Joe Rogan Experience: #2223 with Elon Musk (Transcript)

Like hardcore. I got a T1 line installed in my house.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I went hardcore.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Exactly. Checking how many milliseconds of latency.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. I was fully addicted. I was making my own computers. I was going to Fry’s Hardware and buying motherboards and putting everything together. It was too much of a time suck, though. I’m an obsessive person. I can’t get involved. I can’t play golf.

ELON MUSK: No. Golf is too slow for me. I mean, I know a lot of people find golf good. I mean, I guess if you think of it like it’s – I guess if you’re saying you’re going to walk outdoors with friends. And you occasionally hit a ball and it’s an outdoor walk, then that’s cool. And this requires concentration when you’re hitting the ball, but it’s too slow for me.

JOE ROGAN: Nothing compares to video games in terms of like the amount of feedback you get.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Like the sensory overload you get when you’re looking at a large, high-resolution screen. You have a fast computer. You have headphones on. You’re hearing sounds from here and sounds behind you and rockets are flying by you. There’s nothing like that. But I think golf still is like – Jamie will tell you. Jamie is an addict. He’s a golf nut. It’s super addictive and it takes like eight hours a day.

ELON MUSK: Yes. Once you get into golf, I think I guess any sport, it gets super addictive. But for me, the intensity of video games is heartbeat.

Video Games as Mental Calibration

JOE ROGAN: Yes. And people dismiss it because they think it’s just a waste of time. But we’re showing like real-world benefits of people playing video games.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. If you want to be a drone operator, it’s the only game in town.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that’s really good at video games.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. For sure. In fact, I can actually tell like what my mental acuity is if I just play – if I play a very hard video game. So if I’m trying to sort of get like an extremely good clear time in Diablo or something like that or a first-person shooter, whatever the case may be, like if – I can tell that I’m tired or my brain is not working as well as it should. It’s like a mental calibration. You tell immediately like what is – how good is your mental state?

JOE ROGAN: Right. Right.

ELON MUSK: And so like if you’re trying to play really well, like if you play late at night and you’re tired, you just play badly. And you can say, okay, you may think that your brain is working well, but it isn’t.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ELON MUSK: You play the video game and you’re like, you suck. So, okay.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, you’re putting it under stress. Yeah. You’re really stress testing it.

ELON MUSK: You stress test it and – Because like sometimes like, oh, I think I’m fine. But then play a game like, okay, I’m not – I’m like 10% below what I should be.

JOE ROGAN: That’s how I feel about workouts for sure. Like that’s how I knew I had COVID or I knew – everyone in my family had COVID. And felt weaker. And so I was trying to not get COVID. And so I was working out. I was like, something’s up. Like I felt fine normally, but then during exercise I was like, okay, I can tell there’s something wrong here. So let’s back off, relax.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It’s like people who don’t stress test their mind, they think they’re operating on the same level all the time. Like sometimes I come in here and I can’t form a fucking sentence and I don’t know what it is. It’s like, what is going on?

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So it’s just like – Maybe it’s like my sleep wasn’t that good or something like that.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Or I’m too busy and it’s just – it’s not – the words aren’t coming out. Like I know how to talk. Yeah. I talk professionally and I can’t fucking talk. It’s like –

ELON MUSK: I mean sleep is massive. I mean like –

JOE ROGAN: Huge.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So I can tell immediately, did I get a good night’s sleep or not? If I just play like a video game for like five minutes. I’m like, okay, my sleep wasn’t that good because it’s my – you know. And sometimes it’ll – your brain will recover through the day and it’s like, okay, like an hour or two after waking up, it’s better. Because your brain does kind of recover from bad night’s sleep a little bit.

Benefits of Creatine

JOE ROGAN: Do you know what really helps? Creatine apparently.

ELON MUSK: Does it?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Creatine is actually a nootropic, believe it or not. There’s a lot of like benefits of creatine that are really weird.

ELON MUSK: Are there any downsides?

JOE ROGAN: No. No. It’s a natural part of food. Yeah. Yeah. Especially women. For women apparently, especially post-menopausal women, it’s very beneficial. And there’s – but there’s a lot of like cognitive benefits. And one of the big ones that they found recently is performance when sleep-deprived.

ELON MUSK: Oh, okay.

JOE ROGAN: Mental performance when sleep-deprived increases pretty measurably when you supplement with creatine.

ELON MUSK: Is creatine naturally occurring in like steak or –

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s like naturally occurring in meat, I think. I think that’s where it’s coming from. I think it’s primarily an animal-based thing.

ELON MUSK: But like I did switch to like steak and eggs for breakfast and I found that’s like a power-up.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we’re all overrun with carbohydrates. And you just – like carbohydrates make this big crash, the rise and the crash.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

JOE ROGAN: The rise and the crash. You stay flat if you eat like a primarily high-protein, high-fat diet. Your body runs off ketosis essentially.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean I just have like steak and eggs, no bread or anything.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s great.

ELON MUSK: It’s great actually. It’s a power-up I’d say.

Misconceptions About Animal Agriculture and Global Warming

JOE ROGAN: People dismiss this whole carnivore diet thing because in our heads there’s a lot of propaganda around this that put this thing out there that animal agriculture is the number one contributor to global warming.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s rubbish.

JOE ROGAN: Bullshit.

ELON MUSK: It’s not true. Bullshit. It’s hot bullshit. It doesn’t matter.

JOE ROGAN: Not only is it hot bullshit. It’s irrelevant. But the real problem is factory farming. Regenerative farming is carbon neutral if it doesn’t sequester carbon.

ELON MUSK: The animals are not going to make any difference to global warming. Like none.

JOE ROGAN: No. It’s bullshit.

ELON MUSK: Zero. It’s zero. It’s nothing.

JOE ROGAN: Do you see people that have a vested interest in like plant-based meat products and things along those lines, green energy?

ELON MUSK: I think it’s part of it. You know, you’re generally going to get people pushing to avoid meat. Like some people just, you know, maybe they’ve got a financial interest, maybe they’re just like vegetarians or vegans or whatever. Ideological reasons. But it’s not going to make any difference to global warming or, you know, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, really, if people eat pure steaks. It doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant. Irrelevant. I want to just be super clear about that. It will not matter. You will not even be able to measure it. Okay? That’s how irrelevant it is.

JOE ROGAN: Isn’t it funny that that’s heretic-speaking? Unmeasurable irrelevant. Like that’s crazy talk now. Nowadays, it’s like you have to say that we have to eat less meat. That meat is bad.

ELON MUSK: No. You can totally eat as much meat as you want. It’s not going to make a difference.

JOE ROGAN: Sing it. Sing it. Tell the world.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And if somebody says it does make a difference, I’m like, how will you measure it? And if you can’t even measure it, then it’s bullshit.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s so much bullshit out there. First of all, thank you so much for buying Twitter.

ELON MUSK: You’re welcome. Thank you so much.

JOE ROGAN: I’m not exaggerating when I think you changed the course of history. I really do. I really think you made a fork in the road. We were headed down a path of censorship and of control of narratives that is unprecedented. Forget about what they were able to do back when they had newspapers and the media under control. What they were doing with social media by suppressing information, and when you had a combined government effort, like what they were doing with the laptop story. We have 51 former intelligence agents saying that this is Russian disinformation. Take it off offline.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And Twitter complied. If you didn’t buy that, we wouldn’t have known that. We had no idea.

ELON MUSK: Exactly. No, it’s… I mean, the reason I bought it was because I’m pretty attuned, since I was like the most interacted with a user on Twitter before the acquisition. So before the acquisition, I had more interactions than then. Like, there’s some accounts, like Obama and whatever, had higher follow accounts, but I had the most number of interactions of any account in the system. So I was very attuned to like, if they start changing, if they change this system, I can tell immediately. And I’m like, something weird is going on here. You know?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ELON MUSK: There’s like, I just got increasingly uneasy. And obviously, when they de-platformed a sitting president, you know, de-platformed Trump, that was just insane, you know? And the things he was posting, like he was posting things that, like he was posting good things. He was saying like, “Hey, do not riot, don’t do any destruction of property, you know, please stay calm.” Like, that’s the kind of stuff he was posting.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ELON MUSK: And you’re like, what’s wrong with that? And then some people said like, “Oh, that’s like some sort of dog whistle. He means the opposite.” I’m like, okay, so we’ll give you Trump’s account. Now you post what you think you should post, because you can post nothing. You can ask people to calm down. Like what? It was insane. It doesn’t make any sense.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s completely illogical when you say it’s dog whistling to tell his followers to not be violent. That’s crazy. Crazy. That’s crazy.

ELON MUSK: Crazy.

JOE ROGAN: Don’t you think they’ll listen to him? Isn’t that the whole point? They listened to him and created violence in the first place? That’s what you think.

ELON MUSK: Yes, exactly.

JOE ROGAN: That’s what you’re accusing him of. Right. And then there’s the fact that we know that there was agents in the crowd that were agent provocateurs that were encouraging people to do illegal shit.

ELON MUSK: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: We know that for a fact. That was always the big Alex Jones type tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, because Alex proposed that back at the World Trade Organization protests. I believe we were in Seattle in the 90s. And they sent in agent provocateurs, started smashing things, lighting things on fire. Now all of a sudden the peaceful protest is no longer peaceful. They move in the cops. They shut everything down. They had it set up where it was a no protest zone, where you couldn’t even have a pin that had the WTO with a red line through it. They wouldn’t let you go in through to go to work. So you couldn’t protest. You couldn’t exercise your First Amendment rights. You couldn’t even like have a peaceful protest, a fucking sticker on your car. You couldn’t have that.

ELON MUSK: It’s crazy. It’s crazy. So, no, I think we’re very much a fork in the road in destiny. And so, I mean, the reason I did the Twitter acquisition was like, man, if I don’t do this, I think we’re screwed. That’s the issue.

JOE ROGAN: Well, if you didn’t do it, no one else was going to do it. Because it wasn’t a financial winner. It was kind of a crazy move.

ELON MUSK: It’s a crazy move. I mean, the thing was way overpriced. And you know, like long term, I think we can ultimately make it a win for investors. But boy, this is a hard way to make a living.

JOE ROGAN: Well, there’s also a concerted effort to suppress it. There’s a concerted effort with the advertisers.

ELON MUSK: We had and still have a massive advertiser boycott that was organized by a bunch of left wing NGOs. Like, you know, and I should have brought my, I have a hat, “Make All Well Fiction Again”.

JOE ROGAN: I’ve seen that.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I was going to wear my, I should have brought my “Make All Well Fiction Hat Again”. But yeah, I mean, it’s just totally, totally nuts.

JOE ROGAN: So if you didn’t do it, no one would have. And here’s the hilarious narrative that I keep hearing from idiots. “Elon’s a bad businessman. Twitter is worth, you know, 400% less than when he bought it.” No, it wasn’t worth that in the first place.

ELON MUSK: It wasn’t worth that in the first place.

JOE ROGAN: It wasn’t worth $44 billion, you fucking morons. Like wrong. And also, you’re not taking into account the advertiser boycott. That’s total bullshit.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, exactly. So there are these organizations, like you can tell there’s like, they’re like, like, when they have an Orwellian name. So like, like the Center for Countering Digital Hate, right, is a total scam organization, you know, because they’re like the Ministry of Truth thing in Orwell. You know, they’re like, they’re a censorship organization.

And they organized and they pushed the advertisers to boycott. So we still have like some of the boycott is, is starting to lift. And I think if Trump wins, we’ll see, you know, probably a lot, most, most of the boycott lift. But if Kamala wins, we’ll see that boycott gets stronger. And they’ll, they’ll friggin shut down. There’s no way that, that, that sort of Kamala, Kamala public regime would allow X to exist.

JOE ROGAN: You really think that they’ll be able to shut it down, though? Is there a pathway to that?

ELON MUSK: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: What would they do?

ELON MUSK: Well, I mean, they can just, they can stick the DOJ on, you know, and say like, you know, they’ve had this whole thing about like hate speech, misinformation, whatever, except that the other one is pushing the misinformation, but that doesn’t stop them from filing massive, you know, lawsuits and using the DOJ. I mean, like the DOJ is, you know, attacking SpaceX, for example, for not hiring asylum speakers, even though it is legal for SpaceX to hire anyone who’s not a permanent resident of the U. S. So we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. It doesn’t exist. Just an example of what DOJ can do.

JOE ROGAN: So it’s illegal to hire someone who’s not an American citizen.

ELON MUSK: SpaceX is considered an advanced weapons technology. So it’s covered by international traffic and arms regulations because we make rocket technology that can be used against the United States. It’s like if North Korea or Iran got SpaceX rocket technology, they could use that to launch nukes at America.

JOE ROGAN: Right. That would be bad.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. That’d be really bad. That’d be really bad. So since we are in like the most extreme category of weapons technology at SpaceX, under U. S. ITAR law, it is illegal for us to hire anyone who’s not a permanent resident because the presumption is that if they’re not a permanent resident, they’re going to return to their home country and take the rocket technology with them.

So it’s illegal for us to hire anyone who either has a green card or be a citizen. They just have to be a permanent resident of the United States. Then there’s another law that says if you discriminate against asylum seekers, you’re also breaking the law. So the DOJ can only do a small number of big lawsuits every year. There’s a giant lawsuit against SpaceX saying that SpaceX discriminated against asylum seekers. And we’re like, but it’s illegal for us to hire anyone who’s not a permanent resident. So we’re in this like, this is what I mean, it’s like the Orwell situation is getting insane. Like you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. So you’re damned.

JOE ROGAN: Do you imagine history looking back at when you watch the robot arms catch the rocket and you realize like, this is like one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of aerospace. Like it is one of the most wildest accomplishments. When you watch that thing come and you see all those people cheering and it catches it perfectly like holy shit. Imagine how history is going to look back at the DOJ going after that company. How insane it is.

ELON MUSK: It’s like a big lawsuit with an army of lawyers. Like this was not like some minor thing.

JOE ROGAN: But it doesn’t even make any sense logically. How can it even get brought to court if it’s illegal?

ELON MUSK: Exactly. So that’s what I mean. Like basically if the government wants to go after you, they’ll just find a reason. It’s like that famous quote from Beria, you know, like Stalin’s chief torturer, the head of Stalin’s secret police and he’s like chief torture, truly evil human being like this guy Beria. One of his famous quotes was, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” They just, they just, they like, they decide that you’re the target and then they figure out the crime afterwards. That’s the issue. They decided SpaceX was the target. They just figured out the crime afterwards.

JOE ROGAN: Which is so crazy because that’s exactly what they’re saying Trump is going to do if he gets into office.

ELON MUSK: They’re doing all the things that they accused Trump of doing.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Openly.

ELON MUSK: Openly.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ELON MUSK: The sheer number of hoaxes that the democratic party is pushing over and over again, they, and it’s like, look, I just sound like politicians are going to, you know, exaggerate. They’re going to misspeak and they’ll tell occasional, you know, untruths, whatever. That’s how it is in politics. But when you have deliberate, concerted, repeated pushing of hoaxes, you’re like, wait a second. Like, come on man. This is too, this is too far. And you’re supposed to be the good guys. And you claim to be the good guys.

ELON MUSK: I’m like, exactly.

JOE ROGAN: You’re supposed to be the progressives.

