Elon MUSK: “The Man Who Bulls**!s Us With Great Confidence"

Alex Gibney (0:00)

We think of him as this futuristic tech titan, but he's really the classic American trickster or confidence man.

John Johnston (0:07)

Hi, everyone, JJ here. Welcome back to The Lounge. Well, today, Elon Musk, the confidence man, as Alex Gibney puts it, or the con man in this new interview here. The movie's out, the Musk documentary, selected theaters in New York and Los Angeles right now, going wide release on the 16th of October, I believe, which is this week. So look for that if you're in the US. I definitely see it. It's had good reviews. I've seen people commenting about it online as well, since it's been in theaters. So this interview here, I think is interesting. I've done a lot of these videos about this film, about Alex Gibney, what he's saying. So I want to bring something new. I've picked out things that I haven't focused on, so I thought we'd get into this. So this is with Mehdi Hasan, who is a really good journalist and a really good interviewer. He's done so many, I'm sure you've seen some. So he talks to Alex Gibney about Elon Musk. They both know of Elon pretty well after following him for so many years, like I have followed him for so many years. So I found this interesting. Let's get straight into it.

Alex Gibney (1:11)

We think of him as this futuristic tech titan, but he's really the classic American trickster or confidence man. The man who bullshits us with great confidence and so much confidence that people come to him asking for answers on any number of subjects, and he just bullshits me, kills me.

John Johnston (1:32)

So he's laughing there because we've all seen tweets by Elon pontificating about this, that and the other when he really doesn't know what he's talking about, feeling so much confidence and that he can convince people, which he probably can because people seem to worship money, worship power, so he can say whatever he likes and some people, his fans, his sycophants believe it. But it's so obvious he has no idea what he's talking about in quite a few things, but he's got this confidence and this power where he can feel like he can say whatever he wants, just like any one of these tech oligarchs at the moment, right?

Mehdi Hasan (2:06)

And social media has, of course, amplified that, right?

Alex Gibney (2:08)

They do. He's sitting there on the site. He has his own platform to amplify his views and he has a course of people who run a podcast called All In, which is basically just a kind of ongoing praise poem for Elon Musk.

John Johnston (2:22)

Not just for Elon Musk, for these tech oligarchs, it is a popular podcast and it infuriates me more and more as I watch it. David Sacks, one of the main people on there, literally in the White House is the AI czar, backing up Elon all the time. All those guys on there are like that, really. Even Jason, who's supposedly a Democrat, but he just kind of agrees and says Trump's amazing quite a lot too. So I get what he's saying there. And obviously that is going to be in the film. So if he's exposing the All In podcast, is that in the film as well? There's even more reason to see it.

Mehdi Hasan (2:56)

I mean, there's so many things to unpack there. The Twitter thing is so interesting because I wouldn't even mind. I mean, I wouldn't mind, but I wouldn't mind so much if he bought Twitter and then just pontificated like some public intellectual, posted some grand thoughts and then went about his day. It's the fact that he goes into the replies of random like egg accounts, Holocaust deniers and argues about things he thinks he is knowledge about, which he clearly isn't. Or when he did that interview with Don Lemon, where he almost burst into tears because Don mildly asked some follow ups.

John Johnston (3:25)

He doesn't like questions with actual journalists and he disses mainstream media. And in a lot of cases, there's reason to do that for sure, but doesn't mean to say social media or podcasts or anything are any better than that. And he really doesn't like any pushback. And it was very mild with Don Lemon and he really melted down. And it's very rare that he gets some interviews with any pushback. It is interesting to see when that does happen. And I have reported on a few of those occasions in the past year or so. But there aren't many filters out, any journalists who are really going to ask some difficult questions.