Elon Takes Spotlight at Inauguration and... on Video Games?

Published Jan 21, 2025, 9:26 PM

All eyes were on Washington, DC, this past weekend, when Elon Musk joined Donald Trump’s inauguration events bigly, as our once and current president would say. The news was flowing throughout, including changes to the nascent DOGE project and a very controversial hand gesture. Also controversial? Musk’s ongoing video game scandal, in which influential gamers have accused Musk of not actually getting to the upper echelon of a few games by himself. To discuss DC, host David Papadopoulos is joined by series regulars Max Chafkin and Dana Hull, and Bloomberg video game reporter Cecilia D’Anastasio later joins to talk about her new story on the affair.

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.

More than half the satellites in space are owned and controlled by one man.

Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate.

He says.

He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will be different.

He'll vote Republican. There is a reason the US government is so reliant on him.

Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.

Anything he does, he's fascinating people.

Welcome to Eylan Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, January twenty First, I'm your host, David Papadopolis. We have a new president officially, and Elon was right in the thick of all the pomp and circumstance. There were plenty of fireworks on day one of the Trump administration, including a commitment to send astronauts to Mars, but much of the conversation was about a certain hand gesture that Musk made at an inauguration rally. We're going to dive into all of that and then talk about the other scandal brewing out there. We have a major, major development in the Elon video game cheating saga. To discuss Musk and Trump, we have our regulars with us, Max Chafkin and Dana Hall. Max, Dana, Hello to you.

Hey David, Hey David.

Then Cecilia Donastasio, Bloomberg's video game reporter, will bring us her reporting on the Musk gaming situation. But first, let's listen to Trump himself at his inaugural address yesterday, and we.

Will pursue our manifest Destiny into the Stars, launching American a US or nuts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet.

Mars, Dana Hull. Pretty big moment there for Elon Musk.

Oh. Yeah, going to Mars has been the animating force of Elon Musk's life forever. And what was really notable about what Trump said is that he didn't mention the Moon at all. And NASA has this whole program called Armis which is all about going to the moon, and so the fact that he focused on Mars, it was like this huge gift to Elon, and Elon was super thrilled about it.

Yeah, you know, being the avid listener of the show I am when not hosting it. I listened to last week's show and Dana and repeatedly in that show, you had said again how just how damn serious he is about going to Mars and how everything else in his life revolves around that, and watching him react his reaction was pretty funny, I would say to when Trump said that this is to a certain degree, kind of feels like all that matters to him.

Well, and that's been the case forever. And I think that the mistake that people have made is because Tesla is a public company and SpaceX is a private one, so many people view him through the lens of Tesla because that's where he's a public CEO. But SpaceX is the company that he founded. It is the driving force of his whole life and has been forever, and like everything has always been about going to space and going to Mars and making life multiplanetary. And we have tape of him speaking, right.

Yeah, let's listen to more inauguration day tape. Here's Musk in his own words, and we're going to take those to Mars.

I mean, can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time.

Yeah, when Dana tells us that this is all he cares about in life. This is all he cares about in life. That's about as excited as someone can be. But my question for you is this amazing thing for him that Trump kind of makes it a commitment in his speech there in the Capitol. But how do these things work? Like, what are the practical effects of this?

Well, so the thing Dana kind of hinted at it. But right now there is a Moon program and the assumption, i think before this happened really before, and there have been some hints of this long campaign trail, the assumption has been that, you know, this Moon program would go forward. SpaceX it was supposed to play a part of this program, but not the launch vehicle. Meanwhile, it has this, it has this really large rocket that is essentially built on specially what do they call it, Well, they have a new name now it's called Starship David, but that is what that is what Elon Musk originally called it. And again, this is a rocket that doesn't yet have a market really for it.

It's so big, right like.