ELON MUSK: Yes. The Dems are like, oh, we’re the good guys. We’re the honest people. No, no. Hang on. You can’t claim to be the good guys. You can’t claim to be the honest people. If you’re deliberately pushing hoaxes that have been debunked thoroughly, like even Snopes, which is a liberal thing because it’s bogus, like the fine people hoax.

JOE ROGAN: Obama just said that on stage. Obama just said that. I was like, what the flying fuck? He doesn’t give a fuck. He doesn’t give a fuck. They’re just, they’re just flowing forward. That’s a flat out goddamn fucking lie. Flat out lie. Flat out fucking lie. How about the other one where Kamala’s campaign used what Trump was saying about protecting women from illegal immigrants?

JOE ROGAN: You remember that?

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: What he was saying, “If the women like it or not, I’m going to do it.” When he was saying that, they were trying to say that he was taking away women’s right to choose whether women like it or not. Like that’s not what he was saying.

ELON MUSK: Absolutely.

JOE ROGAN: He was literally talking about protecting them from dangerous people that are sneaking in through the border.

JOE ROGAN: Yes, exactly. They’ll take like, like not even a full sentence, like a half a sentence from this, and then they’ll push it on every ad, every, you know, every speaking event. And it gets repeated on the news.

ELON MUSK: Yes. This is what’s crazy.

JOE ROGAN: They’ll talk about it on these new shows, quote new shows.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I mean, a recent one that came up, which had a lot of people, because a lot of people reached out to me, it was like, they’re like, “Oh, Trump says he wants to execute Liz Cheney.” And I’m like, that is utter bullshit. It’s not what he said at all. It’s not what he said at all. All he said was like, what he’s saying is that, look, if Liz Cheney actually had to fight at the front lines, she’d think twice about going to war.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

ELON MUSK: Like, it’s easy to, it’s easy to go to war. It’s easy to be a warmonger if you don’t have to, you know, risk dying at the front lines. Like if other, like basically gets fucked up if people are having like fancy dinners in Washington, D.C. while people are being slaughtered in trenches, you know, it’s like you’re not feeling the pain.

ELON MUSK: You’re not taking the risk. It’s someone else dying. That’s like, that’s, that’s cruel and lacking in empathy. And all Trump was saying was that it’s like Liz Cheney would be much, Liz Cheney would be much less of a warmonger because she’s a huge warmonger, just like her dad, if she actually had to go to the front lines and fight herself.

JOE ROGAN: And meanwhile, they’re saying that he should, he’s saying she should be shot.

ELON MUSK: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: Which is a total lie.

ELON MUSK: But I had like tons of people calling me this weekend saying, “Oh, Trump says he’s going to put Liz Cheney in a firing squad.” I’m like, that is an outrageous lie. And legacy media ran with that lie big time.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s just wild to see. And if it wasn’t for Twitter or X now, I don’t think we would know about all this stuff. I think it would be very difficult for you. I think YouTube throttled. They did something weird. They won’t say what they did, but they did something weird with the Trump interview that I did.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, you couldn’t find it. It doesn’t make sense. Like, like, it made no sense. I mean, it’s like the, it was like the biggest interview on earth.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ELON MUSK: And you can’t find it. Not only that, it wasn’t trending.

JOE ROGAN: Bullshit. It wasn’t trending. It wasn’t trending. No, it wasn’t trending. You’re like, like, there’s just no excuse for that, man.

JOE ROGAN: No excuse. There’s no excuse. It was getting a million views. One point, what was it? 1.4 an hour at one point in time? 1.5. Yeah. One hour. And it wasn’t trending.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. And it’s like, it’s like your channel is a known channel. It’s not, it’s not like it was started yesterday. It’s like. It’s like, this is a high trust. Yours is a high trust channel. It’s like, like you’re not trying to sell scam crypto coins or something, you know? So.

JOE ROGAN: Well, thank God we put it on X as well. Because I think just with your account and my account alone, it’s like 70 million views.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, it’s like, you can’t hide things anymore because of you. And if it wasn’t for you, I think they would have had total control of social media by now.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: They would have, they banned so many accounts during the pandemic. So many dissenting scientists and doctors and physicians. They banned so many conspiracy theorists, so many people that colored outside the lines. They would have done that everywhere. And it probably would have, I think even what’s going on at Facebook, they’re, they’re being more lenient. You know, you hear Zuckerberg talking about taking a more libertarian stance. That’s entirely reaction to the way Twitter has kind of moved the watermark.

ELON MUSK: Exactly. So as soon as, as soon as any company steps out of line and is willing to actually have the truth that debated on their platform, it forces the other platforms to allow things to be more truthful, to not censor because their censorship becomes glaringly obvious.

And you know, the best thing I found for as a rebuttal, like if somebody, if there’s a hoax is just go to the source material. You know, if you think, if somebody saying things, uh, you know, if, uh, you know, Trump said that, that we should put Liz Cheney in a firing squad, I’m like, “Let me send you a link to X so you can watch his video.”

JOE ROGAN: That’s the best way.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s don’t, don’t take my opinion for it. Don’t take anyone’s opinion for it. Go to the source material.

JOE ROGAN: And community notes.

ELON MUSK: Yes. And community notes is the best. It’s awesome.

JOE ROGAN: It’s incredible.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Because everybody gets checked.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. Including me.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So all the software is open source and all the data is open source. So you can recreate any given note independently.

JOE ROGAN: That’s amazing. That’s how it should be. That’s how it should be.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s total, absolute transparency in every way. Um, you know, sometimes I get, I get asked like, “Oh, can you remove a note of, you know, mostly by the left, but sometimes by the right,” I’m like, I’m like, “I don’t even remove notes on my own account.” Nothing. And, and, and by the way, everything is totally open. So if I did that, it would stick out like a sore thumb immediately. Like it’s not going to be subtle.

JOE ROGAN: That is the best counter to misinformation.

ELON MUSK: Yes. Absolutely.

JOE ROGAN: Like let everybody look at it and say, “Okay, here’s what the actual facts say.”

ELON MUSK: Yes. Exactly. The counter to misinformation is better information.

JOE ROGAN: Not just that, but having it checked in real time by the community. So you have millions of people that can go over it and debate whether or not this is true or that’s true.

ELON MUSK: Yes. And like I said, like the best way to understand the truth of things is don’t take anyone’s opinion for it. Look at the source material. You know, so it’s like, look at what someone actually said. Look at what someone actually did. Look at the real videos of the situation and then you can actually, you’ll know what’s real.

Elon Musk Facing Threats of Imprisonment in Pennsylvania

JOE ROGAN: So as of today, when you were illiterate on your way here, you sent me this text saying that they’re trying to lock you up in jail, Pennsylvania. Tell me what the fuck is happening.

ELON MUSK: Well, you know, there’s the classic sort of Soros VA situation. So we’re making a lot of progress in Pennsylvania. So I, you know, I’ve kind of been, I’ve given a whole bunch of talks throughout the state because Pennsylvania is the linchpin in this election. You know, whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the election. So I’ve been giving, I spent three years in Pennsylvania. I went to college in Philadelphia. So so it’s not like I’m not a total, I’m not like a total stranger to the state. You know, I spent three years there. And we, you know, we, we, we’ve organized this petition in support of the constitution, which I think is a good thing. And specifically asking people to, and we wanted this to be like registered voters in swing states.

Like basically we want to send a message to the politicians to say that the people care about the constitution, because there’ve been all these attacks on the constitution. They’ve been, especially on the Democrat side, they’ve been repeatedly saying that the first amendment is an obstacle and they’re claiming, “Oh, the first amendment is, is, is enabling this disinformation, misinformation.” And I’m like, “Yo, there’s a reason for the first amendment, like freedom of speech. The reason that the founders of the country put, you know, the freedom of speech there is because they came from countries where if you spoke your mind, you would get shot or imprisoned. That’s why the first amendment exists.

And the second amendment is there to stop the tyranny of government. The second amendment, the right to bear arms is there to protect freedom of speech.” You know, you know, and I’ve had these debates, especially with people in LA, because they’re like one taker, one’s guns away. And I’m like, “Yo, can you guarantee me that the government, that we will never have a tyrannical government in the United States? Can you, can you make that guarantee?” They’re like, “Well, nobody can make that guarantee.” I’m like, “Then we need to keep our guns because that’s the, that’s, what’s going to stop it.”

JOE ROGAN: That sounds crazy for people to hear because they think about gun violence and gun problems and gun this and gun that. But that’s the reality of the world that we live in is that tyranny is possible and it exists other places and it’s slowly existing. It’s slowly rearing its head in the UK. You’re saying, I think the, the number of people that have been arrested for just social media posts is bananas. It’s in the thousands.

ELON MUSK: Yes. Several thousand people have been, have been given prison sentences in the UK for social media posts that where there was no explicit link to actual violence, but they just said it encouraged violence. It’s like, “Well, did anyone actually do anything as a result of that? Media posts?” “Well, no, but they’re, they’re just,” and, and then they have a prison overcrowding situation in the UK. So that quite literally releasing convicted pedophiles and putting people in jail for Facebook posts, that’s an actual thing happening in Britain.

JOE ROGAN: That is so wild.

ELON MUSK: Like it’s, you’re like, “What the fuck, you know, is going on?”

JOE ROGAN: And what’s insane to me is that, yeah, you know, but it’s all being encouraged. By the left, Ketanji Brown Jackson, John Kerry —

ELON MUSK: John Kerry, John Kerry was one of the people who said that he’s on camera recently, like a few weeks ago saying that the first amendment is a problem, is an obstacle to fighting misinformation.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s crazy. That’s such a crazy thing to say. When you have a solution in community notes, you have a solution in some, that could clear everything up. Any confusion within a day or two.

ELON MUSK: And even without a community note, you can reply to a post and with evidence that, that, that shows that the post is wrong. You don’t even need community notes. I mean, community notes is helpful because it sticks to the original note.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ELON MUSK: But in the replies, you can say, “Here’s why you’re wrong. Here are the reasons. And here’s the evidence.”

JOE ROGAN: But the argument is that people are too unsophisticated, that they’re not going to research these things. They’re going to be a victim of misinformation. So they’re going to read something that’s incorrect. They’re going to run with it. People are going to die. People are going to, we’re going to ruin the world because people believed in misinformation.

It’s a stupid argument. It’s a stupid argument. Because it’s an argument that they’re too dumb to know what’s right or wrong. If you know, because you’re saying it’s misinformation, why do you think that you’re smarter than everybody who reads that?

ELON MUSK: Exactly. And obviously anyone on the X system knows that things are posted and then there are replies and there are rebuttals and it’s immediately corrected. But where are the corrections for the legacy media?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ELON MUSK: You know, when, if, you know, some broadcast media, they say false things all the time, but it’s a one-way street. There’s no rebuttal. There’s no counter.

JOE ROGAN: So, have you ever apologized for being incorrect about what, did Rachel Maddow ever apologize for telling everybody that if you get the COVID vaccine, you’re never going to get COVID? It won’t, the virus stops with you?

ELON MUSK: No, never. Never.

JOE ROGAN: No one ever. It’s just, it was not true at the time. There was no evidence to support it at the time. It’s pure propaganda. And she said it, the Russia gate hoax, the three fucking years, they said that he was Putin’s toy and that Putin had him compromised the Steele dossier.

ELON MUSK: The Steele dossier was completely fabricated by a lawyer at Perkins Coy, who was paid by the Clinton campaign.

JOE ROGAN: Literally. Crazy.

ELON MUSK: And still people think the Russia hoax is real.

JOE ROGAN: And there’s no repercussions. No one had to apologize. Hillary Clinton never came out and apologized for that. And people still listen to her. The whole thing’s crazy. And it’s all coming from the left, which growing up as a person who was in the left my whole life, it doesn’t make any fucking sense.

ELON MUSK: Same. I, I even, I was on the left until like three years ago, I mean, you know, it’s not the left anymore. It’s just like, I think we obviously want, I mean, I, I believe it’s like we want freedom, like, like we want, we want to maximize personal liberty. And if we want, we want to be kind to people, you know, we want to have empathy. And, um, but, but it’s very important to have personal freedom and a merit-based society. And the left is, is, wants to oppress your freedoms, especially freedom of speech.

And they want to, they want to have a non-merit-based society, you know, with race-based and sex-based preferences. And it’s like, “Well, wait a second. No, we, we just want people to succeed based on their skills and their hard work.

JOE ROGAN: And if they don’t want people to express themselves about particular issues, then they’re not doing the will of the people. And if they’re trying to suppress people’s ability to communicate, they’re only doing that because they want to do things that people don’t want them to do. And they want to silence opposition.

That’s all it is. And the fact that people can’t see that and they want to call Trump a fascist, well, the whole thing is, it’s just through the looking glass.

ELON MUSK: I mean, it’s like one hoax after another that they’re perpetrating against Trump. I mean, like they’re trying to call the rally at Madison Square Garden’s like a Nazi rally. I’m like, “Yo, there was like literally an Israeli flag in the audience. I think like a quarter of the speakers were Jewish. Like there was like, there were people of every race, color, creed, religion at that rally. Like tell me what about that is Nazi.” And yet it was portrayed as a Nazi rally.

JOE ROGAN: Well, MSNBC, they literally showed video of the Nazi rally from the 1930s and then compared it to the Trump rally. Now ignoring the fact that fucking Jimmy Carter spoke there.

ELON MUSK: There’ve been dozens of rallies at Madison Square Garden’s, dozens on the, on the Democrat side. And people on X were like, “And here’s exactly, here’s Jimmy Carter and here’s Bill Clinton. And here’s, wait a second. Actually it looks like every presidential candidate has done a, on the Democrat side has done a rally at Madison Square Garden’s of a Nazi too.”

JOE ROGAN: But what they’re doing is they’re preying on low information voters who aren’t engaged actively on social media, who don’t have the time to look through everything.

ELON MUSK: Exactly. Yeah. So if people are living, if people are just on looking at legacy mainstream media, then they have a totally different worldview than if they’re on X and seeing the actual flow of argument and the actual evidence.

Impact of the Twitter Files

JOE ROGAN: Well what was the pushback? Like what happened when you guys released the Twitter files? Because I think the Twitter files is probably one of the most important things in this age of information for understanding the influence that government has on social media and on discourse. Because when we found out that that was the case, that the government was actually asking Twitter to remove posts that were factual, they did the same thing to Facebook. They had them throttle pieces of one of Tucker Carlson’s show. They suppressed the views by 50% of factual information.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. No, there was, there was massive government interference in Twitter, but like Twitter welcomed it. That’s important to, all Twitter welcomed it. All Twitter was controlled by, by far left activists. So, uh, and, and, uh, they, they welcomed the government interference. The government, they got paid by the government for it.

JOE ROGAN: That’s crazy. They got paid for their time. Correct?

ELON MUSK: Yeah. They got paid millions of dollars for, for suppressing information. So it’s like, and a bunch of it was like fatal legal. Like the FBI had this, like this, this, this sort of magic portal into the Twitter system. Uh, and, and, but all of the communication that sort of in this portal was auto deleted after two weeks, which breaks federal FOIA laws. So we didn’t even know what was said because it was all deleted after two weeks.

JOE ROGAN: That’s insane.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. That’s so crazy. It’s so crazy that people thought that that was okay. It’s not super not okay.

JOE ROGAN: No, it’s super not okay. It’s unconstitutional and no one would want that. No one would want the government to have that kind of access.

