that first term and he was somebody who was always mixing it up every cabinet official feared that he would have you know the last minute in the room with Donald Trump would be able to sway his mind and make him do something uh extraordinary and dangerous uh here we have him again and I think what's really interesting about

this is when president-elect Trump picked Scott bessent to be his treasury secretary there is this feeling all across Wall Street that oh Donald Trump is taking a safe approach now he's picking somebody who's not going to do anything radical he's somebody who Wall Street largely knows well introducing Peter Navaro again to that mix is just going to gum things up I think best case going to introduce somebody who's going to be pushing for these kind of hawkish uh policies dangerous policies that are going to make kind of any cooler heads have to really struggle to

be heard in that room be that the cabinet room or any kind of room with with the president and other policy makers