That when we've talked about this the Moon, we've talked about this, well, no, not necessarily, I'm just saying that that's not the way that the Artomist program is designed at the moment. So so if they cancel the Artomist program and and throw all those funds into this into a quick Mars mission, which is is kind of what Trump has hinted at on the campaign trail and and and in bringing this up without mentioning the Moon, I mean, that would be a huge windfall for Elon Musk. It wouldn't just be a fulfillment of Elon Musk's personal manifest destiny, his personal and profound ideological desire to like get to Mars. It would also be incredibly meaningful for SpaceX.

You you had that prediction, uh, for our mind our listeners man.

That you know, SpaceX's valuation and Tesla's valuation are going to converge. We didn't dwell on that, but that was that was a very provocative prediction. And I think that that if this were to really happen, yes, SpaceX would be a lot more valuable than this today.

Look at that brilliant I love it. Max, Danna tell me this on this whole going to Mars thing, Ken Trump, even with Elon Musk by his side, realistically pull this off. In one term, I mean, I.

Would think that most people would say no, that getting to Mars, particularly getting humans to Mars, is going to take much much longer. But you know, Elon is a man in a hurry, and he always has very aggressive timelines and he would love nothing more than to at least try as soon as possible. And you're seeing Starship launch over and over again, and you know each time they get better at it. I mean, there are always like snaffoos, but that's how they iterate, that's how they learn. And SpaceX is just lightning years ahead of any competitor in terms of having a vehicle that could potentially make the journey.

There's a launch window essentially every two years, so they would have to hit I mean, to make this actually happen within Trump's term, they would have to have a launch I believe it's in twenty twenty six. It would have to go well and then they and that would allow conceivably, you know, astronauts at the very end of Trump's term to blast off. Now again, I think Dan is right, this is like super hypothetical. The whole history of space explorations, particularly human beings in space. We don't like to put our astronauts, our brave, these brave people who are are sacrificing in jeopardy. So I think if you were betting on this, it makes sense to be skeptical. On the other hand, Dana's right, like and and Elon is definitely going for it. He's definitely trying to do this. It's it's not clear that will succeed.

Yeah, and Trump and Musk very aligned in that way. They're both great hype men, and so they are, you know, simultaneously mutually hyper.

They just just in terms to bring up one other sort of potential stump fuck.

Mildly so Artemis.

The Moon program has a bunch of big American defense contractors who are signed up making stuff for it, including Boeing and North or so each of these The idea to like of shutting, of turning this program off or winding it down or something will have serious political implications in congressional districts all across the country. They're definitely people who want to think we should be going to the moon first.

It's been a while since we've been to the moon.

Max.

Now, Max, you heard him say, Musk that is that he's taking Doge to Mars. He's gonna take the entire committee perhaps, and the cryptocurrency didn't specify to Mars set up offices there. But Doge, you know, was in the news on inauguration day as well. I mean Trump had just been sworn in. They hadn't even stopped singing glory, glory, hallelujah. And the lawsuit against those dropped.

The lawsuit that several lawsuits several there are several lawsuits, all challenging basically Doge's legality under aspects of the Constitution, how federal law is structured.

I'm not an expert on an administrative law, but essentially saying that these these are like extra.

Legal bodies and are not going to be allowed.

I don't think we have a clear sense of how significant these lawsuits are.

Trump also sign.

An executive order establishing DOZE, and I'm sorry to report David that the executive order does not include any mention of the role that DOGE will play on any non earth bodies.

Dana. So, DOZE has now been sued. It has scaled back its goals a bit. It's saying, no longer is it feasible to cut two trillion a year in government spending. It's now down talking about maybe one trillion, which is still a very very large number. But we do have another development, which is that Elon is now the sole leader of Doze. Vivek Ramis is out. Is that correct?

That is correct. It's very disappointing because now we can't use the phrase Muskaswamy, which Don moynihan had sort of pioneered. But yet Ramaswami is going to focus on his own political career in Ohio and has sort of you know, stepped aside. The White House put out like a statement about it yesterday. So you know, this whole idea of Doge being co led, you know, has now fallen apart. It's really Musk.

Did Musk bump him out? Is that what happened?