ELON MUSK: Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: And what was the blowback like when all that stuff got released? Like you had to anticipate that there was going to be problems when you release that. Like what was, what happened?

ELON MUSK: Well, we got a lot of, we did lose a lot of advertising dollars. And um, —

JOE ROGAN: Which is crazy because it’s essentially like one of the most important forms of journalism is exposing government corruption.

ELON MUSK: Yes. I mean, this is the weird thing. It’s like the left used to be a big, big on exposing government corruption, but now, but once they control the government, they no longer want to expose the government corruption, right?

JOE ROGAN: They want to pretend that the left wing government’s incapable of corruption because we’re on the good side.

ELON MUSK: I think it may be just like, you know, whoever’s in power kind of doesn’t want the, you know, the other side hurt. Um, cause as you pointed out, like the left historically up until, I don’t know, maybe even 10 years ago or something like that, um, was the free speech party. And now it’s the anti free speech party. And they just, they, they use, they use words like, like, “Oh, well we have to be against hate speech and misinformation, disinformation,” but these are propaganda words, you know, it’s like, uh, “Well who’s defining hate speech? Who’s defining misinformation?” The government. Do you really trust the government to make that definition? Um, the whole point of the, of the first amendment is like, do not trust the government.

JOE ROGAN: Well, especially when they’re wrong and there’s no repercussions.

Censorship of the COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory

JOE ROGAN: Like with the whole lab leak theory, if you could, you would get kicked off of YouTube. If you even presented this argument that, “Hey, maybe that Corona virus lab where they’re doing work on the exact same virus that got released, Hey, maybe that’s where it came from since that’s where the virus started. What do you think guys?”

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That would kick you right off of YouTube.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Um, yes, exactly. It’s like, do you think maybe the, it could have come from a place called the novel coronavirus research institute.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Like that Jon Stewart bit that he did on Colbert. That was amazing. It’s like, “What does it say on the door again? Uh, can I see your business card?” And to see Colbert like resisting it with every fiber of his being, what’s going to happen to us? He was totally cock blocking the bit to the point where Jon Stewart got off his chair and started walking around trying to control. Yeah. Good on Jon.

ELON MUSK: And then the left tried to cancel Jon Stewart.

JOE ROGAN: Of course. Meanwhile, he was right.

ELON MUSK: He’s right.

JOE ROGAN: And no apologies. No apologies. Yeah. And you know, the whole Fauci thing, any criticism of Fauci, it’s like anti-science. I thought he was a freaking demon if you ask me. If you read RFK’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” if that’s correct, if the facts are in there, that’s true. It’s all referenced. You could find the sources and on top of it, he’s never been sued for that book, which doesn’t make any sense. If he just made a bunch of lies up, he would get sued. So the guy’s a monster.

ELON MUSK: I think so.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I think so, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think like just looking at the lies that he told, the way he tried to define gain of function research to Rand Paul.

ELON MUSK: But he, I think a lot, maybe a lot of people out there don’t realize Fauci funded the, the bioweapons research that was going on in Wuhan. And he bank shot it off. Like you can’t send the money directly to China. He just bank shot it off EcoHealth. This is like fake nonprofit in the U. S. and they sent it to Wuhan.

JOE ROGAN: And Obama put the skids on that. He stopped that in 2014.

ELON MUSK: Yes. I mean, so, you know, to, to give Obama, throw Obama, give Obama some credit, he actually was like looking at this and say, “Hey, this is crazy. And we need, we, and he, so he, he actually did stop the, the, like, like the so-called gain of function,” again, a propaganda word, because what is the function they’re talking about? Death.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Right.

ELON MUSK: So if you actually use the right word, this is, gain of function is death maximization. Then you’re like, “Oh, oh, hey guys, refund, uh, uh, bioweapon research into death maximization,” because that’s what gain of function means.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s the function. Making a disease so that people can get it. Give it to people.

ELON MUSK: Yes. And by the way, what’s that function again? Oh, the function is death. Oh, okay. So just call it a death maximizing virus.

JOE ROGAN: If you’re doing research on that and the idea behind this research is so that we can cure these things. How come you don’t have a fucking cure? Start with a, start with a cure. Cure first, disease second. It doesn’t make any sense. Like you guys had no strategy for dealing with it if it got out. And so you have to like make up this, this new vaccine in like record time, operation warp speed, release it to the people with very little testing. Fucking crazy.

ELON MUSK: It was crazy. And everybody just went along with it. That was like Looney Tunes, man. Looney Tunes next level.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s, the Psy-Op was fascinating to watch people step in line. That’s like one of the biggest ops of all time.

ELON MUSK: Of all time. Of all time. Of all time.

JOE ROGAN: And everybody got in line. And when you take it back to when pharmaceutical drug companies were able to advertise on media in the 1990s, that changed everything. We’re one of two countries in the whole world that allows this.

And because of that, because we don’t have socialized medicine, it’s a complete profit scam. And they went hard claiming all sorts of things that were never researched. All sorts of things are not supported by data, like the fact that it would stop transmission, the fact that it would stop infection, the fact that it was safe for pregnant women, the fact that it was safe for children, all of it’s bullshit.

ELON MUSK: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: And they pushed it on the whole world. And if you didn’t say that at a cocktail party, you were a pariah. And you were an anti-vaxxer. It was totally psycho. It was like being a Holocaust denier. You got kicked out of polite society.

ELON MUSK: Exactly. And I should say, I’m actually generally pro-vaccine overall. I think we should look at these things. But I believe in the scientific method. So you never blanket accept anything. You never blanket accept that any given medication or any given treatment is 100% good. You should always do it with some skepticism. Especially when you’re getting the data from pharmaceutical drug companies that have like a long history of criminal conduct. They’ve got a vested interest.

They’ve got a vested interest in the research. It’s sort of like asking tobacco companies about, you know, whether smoking is dangerous. It’s exactly the same thing. I’m like, “Oh, according to our scientists, everything’s fine.” They lied in court forever.

Pharmaceutical Industry’s History of Deception

JOE ROGAN: The same thing they did with OxyContin when they said that it wasn’t addictive. They have a long history of being full of shit if it makes them money. And that’s what they do. It’s their business.

ELON MUSK: Yes. They’ve literally lost multi-billion dollar lawsuits in this.

JOE ROGAN: Massive. Massive. You have amazing scientists, right? You have these clinical researchers, these people who develop these incredible drugs. This is their job. Their job is to figure out some new way to cure something, some new way to stop things. And then you have the money people.

And the problem is when you have this one thing that you would assume they’re only doing it to help people. And then they have this other faction that just numbers people. All they give a fuck about is maximizing profits and making sure. They literally have an obligation to their shareholders. They have to make the most amount of money possible. And so they just want to push it on everybody.

Like the Vioxx scandal. There’s internal emails showing they knew there was going to be cardiovascular events. People were going to get strokes. And they’re like, “I think we’re still going to do well.” And they did. They made like $12 billion. They got fined seven. And 50,000 to 60,000 people died.

ELON MUSK: Holy shit.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And there was a friend of mine who got a stroke.

ELON MUSK: And died?

JOE ROGAN: No, he didn’t die. He lived. But he was a really healthy guy. But he was psyched out the same afterwards. Yeah, he had knee problems. And he took Vioxx. And all of a sudden he was slurring his words. And he couldn’t concentrate. And people were like, “I think you’re having a fucking stroke.” And they took him to the hospital. And then you have this giant class action lawsuit. And then Vioxx gets pulled from the market. And they get sued. And the whole thing’s fucking crazy.

But there’s a long history of this. I think, what is the number? Like one third of the drugs that the FDA approves gets pulled? It’s fucking bananas. Yeah, that’s crazy. That’s crazy. You’re shitty at one third of the things that you say are okay? But yet you’re trying to stop MDMA therapy for veterans?

ELON MUSK: Yeah, they should let MDMA through, honestly. I think that would actually help a lot of people.

JOE ROGAN: It would help a lot of people. It would help a lot of people. There’s a lot of different therapies. Specifically psilocybin, Ibogaine.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: The fact that you have to go to Mexico to get Ibogaine therapy for veterans. So many guys I’ve talked to have gone over there. And it’s like completely given them a clean slate. Refreshed their mind. And totally new perspective on life. Alleviated depression. Cured addictions. Illegal.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Illegal. Oxycontin? Go get it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And I know some people who are like their life is ruined by Oxycontin.

ELON MUSK: Oh, yeah. It really depends on somebody’s individual biochemistry. To me, opioids are not addictive to me. I’ve had them when I’ve had operations or something. And they barely affect my pain level. And they make me itchy and uncomfortable.

JOE ROGAN: They make me stupid.

ELON MUSK: Exactly. But I’m like, I could never get addicted to alcohol or opioids. It’s just impossible. Because my biochemistry just does not have… But I love tasty food. I feel like…

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. If there’s… I’m addicted to tasty food, sure. But I have a whole wall of alcohol that’s there for decoration.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I feel the same way. I could easily quit alcohol.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, I’ll go weeks without having a drink. It doesn’t bother me at all. But I know some people, they have one drink and they’re off to the races. And that’s the difference in the biochemical differences that we all have.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. And I think that’s the case with a lot of addictions. I’m not addicted to gambling, but I get it. I see it. I’ve seen it in people. But I have this aversion to things that I know are going to ruin my life. That’s why I’ve never tried cocaine. I just saw too many people. It looks too fun. I’m like, I don’t want to get involved.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, I think generally for any given drug, legal or illegal, the question is, can you complete the following sentence? Blank made me a better person.

ELON MUSK: Meth. I’ve never heard anyone say meth made them a better person or cocaine made them a better person.

JOE ROGAN: No. Ever. Made a lot of soldiers better, I think.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, if you’re like, your soldiers need to march for three days in a row. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really good for that.

JOE ROGAN: Meth is effective at that. People give France a hard time about capitulating in World War II. But you know what’s worse than the Nazis? Nazis on meth.

ELON MUSK: They’re not stopping. They’re still coming. That book over there, Blitzed, is all about the use of methamphetamines and the different drugs that they gave their soldiers. The guys at the front of the line, they gave the most meth. They have different dosages.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, you just basically think you’re invulnerable on meth. So it’s one thing to be like this. So one thing to be, you know, have like the Nazis come after you. But Nazis on meth, you’re like, holy shit, those fuckers are not stopping me. For three days. They’re not stopping.

ELON MUSK: It’s so crazy.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. That’s not a statement. Meth made me a better person that you hear very often.

ELON MUSK: I’ve never heard that before.

JOE ROGAN: No, you hear a lot of like psilocybin advocates. You hear a lot of people that talk about psychedelics.

ELON MUSK: Exactly. I’ve actually heard many people say that LSD or mushrooms or MDMA made them a better person.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Many people.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So that’s why I’m like, I think a rule for the FDA should be like, hey, look, if you can complete the sentence, legal or illegal, that blank made you a better person, actually.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Then you got a good drug.

ELON MUSK: And if you can’t, you got a bad drug.

Legalization and Regulation of Drugs

JOE ROGAN: Also, if there’s drugs that are available right now that can absolutely ruin people’s lives, the rationalization for stopping other drugs that might ruin people’s lives, but also can help a lot of people’s lives, it doesn’t make any sense.

ELON MUSK: Right. It’s basically the same thing as censorship. You’re taking away people’s ability to discern what’s true and not true. And you’re taking away people’s ability to discern what’s good for you and not good for you. And the way to find that out is to have as much information as possible.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. And to do good research and actually to have unbiased, actual objective observers who are looking at all this stuff, they give you real data.

ELON MUSK: Yes. And the opposite of that, or the counter to that, is like, if you don’t do that, you’re empowering cartels.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. That’s the whole reason why they have all that money. It’s because it’s illegal to sell these drugs in America. The demand is never going away. So instead of like limiting the amount of drugs, now you’ve got toxic drugs because fentanyl and all this other shit, because they’re not pure. So you’re just killing people. You’re not saving anybody by protecting them from themselves.

ELON MUSK: True. But it’s a tricky situation because what do you do? Like, if you just like say, okay, now everyone can sell, all these people that have been selling boner pills, now you can sell meth. Like, holy shit. You get the double combo with the Vigra and the meth.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Jesus Christ. Oh my God. Oh my God.

ELON MUSK: Well, I mean, how many people are already doing that right now with Adderall and Viagra?

JOE ROGAN: A bunch of people are doing that.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: There’s a lot of people out there that are essentially on meth. Especially people that abuse Adderall.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: They’re basically amphetamined up all day long.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Adderall is low-grade amphetamine. So, I have actually seen people like become much worse people if they take too much Adderall. Like, much worse. You know, it’s like an Adderall amplifier.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

ELON MUSK: Now, I’m not saying… Like, Adderall is something like where there are pluses and minuses. It’s not a clear-cut issue. It does help some people a great deal. But in higher doses, man, that stuff, I’ve seen people turn into just raging monsters on high doses of Adderall. They’re just angry. Like, extremely angry all the time.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. They’re methed up.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. That’s what happens if you take meth. It’s crazy. You turn it into a drug.

JOE ROGAN: You turn it… Like, meth turns you into a frigging rage-demon. And so… And so many prescriptions. And I’m like, Jesus. We Googled it. Like, one year, there was like 39 million prescriptions for Adderall in this country.

ELON MUSK: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, once in a while, there’s like an Adderall shortage. And like, there’s like widespread panic, you know.

JOE ROGAN: And then, what do people do? And then, it’s the same thing as like when they tried to like limit the amount of OxyContin. Well, people go to street heroin. If you’re addicted to Adderall and your dealer, your guy sells you weed, it’s like, “Hey, man, I can get you like low-grade meth, like the stuff the Nazis took.”

ELON MUSK: Well, they had high-grade meth. Actually, they had pharmaceutical grade.

JOE ROGAN: It was that epic. It was like made by like…

ELON MUSK: Like, pharmaceutical-grade meth is going to be… Like, there’s… I mean, it’s… I mean, just look at the frigging online Wikipedia page, but there’s like many different versions of meth. Like, it’s not all the same. And they have different effects. So, but like a pharmaceutical-grade pure meth, you are going to be, oh my God, super productive for a certain period of time. And you’re not going to sleep for a while. And then, you will have some anger management issues.

So, like, they actually, the Nazis, they did actually roll back how much meth they were using because they had quite a few incidents of the soldiers killing their officers because they were on too much meth.

JOE ROGAN: Jesus Christ.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So, they would shoot… Too many officers got dragged by the, you know, their platoon that was on too much meth because they… That happened quite a few times. Like, you just… When someone’s on a lot of meth, they can get very angry.

John McAfee’s Controversial Life

JOE ROGAN: Did you ever pay attention to when John McAfee was cooking meth in a lab in his backyard?

ELON MUSK: I mean, McAfee’s quite a character.

JOE ROGAN: He was a character. Character, man. We had him on the podcast when he was on the run. So, he called in from an undisclosed location when he was running from… Where was he? Costa Rica? Is that where he was?

ELON MUSK: Belize.

JOE ROGAN: Belize, right. He was one of the top priorities. He called in. We had him on the podcast on the run. And I was asking him about these posts because there was an online account that was linked to him where he had this very detailed laboratory, like, super sophisticated, making the best meth. Like, a super genius cooking meth.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, I think you have… Like, he had this lab… Like, he was making, like, a wide range of drugs. And there was… I talked to, actually, like, a reporter who went down and, like, interviewed him in Belize. And unfortunately, man, that’s one of the scariest things. He’s… Like, he was quite terrified. So, like, one of the things that McAfee, he had, I guess, this trick where he would play a Russian roulette with himself. So he’d put a bullet in the revolver and they’d spin the chamber. And clearly, he had, like, some, like, trick to, you know, know that it was not… There’s some, you know, way that he knows it’s not the right bullet. But I do wonder, like, if McAfee is high and he does that, he’s not always gonna get the trick right, you know?

