In the grand tradition of American political theater, yesterday’s tête-à-tête between Elon Musk and Donald Trump was less an interview and more a mutual admiration society disguised as a conversation. It was a veritable celebration of alternative facts, delivered with all the subtlety of a Tesla crashing into a brick wall.
Musk, ever the disruptor, decided that his role as the modern-day impresario of the digital age includes giving Trump yet another platform to peddle his greatest hits: the election was stolen, the media is corrupt, and—oh, wait for it—he’s never told a lie. In the spirit of laissez-faire moderation, Musk let these whoppers float by with all the resistance of a feather in a hurricane.
One might have expected the self-styled genius of our times to push back, to hold Trump accountable, or at least ask for a source or two. Instead, Musk played the role of the unflappable host, smiling benignly as Trump spun tales so tall they practically grazed the ceiling of the stratosphere. Perhaps Musk, a man who aims to colonize Mars, found Trump’s reality too trivial a battleground for his superior intellect.
Take, for instance, Trump’s evergreen claim that the 2020 election was rigged—a lie so debunked that it has become the political equivalent of flat-earthism. Musk, the tech titan who presumably understands the concept of evidence, didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. Maybe he was too busy calculating the stock prices in his head to notice the unraveling of democratic norms before him.
Or perhaps it was when Trump, with a straight face, claimed that he had “never been more popular,” despite polling numbers that suggest otherwise. Musk, typically quick to correct inaccuracies about his own ventures, chose silence here too. Could it be that the man who insists on the accuracy of Tesla’s Autopilot data suddenly lost his taste for precision?
The pièce de résistance, however, was Trump’s assertion that he has been “the best president for the economy.” Never mind the minor inconvenience of the pandemic-induced recession on his watch, or the fact that his tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy. Musk, who fancies himself a champion of the common man, didn’t bother to challenge this claim. One might think that Musk, who often waxes poetic about the future of humanity, would have a vested interest in discussing how economic policy shapes that future. But no, the conversation drifted on, unmoored from facts or reality.
Musk’s reluctance to challenge Trump could be interpreted as a savvy business move—why alienate a large portion of his consumer base? But it also raises the question: What good is all that intellectual firepower if it’s not going to be used to counteract blatant untruths? Musk’s interview with Trump was a missed opportunity to apply the same rigorous scrutiny to political discourse that he demands in engineering.
In the end, the interview served as a reminder that, in today’s America, truth is negotiable, especially when there’s an audience to be courted. Musk may fancy himself a revolutionary, but yesterday he was more carnival barker than critic, watching passively as Trump inflated his mythos yet again.
For a man who aspires to reshape humanity’s future, Musk’s refusal to engage with the present was as telling as it was disappointing. And as for Trump? Well, he remains ever the salesman, selling snake oil to a public that increasingly seems willing to buy it—no questions asked, especially by the interviewer.
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