I mean, I don't know personally too clear, Like you know, Doge was a Musk's idea Doge. Musk proposed the idea of Doge to Trump when he had Trump on an X spaces in August. I don't think he ever wanted a co leader, and at the rally at Madison Square Garden that Max and I were both that originally, like Howard Lutnik was sort of floated as the co leader of Doge and then he got pushed aside, and then it was Vivek and that didn't last for very long. So I don't think that Elon ever intended to do this with a partner.

My spin is their efficiencies already taking place right cut one job.

My sense from talking to people around Trump and is that really Ramaswami did this to himself. You remember back at the end of last year there Elon Musk kind of went on this tear around h one b Visas. Ramaswami actually chimed in kind of defending Elon Musk and made a bunch of comments that I think, in certain ways came off even worse than the than the Musk comments, talking about essentially that that perceived as attacking American workers and implying that American workers were sort of like not qualified for the best jobs. It's also true that there was this kind of inherent rivalry.

Danis hinting at it.

You know, Ramaswami was sort of shoehorn into this thing, and you know, it was never totally clear why, because this was obviously a Musk idea from the beginning, and I'd say ram Swami, I think was always kind of aiming in this kind.

Of political trajectory.

You know, there's been there's been talk of him potentially running for governor, even before this of Ohio, even before this this like latest thing with with Musk. So so I think it feels like a bunch of factors, but you got to say like it it is, first of all, Elon consolidating his influence within Trump World. And and okay, somebody's maybe been bounced out of the orbit connected to Doge, but it certainly wasn't Elon Musk. Elon Musk, as we saw from yesterday, is enjoying the same extremely high level access that he has you know, been enjoying for for months.

He has a White House email address now too. I mean that that's really wild this ye.

And the end. I know that you guys talked about this last week with Josh, But does he have this blue pant.

We're seeing Yeah, we're seeing reporting now.

ABC News reported a few hours ago as we're recording this, that that they had that they were hearing that he was going to have the blue badge.

This was the badge that we talked about with Josh.

Greg get some as allow.

Him to kind of walk into the Oval office.

There's also been ordered diet cokes.

There's also been suggestions in reporting, although it's not totally clear if this is definitely true or not to me anyway, that he would have some kind of office space in the in the actual White House and not in addition to offices in the Executive Office building. I mean, the bottom line is going to have a lot of access.

I will say.

Reading this executive order, and I read it closely because not very longin is pretty easy. It doesn't say anything about cutting costs. It actually just talks about sort of upgrading the IT systems, the government software system.

Now that's code for cutting spending.

I don't know that exact, David.

All of my twenty years of reporting on software, I can tell you that software does.

Not expense it.

It's often a way to increase spending rather than cut it.

Dana Hall, The day was not without controversy, though there were several controversial things that took place. But as it regards specifically to Elon Musk, there was a salute that caused quite a stir. He made this gesture while giving a speech yesterday. Tell us as best you can what it looked like.

Okay, so mus did this gesture two and a half times. He put his right hand over his heart, and then he gave a salute to the front of the audience. Then he turned around and he did it a second time, and then he put his hand over his heart yet again. You know, if you are being generous to Elon, he was making an awkward gesture in a time of heightened excitement where he was basically trying to show the crowd that he really loved them. To historians who study fascism, this was like the Hitler salute or the Roman salute. And you know, immediately, like the Internet was just wild, like, oh my god, did Elon just do the Nazi salute. I can't speak with any fidelity as to whether he intended to do this or not. It made a huge sture. John Stewart talked about it last night. Historians were apoplectic. But it was also like a signal, like you saw a lot of people on the right sort of embrace this, like Andrew Tate and people from gab and elsewhere. So it was sort of like, whether it was intentional or not, it sort of sent a signal of sorts to the dark corners of the Internet and then, interestingly, the Anti Defamation League put out a tweet that was sort of giving Musk cover, where they basically said, quote, it seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge. And then Musk of course quoted the post and wrote thanks guys. So it was all very It was all very weird. You know, I have never seen him do that before. And I've seen him and Max has as well. I've seen him speak in a lot of different settings. He certainly never did it on the campaign trail. So it was just it was very odd.