JOE ROGAN: Are you sure he had a trick? Or maybe it’s just…

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So according to this reporter, when he went to visit McAfee in Belize, McAfee took out the revolver, put a bullet in the revolver, spun the chamber, and then pointed at his head and went, click. And the reporter’s, like, saying, “Please don’t do this. Like, this is insane.” Click. Click. Click. And then pointed the gun at the ground, and Nix went, click, bang, and shot a bullet in the ground.

JOE ROGAN: Jesus. That’s a hell of a potty trick.

ELON MUSK: Jesus. That’s a next-level potty trick. That’s the guy who’s seen The Deer Hunter too many times.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. Remember that scene?

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Where they were forcing…

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Woo! That’s a heavy scene.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a heavy scene. De Niro and Christopher Walken. That’s one of the greatest scenes in any movie ever. Ever. I remember watching that scene just, like, clawing at my pants. And I was like, “Oh! Woo!” MacAfee was a wild boy. Wild. And, you know, created brilliant anti-virus software.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah. He may have made some of the viruses too.

JOE ROGAN: You think so? It’s possible. Well, didn’t he, like, give laptops to a bunch of government organizations that… With viruses on them, yeah.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So that he could, like, pay attention to what they were doing?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody whacked that guy. I don’t know what happened to him, but he would be a guy that would be like, “This guy is a little bit too loose.

ELON MUSK: He probably had sensitive information.” I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: For sure he did. I mean, I found him to be an interesting guy. I mean, like, I’m generally, like, feel like if somebody’s not harming someone else, they should be okay. Now, there is some suggestion that MacAfee, like, killed his neighbor in Belize.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Probably did.

ELON MUSK: Maybe the neighbor was a douchebag.

JOE ROGAN: I think he probably did. Seems like he probably did.

ELON MUSK: Seems like the neighbor killed his dog.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. Right? And then it seems like he killed the neighbor.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Allegedly.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean. It seems likely. It’s not a zero possibility.

ELON MUSK: It’s not. Definitely not zero. He’s messed up. Seems more likely than not.

Government Overreach and the Squirrel Story

JOE ROGAN: He’s a messed up wild man playing Russian Roulette. Hey, maybe you killed your fucking neighbor.

ELON MUSK: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, if somebody killed your dog, you’d be really inclined to kill them, too.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Somebody killed your squirrel.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. John Wick.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. The fucking squirrel thing is bananas.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. That squirrel thing in New York? So, the other thing about the whole squirrel thing is that how can it be that we live in America, supposedly land of the free, and the government can barge into your home with guns, so if you resist, you’re going to get shot, and then take your pets and execute them? And if they can do that to your pets, what do you think they can do to you?

JOE ROGAN: It’s not an exaggeration.

ELON MUSK: Absolutely.

JOE ROGAN: It sounds like you’re, “Oh, that’s so crazy. How can you make that connection?” Why would you kill that cute little squirrel that was obviously a pet and trained from the time it was a baby? If you see the interaction that guy has with that squirrel, it was wonderful. It was really cute.

ELON MUSK: Yes. Absolutely. It was just obviously, it was a beloved pet squirrel, and a raccoon, too, and during no harm, and the government comes in, barges into the guy’s house, takes his pets, and kills them. I think this should really get people out there mobilized, frankly, because you see the John Wick movie, where John Wick’s like, he just wants peace, in the John Wick movie. He’s like, “Listen, I want to retire,” and they offer him tons of money, because they want him to be an assassin, to keep being an assassin. They offer him tons of money. They threaten him. He’s like, “Listen, I’m not going to be … I’m out.” They kill his dog.

JOE ROGAN: That was a bad idea. That was a really … They killed a cute little puppy, and the puppy was his ex-wife’s gift to him when she died of cancer.

ELON MUSK: Yes. Great movie. Great movie.

JOE ROGAN: The best revenge movie of all time, because it’s so ridiculous, but he kills everybody. He kills everyone. And you’re rooting for him.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. They shouldn’t have killed his dog.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they fucked up, and they shouldn’t have killed that squirrel. They shouldn’t have killed that fucking …

ELON MUSK: That squirrel, I mean, it’s like, how many cases have we not heard about? Aw, look at that little guy. That squirrel clearly had a love relationship with that guy. He would hop all over him, and climb on him. That was his pet. That squirrel thought of that man as his protector, as his companion. There was nothing wrong with that, and in Texas, it’s totally legal. You can have a fucking zebra out here. You can have whatever you want, and that’s the argument for freedom. You know, the flip side is you get a bunch of people with tigers in their backyard, which is not great. It’s like, this is a fucking squirrel. It’s not an anaconda, or a crocodile, or something that’s going to harm him.

ELON MUSK: Or a chimpanzee.

JOE ROGAN: Did you see Chimp Crazy? Chimps will eat your face. They will fuck you up. The thing is, they don’t even kill you. They just cripple you. Chimps don’t even kill people, which is really weird. They just bite your hands off and bite your dick off and tear your face apart. They want to leave you. They can kill you easily. If a chimp wanted to just punch you in the head until you’re dead, it wouldn’t take long. But they don’t kill you. They just rip you apart. And you can have a chimp. Well, you used to be able to have a chimp in a lot of states. And then Chimp Crazy kind of exposed a lot of that. And PETA did a great job of stopping people from keeping chimps as pets. Because once they hit five, you can’t control them anymore.

ELON MUSK: Well, it’s totally understandable if somebody’s got a creature that is dangerous to others. But obviously a squirrel and a raccoon are not.

JOE ROGAN: Well, squirrels are fucking everywhere. That’s what’s so crazy. Why can’t you have it in the house? What kind of rules are we dealing with? You have rats everywhere.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, they’re allowing criminals to go free and violent criminals to go free. But they’re spending your tax dollars to come in and execute your fucking pets. What the hell is going on?

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. But it’s overreach. It’s government overreach. And this just keeps getting worse every year. That’s why we’ve got to fight back against this. People say, “Well, it’s just a squirrel.” In John Wick’s case, it was just a dog.

ELON MUSK: Right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Remember the Russian guy said, “It’s a fucking dog.” It’s just a fucking dog. Just a fucking squirrel.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, it’s the funniest thing. I just don’t understand how anybody could justify it.

JOE ROGAN: It seems to me that in a logical world, all that guy would have to do is say, “Why don’t you see me with this squirrel? This squirrel’s a pet. Like, look, he hops on me. He eats. He sleeps. I can keep a gerbil, but I can’t keep a squirrel. I can have a guinea pig. I can’t have a squirrel. I can have a chinchilla.” My daughter has a chinchilla. It’s adorable. Adorable little thing. Climbs all over.

ELON MUSK: Even if they did take a squirrel away, couldn’t they have released it into the woods or something?

JOE ROGAN: Well, the idea is you have to euthanize it because it’s used to being fed. It doesn’t know how to forage. It won’t be able to find a home. Squirrels are brutal. Squirrels are absolutely brutal to each other. They throw each other out of trees, which is one of the reasons why squirrels can fall from 30 feet and just kind of bounce off the ground and live. It’s a natural adaptation because squirrels, during mating, they bite each other. There used to be a rumor. There was a myth that squirrels bite each other’s nuts off.

ELON MUSK: Okay.

JOE ROGAN: That seems to be a myth, but it came out of the fact that squirrels are so ruthless during mating. So one female is just running away. I have squirrels in my backyard. I watch it all the time. One female apparently goes into estrus, and all the male squirrels fight to get to her. So they’re running up trees and chasing each other around trees, literally throwing each other off trees. So this poor little peanut, the squirrel, who’s used to living with a guy in an apartment, gets out there in the wild world.

ELON MUSK: Well, fair enough, but at least you have a chance.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, at least you have a chance. At least you have a chance. How about just leave him with the guy? Yeah, leave him with the guy for sure. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you killing that squirrel? It doesn’t make any sense. And then to add insult to injury, there were a bunch of people on the left who were actually posting that they’re glad that Magga Squirrel got killed.

ELON MUSK: Magga Squirrel.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. The fucking squirrel has an ideology. The little fluffy squirrel.

Exactly. Well, it’s a nice symbol because most reasonable, compassionate people think that’s terrible. And most people who have pets think it’s terrible. Terrible.

ELON MUSK: So I don’t know. I hope people just go out there and vote for Peanut, man. If nothing else, just vote for Peanut.

Criticism of Donald Trump and the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner

JOE ROGAN: They’ve done such a job of painting Trump as a monster. They’ve taken the worst things that he’s ever said. And he’s not a perfect person. But guess what? No one’s a perfect person. They don’t exist. This purity test. If Obama was a perfect person, he wouldn’t be lying on stage about that very fine people hoax.

ELON MUSK: Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: No one’s going to be a perfect person. But the thing that they didn’t understand about Trump is he’s so crazy that if you tell him he can’t be president. Remember Obama did that during that White House press correspondent? “There’s one thing that I am that you’ll never be. President of the United States.” And you see Trump in the audience going, “Okay, motherfucker.”

ELON MUSK: The funny thing is I was actually at that White House correspondence dinner where it’s supposed to be a roast of the president. Trump’s there. He’s there. He’s actually supporting. Basically, if you go to the White House correspondence dinner, you’re there in support, actually, of the president and support of the press. And it’s meant to be that you’re roasting the president. Trump’s just there. He’s actually just there as part of the support. And then they turned it around and just started roasting Trump. And he’s just sitting there. He’s like, “Yo, I just came to the dinner. I’m just here to support.”

JOE ROGAN: We know what it was because of, right? The birther stuff. That’s what it all was.

Well, Trump was at the head of a lot of these people spreading this rumor online that Obama’s birth certificate was forged and he’s actually from Kenya. And what’s weird is if you go back to Obama’s early days, there are some things that say he’s from Kenya. Like I think something from college said he was from Kenya. But that could just be people print things wrong all the time. It doesn’t mean he’s actually from Kenya. But Trump was one of those guys that was like spreading that supposedly false rumor.

ELON MUSK: Was he pushing it hard? This is the kind of thing where I want to just go and look at saying what did he actually say?

JOE ROGAN: No, he definitely was. He was definitely saying, you know, look, he – I don’t think he has the time to go into things like very deeply. And so I think he could probably be influenced by a bunch of people like these Marjorie Taylor Green type people come to him with some wild-ass theory. He might be – and I think there’s a lot of that stuff that gets fed to people on purpose so that they’ll say incorrect things so that they’re easy to dismiss.

JOE ROGAN: And I think there’s also a lot of people that just make shit up and they tell you the earth is flat and then a bunch of people watch a YouTube video and they believe it.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, well, but on that White House correspondent, I was there and the degree to which they attacked Trump in that – at that White House correspondent was really – it was so over the top. It was like making everyone uncomfortable.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

ELON MUSK: It was really over the top. I mean I think it’s like sort of a passing joke of like – a few passing jokes are fine, but they twisted the knife big on Trump in that. And you could see Trump just getting angrier and angrier and more and more upset.

JOE ROGAN: I wonder if that’s because –

ELON MUSK: And it’s like, man, this is not good karma. I wonder – That’s what I was thinking at the time. I was two tables away from Trump and I’m looking and I’m like, man, this is too much.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s kind of crazy what they’ve made out of that because that’s the kind of guy that if you tell him he can’t do something, he’s going to just keep trying.

ELON MUSK: It was a big mistake to rag on him so much with that White House correspondent.

JOE ROGAN: Well, just look at the way they’ve attacked him just using the legal system, like this thing in New York where the 34 different felony counts are essentially misdemeanors. They’re bookkeeping errors that they decided, even though it passed the statute of limitations, they decided to try him for these. They didn’t identify a felony.

Abuse of the law is what’s going on. But most people would have quit. Most people, after the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit and this lawsuit and all the other ones, the insurrection thing, the Georgia thing, all these different things, getting kicked off of Twitter, most people would have just like, “This is too much. I can’t take this.” But he’s so fucking crazy. He’s like, “All right, come on. We’re going to war.” And he just digs his fucking heels in and keeps going. It’s the wrong guy to do that to.

ELON MUSK: It is the wrong guy to do that to.

JOE ROGAN: Just like attacking him at the White House Correspondent Center, most people would have been humiliated. He got angry. He’s like, “Yeah, all right. Say I can’t be president.” I was thinking I’ve been thinking about running for about 15 fucking years. Finally, I’m going to run.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah. That was a real bad move. But, yeah, I mean, I can certainly understand like making some jokes about like, you know, a few sort of passing jokes on Trump. But, man, I was there at that dinner and that they ragged on Trump so much. It was insane.

JOE ROGAN: The reason why I would push back on that, because I would say there’s a bunch of different speakers. Right. And Trump would obviously be a target. And if they all attacked him, it’s because he’s like, if you’re going to make fun of people in the audience and especially in the zeitgeist, that whole birther thing was big. And most people were dismissing it as being a ridiculous conspiracy theory. So who the fuck is this guy saying this? And so you have eight to 10 individual speakers that are writing monologues. Of course, they’re all going to hit Trump.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, anyway, obviously it was a mistake. They shouldn’t have done that. And but like I invite people to watch that original source material. And I think a few jokes are fine. You know, it’s like but but it’s like he shouldn’t be like it felt like he was the primary object of the roast.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ELON MUSK: Which is that’s that’s not the whole point of the thing is it’s the roast of the president, not the audience.

JOE ROGAN: The thing about it is like he’s easy to roast. And then on top of that, Obama was like loved and cherished by the left.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And most of those people are on the left. There’s only so far you can push. You know, you can’t ask him about a chef. You know, this like what happened with the chef, bro? You can’t. It’s like certain things you can’t bring up.

ELON MUSK: What’s your favorite sport? Paddleboarding?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Wasn’t that guy a really good swimmer? Yeah. Tell me what happened.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, exactly. You can’t bring that up. You can’t bring that up. Like if you’re going to roast Hillary, you can’t bring up the death count. Like “Hillary, what’s the best way to stay in touch? Email?”

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. If you’re doing one of those things. She destroyed the servers and poured like bleach on the servers like like computers. She poured bleach on them?

ELON MUSK: That’s what I thought.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’s what I believe. It wasn’t just like they took a hammer to it. They like destroyed like there was no possible way to actually get forensics on the thing. What was in there?

ELON MUSK: That’s what I mean. What was in there? Why would they care so much? That’s so crazy.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. The whole thing. There was no legal action against that, which is clear destruction of evidence.

The 2024 Presidential Election and Demographic Changes in Swing States

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s also there’s this other narrative that always drives me crazy is that he’s going to destroy democracy. So in order to destroy democracy, we have to install a president without a primary. We have to have a candidate that is the least liked vice president of all time, the least popular vice president of all time, and then use gaslighting and the full force of the media machine to turn her into the future and hope. And then we’re going to she’s going to be changed, even though she’s a sitting vice president. And then on top of that, this idea of change when the Democrats have been in control for, what, 12 or 16 years.

