MUSK Director: Why Elon Bad Now OUTWEIGHS Elon Good

John Johnston (0:00)

I gotta say, it gives me great heart to know that people like this have jumped on board with this, or in parallel to what I've been doing.

Alex Gibney (0:07)

The damage he's done does outweigh the good that he did. He did so much good, so you have to accept the fact that he's cruel.

No, I don't accept it. And the cruelty took us to a terrible place.

Justine Musk (0:21)

The best way to predict the future is to create it, to invent it.

What is the future that he is deliberately trying to create? I think trickster might be a good word.

Alex Gibney (0:33)

He's agreed it's so much power, it may be too late. I hope it's not.

John Johnston (0:36)

Hi everyone, JJ here. Welcome back to The Lounge. Well, today is the day. If you've been watching my pod for at least the past few weeks, you know I've been talking about the Musk documentary that is coming out today in New York and Los Angeles and selected theaters and wider after that, and streaming HBO after that. Hopefully, Alex Gibney talks about that in this interview with Kara Swisher. On with Kara Swisher. This is an hour and 20 minute interview. I'm just going to play a little bit of it that I'm particularly interested in and a link to the whole interview. I do recommend it. Here's what Kara just says at the intro of this.

Kara Swisher (1:18)

I think it's important to track Elon. He is the most powerful figure in our society and politics right now, in my estimation, so let's get into it.

John Johnston (1:27)

Yes, I do agree with her there. That's why I wanted to show that intro. He is the most important, most powerful figure I think in the world right now. It has become that way since I've been doing these videos since about 2022 I started, and then I got more and more into Elon, Tesla, SpaceX, and he did what he did during that time. Alex Gibney started making this film in 2022, apparently, it's taken him this long. It is a poor out documentary. So it is good to see that people like-minded people have been doing things like this. This is also Justine Musk's first wife talking about him. It's really interesting interview. We'll get to it in a second, but also with the documentary, David Byrne has made a song that does sound like early talking heads. I can't play it here. He's talking about it on Late Night with Seth Myers here. David Byrne reveals how he got into Elon Musk's head to write his song for the documentary Musk. This is a screenshot from it. Musk, Let Me Sell You A Dream. I'm going to link to the interview. I'm going to link to this music video. I can't play any of it for copyright reasons. Obviously, I don't want to get a copyright strike on this one. Here's another screenshot. Let Me Sell You A Dream. I have liked David Byrne's work since the 1980s. Yes, I am that. One of my favorite bands in the 80s. So I must say that it's really good to see creatives, filmmakers, writers, journalists, like-minded people that I do respect talking about this. I've got to say, it gives me great heart to know that people like this have jumped on board with this or in parallel to what I've been doing. It does give me great heart. I have to say that. So I want to play just a little bit of this interview. I'm not going to play a lot. It's worth listening to and the song as well. It's going to be at the end here to do with Elon's legacy.

I mean, obviously, this is a lot in here. The things that I was interested in, how scared were you was particularly interesting to me, talking to Alex Gibney about making the film as Elon became more powerful, more rich and powerful, went in with Maga while he was making this film. And it's something that I've thought about too.

And they kind of decide that being allowed about it, talking about it is the best way for protection really, because if something happened, it would be pretty obvious what Elon was trying to do. The great free speech absolutist, but not really. But also there are other things, Elon's big lies. Now, Alex Gibney talks about how it started off with little fibs and turned into bigger and bigger lies. But I want to deal with Elon's legacy and you'll get an idea from the title of this video that I'm putting out there in the thumbnail. Has he too far gone?