On that last point. This is what occurs to me. Yeah, you're saying you've never seen Musk do it before. I don't know that in my life, and you guys tell me about yours that I've ever seen anyone do it by mistake before. Is that something that like, whoops, you know, I just I meant to do something else and that came out.

Matt, That is what I was thinking. I mean, this is not a thing that anyone does by mistake. Ever.

That said, and I think this is important. We are not as steeped in the world of far right and white nationalism and anti semitism that Elon Musk is and like, as we've talked about on this podcast over and over again. Leave the Gester aside. This is somebody who has brought, you know, Nazis and white supremacists onto his platform, who has interacted with Nazis and white supremacists on his platform, who has repeated anti Semitic conspiracy theories. And if you have that kind of media diet's it seems to me possible that that gestures that would be unthinkable for somebody who did not have that media diet might come out accidentally. And so I do think it's possible that this was an accident, but it definitely you can understand why people are troubled by it, especially in light of Musk's long, long track record.

In this area.

And I just want to read another comment that was in our story today. A historian of fascism here, wrote Ruth ben Giah, she's a professor of history at NYU. It was a Nazi salute and a very belluderent one too. And I think the fact that he did it not once but twice and then almost like a halftime is what also really struck people.

I thought it was a deep fake when I saw it, honestly, because I saw it and I thought this has to be fake because from the outside that sort of looked like now, I did not see it that the original clip I saw was not the full clip in context where he holds his hand to his heart. So maybe, and I think it's like all of these things, it's important that we look at them with the total picture, and the total picture is one where we've seen Musk embracing some of these extreme and arker and more offensive forces, you know.

For years now. Danna, you said that Musk had thanked the ADL for the statement he put out. Has he said anything else about the controversy beyond that.

Yeah, he basically said they're gonna have to come up with better dirty tricks. I mean, he sees this as a smear campaign, similar to when he kind of was tweeting out the great replacement theory stuff that we wrote about like a year ago. He sees this as a as a smear campaign, that he's a victim, that this is the legacy media, you know, grasping at straws, and so, yeah, he tweeted out something about that last night.

All Right, Dana, we are going to say goodbye to you for now. We will see you next week. Thanks. All right now, Max, you and I after that chat, we need to lighten the mood a little. We're gonna we're gonna do something a little more fun.

Yeah, I mean, we got to get into this video game cheating scandal.

David. It's it's it's the only thing.

That anyone was talking about while while they were watching the inauguration.

Anyway, Clearly he's trying to do the map that's not in the chain.

He's just clicking a map repeatedly trying to access it.

He was not eligible to endo that map.

I just want you as to understand this is one of the highest level hardcore characters in the game. He would have played thousands of maps at this point.

He literally didn't know how to open a map just ring bus Kazobs.

He just ran us.

The gazob cast arms are one of the most important currencies. So he's playing no filter, and he didn't pick up the kiss or he's.

Not presing his Monoplaus.

He's not freaking Amuntoflus, He's not freasing amount Max. I'm struggling to dig this segment super seriously after what we heard, but Cecilia Denistasio, our video game reporter, takes it very seriously. It's what she does for a living for us here at Bloomberg. Cecilia, welcome to the show. What did we just hear exactly? Uh, we on this show touched upon this whole saga a little bit last week. But bring us up to speed because there's been some deve.

Yeah, there have been some developments. So for a couple of months now, Elon Musk has been bragging that he is one of the top players of two very popular video games, Diablo for and Path of Exile two. And you know a lot of gamers have been pointing out that Elon Musk is the CEO of six companies and a lot of recent college graduates aren't able to reach the high rungs of gamerdom that Elon Musk seems to have himself. So what we heard in that clip was a couple of gamers commenting over Elon Musk himself playing the video game Path of Exile too.