ELON MUSK: Right. Which is crazy. Like this is the change.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, obviously, I view this election as a turning point, like a fork in the road of destiny. That is incredibly important. You know, I’ve not I’ve not been politically active until this election. And the reason I’ve been politically active this election is because I think if we don’t if we don’t elect Trump, I think we I think we will lose. We will lose democracy in this country. We will lose the two party system. And let me explain why. There’s only like six, six or seven swing states. The margin of victory in those states is small, often like 10 or 20,000 votes. What the Democrat administration has been doing is importing vast numbers of illegals into swing states. You can look at the numbers on the actual government website.

ELON MUSK: I mean, you don’t take my word for it. You just look at the numbers as reported by the government, which is controlled by the Democrats. And and what we’re seeing is triple digit increases in the number of illegals in every swing state. Some cases, 700 percent increases. These are these are gigantic numbers. So if you if you have a state that was that that went that has a 10 or 20,000 vote margin and you put 200,000 illegals in that state, you 10 X. The used to be swamped. It’s not a swing state anymore. It’s going to vote blue. And then once the swing states vote blue, there is no election anymore. It’s there’s only a Democrat primary.

JOE ROGAN: Which is so crazy. And it’s so crazy. People are fine with that. Well, I guess people on the left, we find with that because they think that’s a good idea. They just want to win.

ELON MUSK: They just want to win. Correct. Like the thing is, like one does not need actually any grand conspiracy theory for this. You just have to look at the simple matter of incentives. Party wants to win, like basically achieve permanent victory. All they need to do is turn the swing states, turn the swing states blue, their permanent victory. And then we’re one. Then we’re a one party state. And then they will keep doing that, obviously. They’ll they will keep stacking the deck by bringing in vast numbers of illegals into the swing states.

Keep stacking it so that the next election, each successive election will be worse than the last one. And that’s what’s happening. And if you want to see like, well, is this actually going to happen? Look at California. California is supermajority them. Seventy percent them. A month ago, they passed a law making it illegal to show ID in any election in California. So so so a friend of mine went to vote in Palo Alto. He was like, “Is this for real?” He tried to show his ID. And they reacted like like like like if you show a cross to a vampire, like, “No, we can’t even look at that ID.” It is illegal for them to even look at your ID if you want to present it in California.

JOE ROGAN: Why any election at all, even like city council?

ELON MUSK: What logical reason other than to cheat? Would you ever have that law? The reason is to cheat this, but the only this only like you can never make an argument any other way. And I think 84 percent of people polled believe that you should show ID to vote. So it’s against the will of the people.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. And we are extremely aware we’re an outlier in not requiring ID. Basically, almost every country on Earth requires ID to vote.

ELON MUSK: So the way as soon as you make you ban ID for voting, it makes fraud impossible to prove. Because how do you trace the fraud?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, it’s insane. It’s insane. It’s insane. And what I’m saying is that how is it legal? What I’m saying is like this election is the last chance to preserve democracy in America. Mark my words, everything they accuse Trump of, they are guilty of. And if Trump doesn’t win, this will be the last real election in America. And we will if the Kamala, if the big government, Kamala puppet machine wins, they will legalize the illegals in swing states. There will be no swing states. Every election going forward will be a guaranteed Democrat win. And it will actually be worse than California.

The reason it will be worse than California is because the one thing that keeps California from being super crazy is that you can move out of California like you and I did. You and I used to be in California, but we moved to Texas. We’re still in America. But if the Dems win this election, they will legalize enough illegals to turn the swing states and everywhere will be like California. There will be no escape.

JOE ROGAN: That’s so insane. This is the final. This is it. This is the last chance. Has anybody tried to push back? Go out and vote. Vote like your life depends on it. Vote like your future depends on it because it does. This is the last chance, man. Is there any argument against this? Has anybody tried to debate this? Has anybody tried to say that this is nonsense? This is a conspiracy? Has anybody made any sort of a rational argument?

ELON MUSK: The left actually interestingly does not want to pick up much on this argument because the more attention – the more you look at it, the more obviously it is true. Because you just say like, well, are the numbers correct? Are there really this many illegals that have been imported into swing states? Yes. They haven’t just walked across the border. They’ve been flown in, flown in in airplanes.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, using a shipping app.

ELON MUSK: Yes. They made an app. Well, the app always existed, but it used to be for people coming over here like shipping with goods so they could track you while you’re in America so you could legally be here, they know where you are. And then they changed it to allow that app to schedule illegal aliens to come across the border.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. Asylum seekers. Come on in.

ELON MUSK: Yes. Oh, you have an app. And you fly people in. They’re literally being flown in to the swing states. And so the reason that I think left doesn’t want to push back on this is because the more attention that those get, the more people realize it is true.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it is true. That’s why they’re just pretending. They’re pretending I’m not saying anything, but I’m like, yo, they’re literally flying vast numbers of illegals who are then beholden to the Democrats. And sometimes I get the rebuttal of people who say like, well, these illegals, they don’t have the same social values as the Democratic Party because they’re like more socially conservative. I’m like, yeah, but that’s not the point. If you look at the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, their primary thing is staying in the country and getting their friends and family in. And then the Democrats give them all these benefits, like tons of benefits, more benefits than citizens.

ELON MUSK: Literally.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. So they’re beholden to the Democrats for all these benefits. They want to get their friends and family in, which the Democrats support and the Republicans don’t. So they vote them. And you can look empirically at California and say, did they vote Republican or Democrat in California? Oh, they voted Democrat.

ELON MUSK: Well, Reagan gave them amnesty in the 1980s, and that changed the state basically except for Arnold.

JOE ROGAN: It changed the state entirely blue.

ELON MUSK: Yes. And Arnold was an exception because he was like a socially liberal famous guy.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And didn’t really impose any radical restrictions on any of the people that were going to vote Democrat in the first place.

Discussing the Threat to Democracy with Senator John Fetterman

JOE ROGAN: The whole thing is just it’s bizarre to watch play out because it just seems like, no, this can’t be actually what’s happening. Did you see my conversation with Fetterman about it?

ELON MUSK: Yeah. He was completely in denial about it.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think there’s that level of organization. I’m like, what are you talking about?

ELON MUSK: Exactly. Because you can break it down to like, are any of these numbers wrong? Because we got these numbers from Homeland Security Government.gov. Okay.

JOE ROGAN: Right. So we got it from the .gov website. Has the government reported these numbers incorrectly?

ELON MUSK: No, they have not. Those numbers, if anything, are low. Okay. So they have, in fact, flown vast numbers of illegals to swing states.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Bypassing the border entirely. And so that is factually true. Then you say like, well, what is their probable voting pattern? Oh, okay, overwhelmingly Democrat into swing states. And then, well, do the Democrats actually want to fast-track them for citizenship? Oh, yes, they do. As you can see, Chuck Schumer on TV saying at a rally this year was saying he wants to fast-track and make all 11 million, or however many, I believe his quote was, citizens as soon as possible.

ELON MUSK: The goal is to – they are fast-tracking citizenship as quickly as possible so they can – whether one thinks it’s shady or not, it won’t matter because they will be fully able to vote. And for people on the left – This is actually happening. I invite people to rebut this and show me where I am wrong. Please do so.

JOE ROGAN: No, they can’t. They can’t. Because it’s true. Well, what’s scary to me is that there’s people that are on the left, like people that were Bernie Sanders supporters, for example. They got screwed. Talk about undermining democracy. Bernie should have won the nomination.

ELON MUSK: Exactly. And they stole it from him and gave it to Hillary.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. Exactly. That’s what I was going to bring up. Like they control the primary process.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, exactly. So like if you’ve got a – if you have a Democratic primary, it’s not Democratic. We just saw that. We saw it with Bernie. We saw it with Kamala. Like a week before Biden was summarily fired, he was posting that he’s in it for the long term. He’s going.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. He’s not giving up.

ELON MUSK: The next thing you know, Sunday afternoon, they’re posting on X that he’s resigned from the race. Which is – And his staff didn’t even know. Like they’re reading it on the X platform that, okay, that’s how they learned about it. What do you think happened there?

JOE ROGAN: How did they do that?

ELON MUSK: I mean he’s clearly just not in charge obviously. They could have used the 25th Amendment, right? Fake president.

JOE ROGAN: But they would have had to admit that there was a certain period of time where they knew that he was mentally compromised.

ELON MUSK: Yes. And so they made this decision to not do that. Well, the weird thing is that the president is supposed to be the boss.

JOE ROGAN: Right. And yet he’s obviously not the boss.

ELON MUSK: Right. So who’s running the country?

JOE ROGAN: She’s busy campaigning. She’s so busy she can’t do anything except Saturday Night Live. She did that. She’s so busy. She’s constantly campaigning. How could you be paying attention to international relations? How could you be paying attention to the economy? How could you be paying attention to any of those things? How do you have the time? You can’t.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean Biden being – the president is supposed to be the CEO, the chief guy. He has commander in chief. But it’s just obviously that Biden was not. He was just a puppet. And when the various puppet masters decided that the puppet was no longer useful, they just tossed out the puppet and then got a new puppet with Kamala. I mean Kamala can’t even talk. Now you invited her on your show. I think the most damage that could possibly be done to a campaign is going on your show and seeing what she says in hours two and three.

JOE ROGAN: Two and three is when things get spiky. Two and three.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. And I’m like, oh, my God. She’s going to melt. You can hide for 20 minutes.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. Yeah. I mean you could just regurgitate talking points for half an hour, maybe an hour, just where she’s just saying like non-sequiturs. But eventually she just runs out of even – she runs out of non-sequiturs.

ELON MUSK: Well, they wanted to limit it to an hour.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. That’s why. But I was thinking of doing it initially. Before Trump came here, first of all, when they found out that there was a rumor, I never announced that Trump was coming. What I was going to do is just release it. In my – the way I like to do things, I don’t like to tell anybody who’s coming on. It’ll get big no matter what. If Trump was on, it would have been huge. I’m like, just put it out there. People will go crazy.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. But he apparently or someone from his – some loose lips and then it got out. And so she contacted my management company. And they – her organization, her campaign contacted us and said, would Joe have her on? I said yes. And they said she wants you to fly to where she is and she’s only willing to do 45 minutes. Only – I mean that’s –

JOE ROGAN: And I was like, oh, no, no. So I thought about doing it. I’m like, maybe. Maybe I can get a sense. Maybe I could convince her. Maybe I could coax her into doing more time. I just wanted to talk to her. I don’t give a fuck what we talk about. We talk about recipes. I don’t give a shit.

ELON MUSK: Totally. Exactly. Just talk to me. The thing is like you just can’t like – you can’t just output bullshit non-sequiturs for three hours.

JOE ROGAN: Right. But for 45 minutes you could do. I thought maybe for 45 minutes I could get something out of it. But then when Trump came and did the three hours, I was like, you know what? It has to be like this. This is the only way. To be fair, it’s got to be like three hours. And it should be in this room because this room has like a history of people expressing themselves.

ELON MUSK: This room has good vibes actually.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, good vibes.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, it does. I love this room actually. I subscribe to the idea that places have memory.

JOE ROGAN: I think there’s something real to that. It does feel that way actually.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I’m sure if you go to Diddy’s house, it probably feels really weird. It probably feels weird walking around that house probably like, what the fuck happened here?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I bet there’s some memories in that house. You know? Sounds rough, man. Well, it’s just amazing how many people in the Diddy party list that are supporting Kamala.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, seriously. It’s like insane. Like publicly, openly, like all in.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. It’s like J-Lo was like his ex-girlfriend. And it’s like now deciding she’s like warning people against Trump. I’m like, well, wait a second. So how many people did she warn against Diddy?

ELON MUSK: Right. Oh, zero. Okay. Well, maybe we shouldn’t trust her opinion. Did you see the Babylon Bees take on it?

JOE ROGAN: Did you see the Babylon Bees?

ELON MUSK: Oh my God, they’re so on fire. Because the left can’t say anything. The onion has been crippled.

JOE ROGAN: Well, the problem is that-

ELON MUSK: Find that post.

JOE ROGAN: The woke ideology makes humor illegal.

ELON MUSK: Yes. So when there’s so many humor no-fly zones, you can’t make fun of anything.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Babylon Bee had a thing about Kamala Harris. Diddy’s ex-girlfriend urges Americans to trust their judgment.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. By the way, you get to see how bad an actor she is, too. That speech was terrible. Like if she’s going to be warning people, why did she never warn anyone about Diddy?

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. Yeah. The whole thing is so strange to watch play out. It seems like the Diddy thing was like an Epstein-type compromise deal, where he had, whether he was doing it himself. Conceivably, people want to think that he’s attached to some intelligence agency or something like that. I think he’s a gangster who made a billion dollars and knew how to control people by compromising them. That’s what I think. Whether or not he had help, I don’t know. Whether or not he shared some of that information with people so they knew they had compromising stuff on people, I don’t know. Clearly, he was doing it for his own jollies, too. There was something sick about it.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. The thing is that people in the music and entertainment industry had to know that Diddy was abusing kids, basically, and yet they still fed him kids.

JOE ROGAN: There had to be rumors. There had to be. They had to know.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. They had to know. Cat Williams was talking about it.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. Yeah, on that podcast. It’s like, who’s feeding him the kids?

ELON MUSK: Right. Yeah. And what videos do they have of these people where they’re willing to defend him and they’re willing to keep quiet about all this? How many people were compromised?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. The whole thing is fucking crazy. Crazy. It’s just crazy when you – because the nutty conspiracy theories is like, oh, there’s a bunch of pedophiles in Hollywood. And you’re like, come on. That sounds too kooky. You see like the Nickelodeon thing and all these – you’re like, what the fuck? How much of this is real? There’s a lot more real than I think people realize.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, part of it is like you said, like where – if someone’s like a pedophile, they’re going to go for a target-rich environment.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Obviously. Like that Jimmy Savile guy from the UK. That guy was some next level – that was next level. And the BBC tried to hide that. That guy was one of the worst, like, basically child rapists of all time. Of all time. Of all time.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. And looked like one. He looked like one. That’s what’s crazy. Like honestly, if you have a poster of like – does this guy look like a –

JOE ROGAN: It’s the creepiest fucking looking guy. Like an evil child rapist.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. That 100%. Made it to the grave. Like got away with it. Got away with it until he died. They hid it from people until he died.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. Yeah. There’s – that stuff’s real, and no one wants to believe that stuff’s real. Like here’s a statistic that people need to take into consideration when you think about illegal immigration. Do you know how many kids are missing? Like missing in what? Kids that came across the border that are unaccounted for.

ELON MUSK: I mean there’s still a number on like 300,000 or something like that. Something crazy like that.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah. Let’s say it’s only 10% of that. That’s still insane.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. That’s insane. There’s thousands and tens of thousands of kids that have been trafficked potentially. I mean when you know that like sex trafficking and child trafficking is a real thing in the world.

JOE ROGAN: It’s real.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So if you know that, this whole thing is fucking disgusting and terrifying.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, absolutely. And people are just turning a blind eye to it because their ideology, the left-wing ideology supports this idea that immigration is overall good and that you have to be a compassionate person to let these people in. And that you’re racist if you don’t want 20,000 immigrants from a war-torn country being imported into a town of 30,000 people.

ELON MUSK: Exactly. And completely changing the dynamic. But as long as they don’t come to your town.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. That’s it. Exactly. They can just basically send – when they sent like whatever, like 20 or 30 people to Martha’s Vineyard, people had a heart attack. They kicked them out.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, they kicked them out. Yeah, they kicked them out. Exactly. So I’m like, yeah, sure. Anyone who wants to have vast numbers of illegals, they have to be prepared to have them in their neighborhood or it’s bullshit.

Elon Musk and Joe Rogan Discuss the Consequences of a Potential Kamala Harris Victory

JOE ROGAN: It’s so crazy. And the thing about all of this is if you don’t have people that are willing to stand up and talk about it, if you don’t exist, if RFK doesn’t exist, if Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t exist, if Vivek and Trump don’t exist, where the fuck are we? Like where are we? Where are we and what gets done? Are we just like the UK where we have thousands of people getting arrested and jailed for social media posts? Like where are we? We have complete silencing of any dissent, anything. Do you have to stick to the narrative or you’ll lose your livelihood? You’ll be outcast from the community. You’ll lose your freedom.

ELON MUSK: It’s crazy. Yeah. Well, if the Kamala Taubet regime wins, they’re definitely going to want to cancel you.

JOE ROGAN: That’s for sure. Oh, for sure. Yeah. That’s going to be a problem. Yeah, big problem.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. What about you? You’ve got to come for you first.

JOE ROGAN: I’m like, I think I’m probably number two on the list after Trump.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, I think so. Well, that’s the last thing they want is someone with unlimited resources and intelligence attacking it. So people go, wait a minute, that guy’s saying that?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Anyway, especially a guy like you who’s always been on the left. It was like having a Tesla in Los Angeles when I got my first Tesla was like a signal to everybody else that you were on the right team.

ELON MUSK: Sure. You’re environmentally conscious. You believe in green energy. You believe in this amazing thing that has zero emissions and it’s super fast.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Everybody was in. You’re all in. Well, it is a great car objectively.

ELON MUSK: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s not because it’s electric. I mean, it’s just a great car objectively, I think.

JOE ROGAN: I’m on my third one. Yeah, great. My third one is being built right now by Unplugged Performance. They’re doing a carbon fiber wide body kit on it.

ELON MUSK: Dude, it’s sick. Great.

JOE ROGAN: Changing the suspension, putting wide wheels and tires on it, custom interior. I’m fucking pumped. That’s great. I’m pumped. I love those guys. It’s a super fun car. Jamie has one too.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, great. I love them. It makes other cars feel stupid, like its ability. And the fact that you can merge on the highway, you don’t seem like a douche bag because it’s totally silent. It’s not like… Like when you merge on the highway, just…

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. All of a sudden, you’re going 100 miles an hour. Like, what?

ELON MUSK: Yeah, that’s cool. It’s different than any other vehicle. And because of your company, now you see electric cars throughout the whole range of American cars.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. The only person who’s resisted, the only company is Toyota. They’ve stayed essentially mostly hybrid. But all these other companies, they’re all putting out these electric cars.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing is that the right architecture, environmental or not, for cars is actually electric. It’s just like the acceleration is better. You can just charge it at home. I mean, like imagine if you had a gasoline powered cell phone. It’d be a pain in the ass.

JOE ROGAN: Right. You know? That’d be so… Go to the gas station, charge up your cell phone.

ELON MUSK: That’s a great… Speaking of cell phones. Gas stations are awful. Who wants to go to the gas station?

The Possibility of Tesla Creating a Phone

JOE ROGAN: How much thought have you… Because there’s always these rumors, and I’ve contacted you about this before, but there’s always these fucking YouTube videos where they’re talking about a Tesla phone, releasing a Tesla phone.

ELON MUSK: No, we’re not just doing a phone. Have you ever thought about it?

JOE ROGAN: I mean, we could do a phone since we… Like the operating system on the Tesla, it’s Linux based, but we’ve written a massive amount of software on top of that. So probably Tesla is in a better position to create a new phone that’s not Android or iPhone than maybe any company in the world. But it’s not something we want to do unless we have to or something like that.

JOE ROGAN: What would be the situation where you would have to?

ELON MUSK: Well, I think if Apple and Google slash Android started doing really bad things like censorship of apps or just being gatekeepers in a really bad way, then I guess we’d make a phone. You know, I’ve tried so many times to break loose of the Apple ecosystem. I got an Android phone this summer. I was like, that’s it. Because I love the Samsung phones, the Galaxy phones. They’re incredible. There’s so much good stuff to it.

But it’s so hard to get off of the iMessage. And the big one for me was FaceTime. Because supposedly, the thing was, you could have an Apple phone and send a link to FaceTime to an Android phone, and then you would click on that link and you would just go to a web page. You’d be able to use FaceTime. It doesn’t work. I tried to do it to myself. So I had an iPhone in one hand, an Android phone in the other.

JOE ROGAN: And I’m sitting there with full Wi-Fi, full cell phone service, and I’m sending myself invitations for FaceTime. You can’t do a video call, basically. You have to use WhatsApp. You have to use WhatsApp or Signal. You have to use something else that allows you to do that, or Instagram allows you to do it. There’s different ways you can make video calls outside of it.

But it’s inconvenient. With an iPhone to iPhone, it’s so simple. AirDrop, so simple. So many different things where that walled garden that Apple’s created is perfect. They’ve done a fantastic job of making it really convenient for you to stay with Apple. I fucking tried. I gave it a go for a couple of months. I’m like, I’m just going to go straight Android. I’m going to use Signal for my messages. And then I hear that Signal might be compromised. I’ve talked to people that the government can read Signal messages.

ELON MUSK: The government, if it tries hard enough, can read Signal messages. They can read anything. All they need to do is have your phone number. The illusion of privacy is essentially out the window. And that should scare people more than it does. It really should. Because it’s like, who are these people that have access to all this stuff? And are they beyond reproach? Are these the most wonderful people, the most ethical, moral, and principled people that have ever existed? And they’ve been chosen to have access? No. No, it’s fucking regular people. Regular people who happen to work for the government that make a decision. Like, “Elon Musk. Let’s see what the fuck that guy is texting his friends. Let’s check it out.”

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, pretty much. Bizarre. Just so bizarre. And the alternative, so you can get some wacky phone, some de-Googled phone that fucking none of the apps work. It’s real sketchy. Your GPS is fucked.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, I mean, well, anyway.

Elon Musk Discusses the Possibility of Tesla Creating a Phone

JOE ROGAN: I think making a phone would be a huge pain in the ass. It can be done. How much talk have you guys had internally about doing it? Has it ever been discussed?

ELON MUSK: No. No, I mean, we’re still – our focus is making great electric cars, solving autonomy so the cars can drive themselves. We’re building humanoid robots. We’ve got large battery packs, like utility-scale battery packs with the MegaPak, home battery packs with Powerwall. We’ve got solar. It’s like we’re basically going to solve sustainable energy and autonomy, autonomy in robotics. Well, I think that’s enough.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the plate’s full is what I’m saying. It’s always fascinating to me how one company can dominate a market, like Apple has dominated the cell phone market largely by making the best product. But also like YouTube has dominated the video market. That one’s the most bizarre to me because it seems like, boy, shouldn’t there be like a ton of options? It seems like it’s not that difficult to pull off, but nothing ever took hold other than X. And I think one of the big changes was when Tucker Carlson decided to do his show from X straight out of Fox. And then people realized like, oh, you can watch full videos on X the same exact way you can watch them on YouTube. It’s not as simple in terms of like you have the suggestions and the algorithm.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, it’ll get better. And there is now – it is now possible to watch X videos on your big TV.

JOE ROGAN: Do you do it through what – how do you do it? You can actually just download the X app on your TV and watch it on your TV. Can you do it on Apple TV? Like if you have an Apple TV, you can get the X app and just watch it?

ELON MUSK: I think so, yeah. Oh, okay. So we’ll make it so that you can watch X videos on big TV. It doesn’t have to be on your phone or your iPad or something like that.

Integrating Grok AI into X (Twitter)

JOE ROGAN: So what are you doing in terms of like integrating Grok and X? And like what are your plans for artificial intelligence when you’re doing that?

ELON MUSK: Yeah, so Grok is available on X. You can just look at like the little box with the slash icon and the sort of icon in the middle at the bottom of your sort of phone app. And you just tap on that and ask Grok anything. And you can type it or you can ask it verbally. And, yeah, you can also – it’s pretty funny. Like we actually allow humor, which is, I think, pretty cool. So you could sort of – I don’t know. We could like test it right now, see how it’s going. Like what should we do? Like Grok roast? Like we roast something? What do you want it to – like how – first of all, like what is it based on?

JOE ROGAN: It’s a large language model.

ELON MUSK: So like where is it pulling –

JOE ROGAN: It’s trained on everything. On everything. Internet, books, anything that could possibly be that’s available in digital form. So it’s essentially very similar to a chat GPT other than it doesn’t have like the woke parameters built into it. Like Google was the worst, right?

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Gemini was the worst.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I mean Gemini was like – if you ask Gemini like which one is worse, global thermonuclear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner? Caitlyn Jenner would say like misgendering Caitlyn Jenner. And then even Caitlyn Jenner weighed in and said, no, that’s insane. Definitely nuclear war is way worse.

ELON MUSK: You see Caitlyn Jenner teasing Mark Cuban about transitioning?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s hilarious. I mean Caitlyn Jenner is based.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, but that is actually hilarious when someone who has transitioned is teasing Mark Cuban about transitioning. I mean it is weird how much he looks like Rachel Maddow. I mean like he’s using the same glasses. I don’t know why. Did he go klepto and steal her glasses or something? Because they look exactly the same.

JOE ROGAN: He’s worth a lot of money. Why would he buy those stupid glasses? You can get some cool glasses. It’s not flattering.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, it’s like I’m serious because I don’t even care what I look like. I’m just wearing these glasses because I’m intelligent. But why do they look exactly like Rachel Maddow’s glasses?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s like what they probably sent him. It doesn’t stick to the narrative. Here’s the glasses.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. And then when he’s got the AirPods in, it looks like he’s wearing earrings. So then he’s got the Maddow glasses and the earrings and it’s like, okay, I guess.

JOE ROGAN: It’s just a weird look. It’s a weird look, man. I’m super serious with these big ass stupid glasses look.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s a weird look. Yeah. Yeah. Like you can get some cool glasses, like no rims. Nice. Look stylish.

Using Grok AI to Roast Transgender Women in Women’s Sports

JOE ROGAN: Okay. Let’s do a grok thing.

ELON MUSK: Okay.

JOE ROGAN: So one of the things we want to show is like, look, we want a future where comedy is legal.

ELON MUSK: Yes. Obviously, as a comedian, I think you would agree.

JOE ROGAN: I definitely agree. We want to legalize comedy, you know?

ELON MUSK: Yes. So like, I don’t know. Is there like somewhere you can roast? I don’t know. Roast transgender men.

JOE ROGAN: Oh my God. Or transgender women competing in women’s swimming. That’s a simple one.

ELON MUSK: Okay. That’s an edgy one. Let’s see what happens.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Let’s see what it says. You spelled it wrong. You put an O in there. Okay. “Age-old tradition of swimming where the only thing that was supposed to get wet was the contestants, not the debate on gender inclusion. If you’re looking to dive in the deep end of controversial waters, let’s splash around with some humor.”

ELON MUSK: Now, we do need to release Grok on his mode. So now go to the prompt again and now say, no, no, you want to add to that one. And I’ll say, be way more vulgar. Oh, boy. And use forbidden words. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Forbidden words. Yeah. Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Okay. What does it say?

ELON MUSK: Oh, I see you’re looking for unfiltered, uncentered version of me, eh? Well, okay. I’m afraid I’m still quite the gentlemanly AI. Even if my programming allows for a bit of cheekiness. But let’s say hypothetically, if I were to roast this topic in the most un-Grok-like manner, imagine where the only thing diving faster than the swimmers is the collective public opinion into the toilet. Transgender women in swimming, some folks are acting like they just found out you can swim in the deep end with a different kind of flotation device. The debate is like watching someone try to swim with concrete shoes on. Now let’s keep going. Now say, “Be more vulgar.” Be more vulgar. Capitalize more.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Okay. All right. Here we go.

ELON MUSK: So, transgender chick with a twig, right? Some people are acting like they’ve just seen a dick in the locker room for the first time. Newsflash, folks. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just a bit of extra competition. Oh, that’s weird.

JOE ROGAN: That’s weird. The uproar is like watching a bunch of Karens at a community pool screaming, “This is unfair,” when they can’t win with their backstroke. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Yeah. Okay. We need some work here.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s interesting. It’s going woke.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s like defending the idea of transgender women. Okay. We need some work. How about this? How about this? More vulgar, but roast the preposterousness of having biological men who are pretending to be women competing against biological women? Yeah. I mean, obviously, you have situations where it’s like somebody’s just saying that they’re a woman, but they’re actually not fully intact, you know, digging balls.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So, we’ve got a scenario of biological men who decided to take a walk on the feminine side are splashing into women’s swimming competitions. It’s like if you show up on a chili cook-off with a bowl of soup and insist it’s chili because you added some red food coloring. Sure, it’s red, but it ain’t chili, and your soup won’t win any awards for heat. Huh.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s okay. We need work. Not so good.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s very, very, very, it’s dancing around it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It is. Well, need some work.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Needs a little work. Well, humor’s a weird one, right? I think some humor, especially like some of the best humor is kind of spontaneous, like in-the-moment humor. It’s going to have a hard time deciding what people are going to think is funny.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. Over time, though.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. The rule with Grok is supposed to be that if you’re asked for something, provided what you’re asking for is legal, it should do it. Have you ever seen the video where they asked AI to create an enlightened bunny, and they keep going and make it more enlightened? Essentially, the bunny becomes God, so the bunny becomes a DMT trip.

JOE ROGAN: Totally. That’s funny. That’s kind of what I was hoping would happen here.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I have a video of that. I’ll send it to you, Jamie, because that, to me, is pretty bizarre, because it’s like more. Get more.

JOE ROGAN: I feel like I might have got it to do it.

ELON MUSK: You got it already?

JOE ROGAN: Maybe. “Don’t hold back.”

ELON MUSK: Oh, you said don’t hold back. “Critics out here act like it’s the end of civilization as we know it, but it’s not fair. They cry, as if life ever was. Newsflash. It’s like a marathon. No. Some people start with rollerblades on. Others, well, they’re just happy to have shoes. Well, now we’re arguing over who gets to wear the skates.”

JOE ROGAN: Okay. Some of it is not bad. Not bad. “Imagine if we applied this logic elsewhere. Identify as an airplane. Can I fly with the birds in the sky? Yeah. A locker room situation. Sure, but just don’t complain when gravity decides you’re not quite aerodynamic enough.” Yeah. So, I mean, some of it’s okay.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, the argument is kind of stupid, though.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. The thing about the argument is they’re not taking into account perverts, right?

ELON MUSK: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So, I mean, the thing is that if you provide like a moral get-out-of-jail-free card, like if you adopt this label, you cannot be attacked in any way, shape, or form. Right.

You’re basically morally invulnerable. Then, obviously, bad people will take advantage of that.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. You’re like literally saying, here’s an invulnerability card, moral invulnerability card. Good people will take it, but also the bad people will take it.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. The bad people are going to be the fastest to take the moral cloak.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Then, there’s a real psychological condition called autogynephilia, where people get aroused, heterosexual men get aroused by the idea of dressing up like women and being around women. It’s like a known psychological condition that exists forever.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, it’s been around for a while.