They seem to be mocking him, Cecilia.

They are mocking him because look, I play these games, and I was one of these people when I was watching him play this game, like, h, he's out of mana, please use the manifest, use the Manoflast, use the manoflask and.

He does it, and you the same thing that they were saying as you were watching it.

Yes, because look, he's bragging about having these very high level characters that take a lot of time to level up, and he's playing in a way that maybe you know, doesn't seem to indicate that he had leveled up his character himself.

I see.

So wait, just to translate here, yes, translation.

The point of this story is that Musk had basically presented in his own telling, and I'd say, in the telling of maybe some people close to him, that he was, you know, a world class player in these video games. And these Cecilia experienced gamer as well as these other gamers that we're hearing, are basically seeing holes in that story.

Correct, correct, Okay, now that's where we were as of a few hours ago. But Cecilia looks like there's evidence that Musk himself perhaps has admitted that indeed he was cheating all along.

Yeah, it's funny you use the word cheating because it's cheating. Well, the video game developers say it's not kosher either, according to their terms of service. But what Musk allegedly did was have somebody else level up his accounts for him, which, if you are listening to this podcast.

So sorry, I account what's that meaning?

Exactly? Help us out here, Max and I are idiots. What what is leveling up?

Yeah?

So you create a character playing one of these games and say you want to get to the highest level where the swaggiest gear fight the most hardcore monsters. Right, but that takes a lot of time, hundreds or thousands of hours. I interviewed a lot of people who offer services to wealthy gamers who don't want to spend the hundreds or thousands of hours killing little goblins and leveling up the characters. Like, you know, if you're the CEO, for example, six companies, maybe you don't want to be hitting goblins.

Even just one for that matter, you know, or you know, even if you just have normal adult responsibility.

Well that's a little condescending.

Well correct, and Cecilia, no, you know. One of the things I learned in your story, which is very good, is that it is now cool, totally cool to me. An adult gamer all along. The joke was on me then, I guess, and I feel like I own an apology to my son Miguel and my nephew Michael for mocking him all these years. I'm sorry. It's cool to be an adult gamer now, yeah, it really is.

I mean, if you are the king of the nerds like Elon Musk, you know, wants to be and he wants to use his like meme speak and you know, be with it on Reddit like you know, being good at gaming offers you a certain level of cultural cloud.

H Okay, who knew? Now? But back to the admission, What exactly did he say? And are we positive? Are we positive that that admission actually came from Elon Musk? Gosh?

I mean, it's it's really hard to say, but what news outlets are reporting is that a very small YouTube account had communication with Elon Musk in a direct message on x in which this YouTuber asked, you know, hey, did you level up these accounts yourself or did somebody else do it for you? And Elon says, look, you know, if you want to be competing with these high level gamers in countries like Asia, you know everybody has somebody else level up their accounts, and he indicates that he did not do it himself, and that also he had never represented that he had done it himself.

I see, I'm curious. Can I ask you to a question, Yes, absolutely, I mean.

Hearing hearing this story, like, how does this square with the way that he's run his businesses over the last couple of decades.

Well, okay, so one thing I want to say is, you know, I've never covered the world of video game cheating before chating, but I have, but I have some experience in the in the world of sports cheating. And this is a classic sort of non denial from Elon. It's kind of like what Lance Armstrong has said. It's what many dopers after they have been found to be dopers say, which is basically like everyone was doing it, there was no way to could never have won the Tour de France without and which which is true, potentially true.

But I just want to know it was just the best of the cheaters.

Not a great defense.

I think the thing that struck me about this scandal or non scandal or whatever was that you saw a bunch of people in Elon Musk's orbit kind of spring up on Twitter over the last couple of days to essentially say no, no, no, no, he really.

Was spending a lot of time playing video games.

You didn't know how to open the what was it? The mail?

Javon Zillis, mother of some of his children, tweeted yesterday a year old video of Elon Musk gaming and then saying that he played seventeen hours. It was part of a seventeen hour push on Christmas Day.

So God, this is getting depressing.

So maybe that's how he fits it in. He's just doing this on the holidays.

Okay, So there's a good question for you, Cecilia, to become that good, to become that guy does a periodic seventeen hour binge on Christmas? Does that get you there? Or are you just logging obscene amounts of hours day in, day out, week in, week out.

In my experience, it takes more than seventeen hours on Christmas or an hour or two at the end of your day running a couple of companies. But I mean, look, he did play the video game himself when he was live streaming to the audience, and it's not as if he's never played a game before, like he's fine, he's fine at these games, you know, But what was interesting to people was the fact that he had represented that he was one of the top players ever in some of these games, which is really confusing when you go out and livestream yourself. Right, That's the thing I don't understand.

He exposed himself in a way that he didn't he didn't really need to show.

I mean, look, this is a guy who is very who has been very successful kind of creating an image of himself, an image of himself as a larger than life figure, as a guy who can simultaneously design a car and a rocket and be awesome at video games. And I don't know, he's obviously pretty stretched at this point between the companies and between his political activities and and also perhaps not spending as not not being quite as precise in his personal branding as he used to as we just as we just saw talking about this this gesture, and it just it just it feels I don't know, sloppy or something, and that and that in that sense, it does feel a little bit out of character for Elon Musk, like where where he has been very very successful for a very long time crafting this image and this, and this feels like a crack in that image.

So now that Elon is a politician, essentially, I ask you Max, years from now, are we going to reflect on this scandal and say bigger, bigger than Watergate? Well, you know, bigger than Iran Contra. If not Watergate, I Ran Contra.

I don't know what this means for the Trump presidency. This could be, as Josh Green suggested last week, this could be the thing that brings the whole edifice down, although probably not. I mean, it's honestly at Cecilia is as she's saying, it's like it doesn't feel it doesn't feel as morally clear cut as some other things. Although it definitely does seem like he's not as cool of a gamer as we thought he was.

Now Cecilia and the conversations out there that are happening on this is must cheating or is he not? These people that are that are jumping in and opening they have big followings in social media? Correct? How big is the community out there that's that's a buzz about this?

Oh?

Millions?

Gosh?

I mean, Elon Musk got into a fight with a very famous video game influencer who has millions of followers.

Oh yeah, what remind us of the name.

His name is asmen Gold. He's a very controversial, very famous gamer who's known for just sort of saying whatever he thinks and feels. And what he thought and felt was there's no way Elon Musk leveled up this account himself, and asmen Gold said, I think he bought it, and that led to a series of events that was really wild. You know, Elon unfollowed asmen Gold and then the gamer's account was unverified shortly after that, and then reverified not long after. People started noticing. But it was like, what is going on? How important is this to Elon to seem like a top gamer.

I've said versions of this before, but I do think Elon Musk he has had public flaws and there have been scandals around him, and he has stepped in it before and said things that are offensive before. But one thing that feels different about this moment, in particular.

What about about the video.

About the video game thing? Yeah, yeah, no, I'm not getting that far.

Afield, but that, like with if he loses the gamers, I do think that hurts his kind of popularity and his cool and this universe of sort of young men that has been you know up to this moment, you know, really.

Saying, if he loses the Gamers, the Dems retake the house in twenty I'm.

Saying, these commentators on the youtubes that we were listening to should probably be calling the DNC right now looking for jobs, because I think.

They may be more than anyone in our politics. Have his number.

All right, Well, Cecilia Donastasio, thank you very much for joining us, and when there are fresh developments, please come back and tell us all about them.

Sure, thank you, Max.

Great having you on as always. I'll see you next week.

Great to be here, David.

This episode was produced by Stacy Wang. Anna Masa Rakus is our editor and Rayhan Harmanci our senior editor. The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan Blake, Maples Handels Engineering and Dave Purcell Factchecks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The elon Ing theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. See you next week.

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