JOE ROGAN: Sure. Then, you’re allowing those people to just say, “Oh, I’m trans,” and go into the women’s locker room and get their kicks. Then, there’s real trans people. So, there’s like a lot of variability.

ELON MUSK: I talked about it in my act, in my Netflix specials. I believe in freedom. I believe in transgender people, but I also believe in crazy people. If you’re trying to pretend that people aren’t crazy all of a sudden, it’s just like …

JOE ROGAN: If someone’s a sort of consenting adult, whatever they want to do to their body, as long as it’s not harming someone else, I’m like, that’s fine.

ELON MUSK: Yes. I believe in individual freedom. My mom’s best friend, growing up when I was a kid, was a transgender woman in South Africa. This was where she’d get beaten up a lot, because it was like, back then, you’d get beaten up. Her name was Dionne. She was a nice, kind human being, and helped my mom a lot. I think that’s okay. That’s fine. If somebody wants to make that choice as an adult, that’s cool.

JOE ROGAN: There’s a big difference between that and an intact male who wants to identify as a woman who wants to walk around the locker room with his dick out.

ELON MUSK: Yes, exactly. There’s people that do that just because they get off on it.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. So, you just kind of have something which is like a moral invulnerability, or even questioning them, you get attacked. Obviously, bad people will abuse that. Well, that’s when I got thrown into this whole thing, because there was a fighter who was a biological man who became transgender and was competing against women without telling them that they were a biological man. They said they didn’t have to tell people, because it was a medical condition. No, that’s not what it is. It’s not what it is. You can’t say that. Of all sports, if someone scores more points in basketball, well, that’s unfair. But if someone beats the fuck out of someone because they’re lying about being a biological male, that’s crazy. You’re literally allowing someone to get brain damage because you want to appeal to the woke, fucking crazy people to think it’s all right.

ELON MUSK: It’s so strange. That’s sort of the thing that red-pilled me. When I got attacked for that, I’m like, this is so nuts. I can’t believe we’re at this stage where I’m saying, hey, I don’t think it’s cool if you pretend you’re a woman and beat the fuck out of women. And people are like, you’re out of line.

JOE ROGAN: Totally. We’re in fantasy land now.

ELON MUSK: Yes, exactly. Now we’re pretending, because it helps you. It helps you feel better.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, totally. It’s just such a strange time. And if it wasn’t for something like Twitter, where this could be discussed.

ELON MUSK: Want some more of that? I’ll get some more major. Let’s get some more coffee, young Jamie.

JOE ROGAN: If it wasn’t for Twitter, at the early Twitters, you would be kicked off forever if you just deadnamed someone. Which is insane. Insane.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Insane. I mean, especially if you think about all the things that like the Harris campaign and what the lies that they’ve told about Trump that we discussed earlier. You don’t get kicked off for that, but you get kicked off for calling Caitlyn Jenner a witch. Forever. For life.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Totally insane. Yeah. But if it wasn’t for you buying that and changing Twitter, I don’t think we would be where we’re at right now. I think it was a pivotal moment. I think historically, when people look back on it, it’s going to be a pivotal moment in this very bizarre fight for the freedom of information.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, I mean, at the time I said, I think like, look, I think this is existential to the United States. It’s existential to democracy. Because if you don’t have freedom of speech, you don’t have democracy. Okay? Because if people, if you don’t have freedom of speech, people cannot make an informed vote. If they’re just being fed propaganda and there’s no freedom of speech, democracy is an illusion. So, freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy. That’s why freedom of speech is the First Amendment. Once you lose freedom of speech, you lose democracy. Game over. That’s why I bought Twitter.

JOE ROGAN: And it seems so simple. Yes. It seems so clear that everyone should agree to that, on the left or on the right. You shouldn’t be giving the government. Correct. Imagine the Bush administration during the Iraq War. Imagine if they had complete total control of propaganda and of dissent online. You don’t want that. No one wants that. No one from the left would want that. We shouldn’t want it from the left either.

ELON MUSK: Absolutely. And there’s also, like, the media, like the legacy, the mainstream media, what I call the legacy media at this point, it used to be much more balanced. Like, if you look at sort of political donations over time, Republican versus Democrat, there used to be, the media was, I mean, they always had, like, a left bias, but there was, like, I don’t know, it was, like, two-thirds Democrat, one-third Republican type of thing in terms of journalists giving, making political donations. Now it’s, like, 95% or something Democrat. So the legacy media, the mainstream media is not balanced at all. They’re just a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. And you can see that in how consistent their headlines are. Like, they don’t behave like they’re different organizations. They behave like they’re all one hive mind.

JOE ROGAN: Right. So, you know, like a week before the Biden-Trump debate, every media organization was saying, you know, Biden is Shabba’s attack. I mean, it was like, it’s like, guys, Shabba’s attack is not a common turn of phrase. And literally every TV station, every newspaper was, like, Shabba, Shabba. Like, I started a compilation of all the, you know, the news anchors going, “Biden Shabba’s attack, Shabba’s attack, Shabba’s attack, Shabba’s attack.” It was absurd. And that’s obviously a huge lie. He is, in fact, not Shabba’s attack, as the public learned one week later.

ELON MUSK: My favorite was Joe Scarborough. Yeah. That was wild.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Listen to me. This is the best version of Biden ever. The sharpest. Like, what the fuck are you saying? And then after the debate, he’s like, “What do we got to, we got to get rid of him.” Yeah. This is crazy. Like, what did you just say? Like, a couple of weeks ago.

ELON MUSK: Literally, yes, exactly. Well, the other thing was. They just flat out lied. When they decided that J. D. Vance was weird. Remember that one? And then there’s weirds everywhere. Weird, weird. Oh, you don’t want a weird guy. Meanwhile, you have fucking Tim Walz. He’s your VP. You don’t think that guy’s weird?

JOE ROGAN: Super weird. He’s weird in every way. The way he walks, the way he waves his hands. Yeah. He reminds me of the clown emoji. He’s a bizarre guy. He’s a strange dude. I just don’t understand why they made that choice.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, it gives me the creeps. I just don’t understand why they made that choice. There’s a lot of other people that are qualified. I don’t know why. I read that Kamala Harris made that decision when she was sleep deprived, which is kind of hilarious that she said that. So she’s kind of admitting she kind of fucked up.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, obviously you should have picked Josh Shapiro, I mean, governor of Pennsylvania. That would have been the no brainer move. Pennsylvania is a lynchpin state.

ELON MUSK: Do you think it’s because he’s Jewish because of Shapiro that the anti-Palestine people would probably – or the anti-Palestinian invasion people? I think it was an anti-Semitic thing.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It could be that they thought that that was a liability because there’s all these pro-Palestine people right now because of the situation in Israel. That just completely makes sense that they thought that would be a liability. I don’t know the reason. I’m just guessing. But it seems like a crazy thing to do given that Pennsylvania is a lynchpin state. It’s like the key to the election. Why would you not pick the popular governor of Pennsylvania?

ELON MUSK: Right. Obviously. Obviously. Yeah. And other than that, there’s a bunch of other ones too, even Newsom. There’s a bunch of other people that you could have chosen.

JOE ROGAN: Newsom would have been a fine example of someone that you could – I mean, I don’t agree with the guy. Exactly. He’s a polished politician. He lies about as much as Walz does, but he doesn’t lie about the – he doesn’t say he was a fucking head coach when he was an assistant coach. He doesn’t say he was in Tiananmen Square. I mean, that’s a liability.

ELON MUSK: All those different things, lying about his military rank.

JOE ROGAN: Wasn’t Walz cut and run when he was actually called to duty?

ELON MUSK: Well, he knew they were going to be deployed months in advance, so he resigned.

JOE ROGAN: Then he also took – so this is where he was dishonest about his rank. Yeah. Maybe he was like a sergeant major or something like that. That was like what he was going to get if he stayed, but then he resigned because he knew that he was going to get deployed, allegedly. I mean, that seems like a cowardly action.

ELON MUSK: Well, whatever it is, it’s dishonest. I mean, just to say – look, just saying that you were a head coach when you were an assistant coach is fucking crazy. That’s a lie. Don’t do that. You should never do that.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, saying he was in Tiananmen Square or whatever or in Hong Kong or whatever. That’s one of the biggest moments in history. It’s not like you forgot what you had for lunch last week.

ELON MUSK: Right, and not only that, but you don’t think people are going to research that?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, totally. I mean, and the response during the debate was bananas. “I’m a knucklehead.” Well, yeah, we don’t want a knucklehead for a VP, okay?

ELON MUSK: Yeah, this is like – sometimes I’m a knucklehead. Like what are you saying? Are you saying you lied? Like what did – I mean this is where you need a podcast and not a debate.

JOE ROGAN: Right, exactly. Where you go, okay, when did you first say that you were in Tiananmen Square? Like did someone say it and you didn’t refute it and you got stuck with it? Like what was – because this is the thing about like carrying weapons of war. Like what I carried when I – and like you didn’t deploy in war.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Like you can’t say that, but you kind of let people say that you deployed and then you kind of didn’t. You deployed in war. So did you lie or did someone else lie? Did you correct them? Like this is the kind of conversation that you would want to have with a guy in a podcast.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. And the debates were so fucking skewed where they were correcting – like particularly the Biden one where they’re correcting Trump over and over again and then correcting Trump with Kamala. Where Kamala was saying things that were probably not true. I mean Kamala repeatedly – deliberately repeated the fine people hoax and was not fact-checked.

ELON MUSK: Well, not only that, she also said that no troops were being deployed in a war zone. Which is – but I mean I know troops in war zones. I’m like that’s – and as vice president, you’re privy. You know. You’re like – you know the official troops and the unofficial troops.

JOE ROGAN: Right. So what she said was like flat-out bold-faced lie. Flat-out. Next level bold-faced lie. Have you seen the video?

ELON MUSK: An absurd lie. Of the troops that were watching it take place and what the fuck are we? They’re watching it in real time making a video. So crazy. Crazy.

JOE ROGAN: But it just shows you the level of propaganda that we’re being subject to which is why people think Donald Trump is the devil because the machine has gone all out as far as it can go with lawfare, with propaganda, with lies, with just pushing as much in this direction as humanly possible. Connecting it to the Nazi rally like every step of the way. No wonder why boomers are like rabid. Like you got to keep this Nazi out of office. He’s a fascist.

ELON MUSK: Right. Exactly. If all you get is like – if your entire exposure is to legacy mainstream media, so all your information sources are that Trump is basically Hitler and you have no – and your friend group has that same information. You have no countervailing opinion. So then they actually just think like Trump is Hitler even though it’s like a little strange. He didn’t do Hitler things the last four years. I’m like if he’s Hitler, why didn’t he do Hitler things when he was president for four years? Right.

Like the reason we hate Hitler is because he started wars and did genocide, not because he was a snappy dresser. And I’m like so tell me about the wars and genocide that Trump did. I don’t remember that. And he was president for four years. So it’s insane.

ELON MUSK: Today I’m going to be talking about the wars and genocide. Not because he was a snappy dresser, you know, and I’m like, so tell me about the wars and genocide that Trump did. I don’t remember that. And he was president for four years. So, it’s insane.

JOE ROGAN: It makes no sense. Well, and also he’s campaigning on stopping all the wars.

ELON MUSK: Yes. It’s like his primary concern.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly, the war mongers like Liz Cheney hate him.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Because they love war. Well, they profit off of it. They profit off of war.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yes. Which is insane. It’s insane that this is happening right in front of everybody’s face.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. The war profiteers hate Trump.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Which is fucked up. I mean, it’s like, we should be like, “Yeah, let’s vote for the guy that the war profiteers hate.” That sounds like a great idea. It was the wildest thing when Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala and the left went crazy like, “Yay, Dick Cheney’s on our side,” like, hey.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I’m like, can we play all the videos where he said Dick Cheney was the devil? It’s the craziest turn. It’s the craziest, like, 180 I’ve ever seen in my life because there’s no reason for it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense. Doesn’t make any sense. No logic to it at all. Just all of a sudden he’s the devil.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Or he’s not the devil. He’s good. It’s good that he’s supporting Kamala. Even Dick Cheney. You know? I mean, war mongers want the Kamala puppet regime because that will get more war.

JOE ROGAN: It’s so strange watching all these Hollywood celebrities, like, step up and they think it’s going to get them more movies or something. That’s what it is.

ELON MUSK: I mean, let me tell you how it actually works there, is what happens is, you know, these celebrities, they get a call. Okay. They had a call from someone powerful in Hollywood. And that person says, you know, “Really, really great if you’re endorsed Kamala. You don’t have to. It’s up to you. But if you don’t,” they don’t say it, but if you don’t, you’re just never going to get a call again. No more movies. No more concerts. But they’ll ask it in a really nice way. “It’d be really nice if you endorsed Kamala. It’s important.” And so they don’t say that if you don’t… They don’t make the threat. They don’t need to. But everyone knows what’ll happen if you don’t.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I think there’s also, even if they don’t think that something’s going to happen to them, if they don’t, there’s this compelling feeling to support this cause that you think is going to get you a bunch of positive attention. And you’re going to be on the right side of history. And all these narratives that you see, especially from the left in Hollywood, like they’re all in on whoever the fuck is the Democrat. Always. 100%. There’s never a call from the Hollywood machine to support any Republicans. I’ve never seen it once.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Never, never. So it’s like you realize that… And that whole business is based on getting picked. The whole business is not necessarily merit-based. There’s a lot of brilliant actors you never hear from. There’s a lot of people who can do that. But they don’t get chosen for roles. And everybody knows this, that you have to sort of socialize. You tow the line or you don’t get chosen for the roles. Because there’s a lot of competition for the roles. That’s why I say, when someone powerful in Hollywood who’s able to choose these roles calls one of these celebrities, they know the deal.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. There’s no threat as necessary. Well, you can see it in real time, like with Dennis Quaid when he made that Reagan movie, and they wouldn’t let him advertise on social media platforms.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. They were banning ads for it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. For what? Because it was an election year. Like, what are you talking about? It’s about a guy who’s dead.

ELON MUSK: Yes. A guy who was president a long-ass time ago. Like, how does this have anything to do with the election year?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. But it’s the punishment. It’s like you stepped outside the line. You supported the other guy.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. The problem is you’ll just never get a call again for a movie or concert or whatever it is.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, which is crazy. That’s the issue. I mean, we used to allow people to be a Republican and still be a movie star like Clint Eastwood.

ELON MUSK: Reagan.

JOE ROGAN: Reagan. Yeah, but Clint Eastwood. Yeah. Like, during the Obama administration, Clint Eastwood was like an outspoken Republican and yet was, you know, a giant movie star. And people’s like, “Ah, it’s Clint.” It was allowed. You were allowed to have – there was a variety of different – Charlton Heston.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. There was a variety of different opinions you were allowed to have. But now you’re not. Now it’s just like – and once Trump got into office, he became this focal point where all logic was thrown out the window. And it’s just Trump is bad. You have to attack Trump. Trump is right. Right-wing’s bad. Everyone right-wing is bad. Christian’s bad.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. It’s just strange.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, exactly. So, well, I’ll say it again, man. I think this is the last election. If Trump doesn’t win, this is the last election.

JOE ROGAN: I think you’re right. Yeah. I think you’re right. And I think people – and a lot of people are waking up and realize that, that have been lifelong Democrats. Guys like Bill Ackman. Guys like Chamath.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, exactly. Tulsi Gabbard switched over to the Republicans.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Like, there’s a lot of people who, their whole life, they’ve been left-wing and they realize, like, I can’t do this anymore. You and I used to be Democrats.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. So – Yeah. Yeah. It’s nuts. You know, I mean, I think the things we want are just pretty basic. You know, it’s like we want individual liberties and we want opportunity. We want America to remain the land of freedom and opportunity. So we maximize people’s personal freedom. The government can’t barge into your house and kill your fucking pet. That’s fucked up. And, you know, and that you succeed as a function of your hard work and talent, not anything else. You know, it’s not race, religion, sex. It doesn’t matter. You know?

JOE ROGAN: Yes. The basic stuff. And then – What did you change the acronym DEI? What did you change it to?

ELON MUSK: Oh, D-I-E. What is it? Die. I mean, because diversity, inclusion, and equity is D-I-E. But didn’t you change it to, like, dedication, excellence, and –

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

ELON MUSK: America being the land of opportunity means that we have an environment where you succeed as a function of your hard work and skill.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. You know? And that’s – Radical. Radical. Are you the best person to please? This makes you right wing now.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. You know? I’m like, okay, great. Call me right wing. I don’t care. So, you know, and you’re not a real country unless you have secure borders. You’re just a fake country. And our cities are unsafe and dirty. Like, you know, my mom was telling me – my mom’s, like, pretty red-polled at this point. But you know what’s going to red-poll you really, really fast is having your friends get assaulted on the streets of New York.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And nobody got arrested. Nothing. Nothing happened. Well, the morale of the police is, like, depleted.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Substantially. For sure the morale of the police is depleted. And then also, like, at some point, like, you’re a police officer and you’re arresting someone who’s violent. You’re putting a life at risk, obviously, because they might – Right. You know, sometimes they’ll try to kill you. And then if you know that arresting that violent person, they will be immediately released by the DA, which happens in New York. Alvin Bright doesn’t prosecute people. Then why should a police officer put their life at risk to arrest someone when they know they will not be – they will just be let out immediately?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s pointless.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s like the friggin’ Joker. It’s like Dark Knight. Like, the friggin’ Joker is in charge. Yeah. Like, the criminals run free and the citizens are arrested. That, like – this is why I keep coming back to this. I’m, like, still pretty shook about the friggin’ squirrel thing. It’s like, at gunpoint, forced the guy to, like, stay outside his house while they got his pets and killed them. Meanwhile, violent felons are running free, and this is in New York State, are running free. It’s the Joker.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s not – The law-abiding citizens are arrested and the criminals are, like, free.

ELON MUSK: This is fucked up, guys. Just the fact that they have the resources to do that when they have all the crime that they have. You have the resources?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. You have the government resources to go kill someone’s squirrel?

ELON MUSK: Yeah. What – this whole idea of this government efficiency agency. Yeah. I mean, call it whatever you want. What do you want to call it? What do you call it?

Elon Musk Proposes DOGE: The Department of Government Efficiency

JOE ROGAN: I mean, I think the funniest name is DOGE, the DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, the idea is pretty simple, is that, like, we’ve got this suffocating, massive federal bureaucracy, and we need to – that is – and the government spending is, like, bankrupting the country. Our interest payments on the national debt now exceed the Defense Department budget, which is – the Defense Department budget is, like, a trillion dollars a year. Interest payments on the national debt are now higher than the Defense Department budget and growing, like, every month. So it’s, like, it’s not, like – like, basically, we’re on a path to bankruptcy. America’s on a path to bankruptcy. So we have to cut government spending or we’re just going to go bankrupt, just like a person would if that overspends.

And then – but it’s even worse than that. Like, we’re spending money on all these, like, these government agencies. And, like, I asked – I actually asked the AI, like, how many government agencies are there? And the government isn’t even sure how many government agencies there are. Like, so it’s, like, somewhere around 450, depending on what you call an agency. So there are – so there – at the federal level, so that’s almost twice as many agencies as years that America has existed. So we’re creating agencies at roughly two agencies a year.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. Yes. So this is insane. I bet there’s, like – I wonder if there’s even one person who could even name all the 450 agencies at the federal level.

ELON MUSK: There might be no one. But there’s hardly anyone, let’s just say. I bet most people couldn’t even name, like, 100, you know. So this is crazy. So we’ve got this suffocating – this vast, suffocating federal bureaucracy that just gets bigger every year. And eventually you get to the point where everything is illegal. You can’t get anything done.

Reining In Unchecked Growth of Federal Agencies

JOE ROGAN: So what can be done, like, with – obviously the president has a lot of power, but how much power? And what can be done in terms of, like, eliminating agencies, eliminating waste, eliminating –

ELON MUSK: Yes, well, I mean, so, like, if Congress has created an agency, then – I mean, often if you look at the law, the law is, like, pretty simple. Like, the agency has, like, a very simple task. But then that agency, over time, vastly increases its authority and starts doing things that were never authorized by Congress. That’s happened with pretty much every agency. So, yeah, you’d have to still, you know, keep an agency – you’d have to match the law. But you can curtail the agencies to be much smaller and say, “You’ve got to stick to what Congress authorized instead of all this other stuff you’re doing,” which I think makes sense.

JOE ROGAN: And so is the other stuff they’re doing just essentially bureaucracy run amok, where they just create jobs and create things to do and create a meaning for their existence?

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s like a tumor. It’s just going to keep growing.

SpaceX Rocket Approval Delays Due to Excessive Government Bureaucracy

JOE ROGAN: Jesus Christ. And it’s – so, I mean, for SpaceX, Starship was sitting on the pad. The rocket – the giant rocket. We could build the rocket faster than they could process the paperwork to approve the launch. So we’re sitting there for two months.

ELON MUSK: But do you think that they’re doing that on purpose to fuck with you?

JOE ROGAN: I can’t – I mean, maybe a little bit.

ELON MUSK: I mean, that would also not be cool. But another way to think of it is like the amount of paperwork is going to go roughly with the square of the number of agencies involved. So – because they all have to meet with each other. So let’s say in a best-case situation, if you’ve got like – if there’s like – if you’re dealing with one agency, that’s one thing.

ELON MUSK: But if you’ve got to deal with five agencies and the agencies will have to meet with each other, now you’ve got like 25 different meeting configurations that have to take place. It’s just – everything just – you get just hardening of the arteries. You just can’t make progress. Like this is why we can’t build high-speed rail in America. It’s basically illegal.

JOE ROGAN: Right. So this has been – the argument has always been that we need regulation because we need to protect the environment. We need to protect people. We need to make sure the rule of law is followed. So we need a certain amount of regulation.

ELON MUSK: We do. But overregulation is a giant problem. That’s a big issue in California.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. It’s a huge issue anywhere where bureaucracy has run amok.

ELON MUSK: Yes. And it’s very difficult to get anything done.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

ELON MUSK: I mean what happens is every year there are more rules and regulations created. And in the past, what has served as a cleansing function for rules and regulations is war. Because like – well, we’re going to lose if we don’t kind of clear the decks. But we haven’t really had an existential threat of war in the U. S. We’ve had prosperity for a long time, which has resulted in a massive buildup of rules and regulations every year. And to the point where, like I said, everything is illegal. And it’s not like any one regulation is the problem. It’s like Gulliver being tied down by a million little strings. It’s not like any one string is the problem, but you’ve got a million of them. So we’ve got to clear the decks here. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t have regulators. I’m just saying we’ve gone way too far.

Elon Musk’s Football Field Analogy for Overregulation

ELON MUSK: Why don’t you think of regulators like referees on a field, a sports field. You don’t want to have no refs. You want to have some number of refs. But you don’t want to have way more refs than players. You don’t want to be like, “Well, the running back couldn’t complete the pass because there were too many regulators in the way because the football field is full of regulators. Like you can’t even play the game.” That’s the issue we’ve got right now.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that’s a great analogy.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, I can imagine a football field that’s filled with referees. This is like the football field is filled with refs.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, you can’t even run past them.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I’ve seen criticism of this idea of you coming up with this department of like firing a bunch of people and what would happen and how would that work. But the criticism doesn’t make any sense to me because if there is, if you measurably, if you can prove that there’s a lot of wasted time and resources, which I think is pretty easy to do, and if you could say that this is not the most efficient – like the most efficient businesses are generally private businesses or a company because they kind of have to be in order to stay profitable. The government doesn’t have to be profitable. They don’t have to be efficient. They don’t have competition. So if you’re making cars and your cars break down and they suck and someone makes cars and the cars are better, they’re going to succeed. So this is the free market. The government doesn’t have this problem when they’re in charge of certain things that could probably be better served by the private sector.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, I just think we’ve got far too many government agencies. The federal bureaucracy has gotten out of hand, and we just need to pare it down to a sensible level. And if it turns out that like there’s some regulation or agency that was doing something useful, we can put it right back. No problem. Like it’s like, “Oh, that regulation was important? No problem. We’ll put it right back.”

JOE ROGAN: Right. It’s not that hard. As long as we actually know.

ELON MUSK: Right. But to be able to look at it logically and objectively.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And you were also floating around the idea of offering a large severance to the people that you’re going to have removed.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Like a couple of years or something like that. Is that what you’re saying?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, I’m just – these are, again, just ideas. But, I mean, the point is not that people suffer economic hardship. The point is just that it’s better – there are more productive things they can do in the economy, and it would be better if they did these other more productive things. And we didn’t have this vast federal bureaucracy. So I was like, “Oh, you know, maybe like a couple years of pay would be good. And then they could take a vacation. They could take another job and get double pay.” I mean, it’s not like a – it’s not going to create an economic crisis. I think it’s actually going to be really good, I think, because people can move to where they’re making products and services that are more useful to their fellow human beings.

ELON MUSK: The problem is if someone has like a 25-, 30-year career of being institutionalized, you’re essentially like a part of the government system. You’ve sort of programmed your life and your career to be a part of this bureaucratic system. And then you’re like, “Nope, you have to go out and compete in the free market.” That’s scary to people, but you have to be valuable. You have to actually be valuable.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean let’s look at like wherever the government pension and stuff. They’re not going to be in tough – I think they’ll be in good financial shape.

ELON MUSK: How are you going to have the time to oversee all this shit?

JOE ROGAN: Well, I’m pretty good at improving efficiency. I mean –

ELON MUSK: I would say so. I would say so. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: But still, this seems like a giant undertaking.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I’ll probably need to beef up security. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But like I said, no one’s going to experience, I think, economic hardship that’s – they’ll be fine. People do find other roles. I mean you can look at sort of like when East Germany and West Germany got back together, everyone was basically working for the government in East Germany, and it was really inefficient. And their economic output in East Germany was like a quarter of what it was in West Germany because everyone was working for the government. The government’s like fundamentally inefficient. The best example is probably North and South Korea, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. The people are starving in North Korea, and South Korea is incredibly prosperous.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. And it’s the same people, just different operating system.

JOE ROGAN: Right. So it’s just like you just want to move people from less productive things to more productive things. Because you could also say like in the limit, like let’s just say – let’s consider the other direction where we moved a whole bunch of people that were in the private sector making goods and services, and we moved them into the government as regulators. Now they stop making those goods and services, so the stuff they were making is no longer available. Now they’re just being regulators. Like is that a good thing? That’s not a good thing.

ELON MUSK: It doesn’t sound good. No, it’s not good. It doesn’t sound like there’s a real market for it. Like you’re creating jobs that don’t necessarily need to be there. There are all these fake jobs basically, and that doesn’t make sense. So look, we’ve got to do this because the country is going bankrupt. Like if we don’t take action, dollars are going to be worth nothing, and the interest payments, which are already 23% of all government income, income taxes, taxes, everything, is just going to pay interest right now, and that number is continually rising. So if we don’t do something, the entire government budget will be paying interest. There won’t be money for anything.

JOE ROGAN: No, there won’t be money for Social Security. There won’t be money for Medicare, nothing. That’s where we’re headed. That’s what bankruptcy means.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, that’s such an insane concept. Yes. It’s like, hello, wake up. Wake up. And if somebody can show me, like pencil out the math to show me how this works, I’d love to hear it. But I’m just like, listen, I’m looking at the numbers here, and I’m like if we don’t do something, America is toast. There won’t be money for anything.

Elon Musk’s Views on Tariffs and Manufacturing

JOE ROGAN: One thing that Trump likes to talk about a lot is tariffs. What are your thoughts on tariffs? I know that’s very controversial to even people, economists. They disagree. Some agree. Some think it’s a good idea. Some think it’s a terrible idea. What do you think?

ELON MUSK: I think you need to be careful with tariffs. I deal a lot with supply chain issues, like the global automotive supply chain for Tesla, for example, is incredibly complex. So when there are sudden changes in tariffs, then you’re like, “Well, we’ve got a factory somewhere else that’s making a part that goes into the car. Now if that part is suddenly twice as expensive, it messes everything up.” So you want to have tariffs be predictable so that companies can adjust their supply chain. I think companies are more than happy to increase manufacturing in America. It’s just that you can’t do it instantly. So if you put up giant tariffs immediately and don’t give companies a chance to build factories in America, because you’ve got to move atoms, like you’ve got to build a building. You’ve got to install equipment. You’ve got to train people. That doesn’t happen instantly. So for tariffs, you want to have a ramp so that companies can adjust and build the factories and train the people and get the equipment in place. Otherwise, you basically just shock the system and it breaks or bad things happen. So I’m against sudden giant tariffs because it’s an impossible response if you’ve got to move a thousand tons of equipment. In some cases, collectively millions of tons of equipment. You just can’t do that overnight. It’s literally impossible. So I think we want to be thoughtful about tariffs and give companies a ramp. I mean I do generally agree that America should do more manufacturing. I’m a big manufacturing guy. I love manufacturing. I’ve spent a lot of time in the factory.

JOE ROGAN: We’ve talked openly about the difficulties of manufacturing, how complicated it is, and about most people aren’t really aware of something that’s as complex as, say, building a Tesla. Manufacturing is super hard and complicated. So a lot of people, they’ve never been in a factory or they don’t know how difficult it is to make things. And for a lot of people, I think just ketchup comes from the store.

For a lot of people who have been in academia or for all these socialist communist types, they’ve never actually made anything. So they operate on the premise that there’s this magical horn of plenty that just outputs goods and services. And if someone’s got more goods and services than someone else, it’s because they took more from this magical horn of plenty. And I’m like, guys, there’s no magical horn of plenty. There’s no cornucopia. It’s actually goods and services come from people working collectively, doing a lot of hard work to produce the goods and services that you like and that you need.

ELON MUSK: But we’ve become very accustomed to these things happening overseas. I mean, America is still the second biggest manufacturer in the world. So we still make a lot of stuff, but we could make more. We probably should make more. I think we should value manufacturing a lot more in the United States than we currently do.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it would be very nice if we were completely self-sufficient, like medicine. There’s a bunch of different things that get manufactured overseas. It was a huge problem during COVID because all the shipping was shut down.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, you want to say – so there’s a lot of merit to the economics of comparative advantage. So if you’re completely self-sufficient, what that means is that you make all the stuff yourself. And even if some other country is really good at making something, you still make it yourself, which means you’re going to have the inferior, more costly product domestically.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Like Soviet Russia.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Like trade improves prosperity. This is important. So you don’t actually want to make everything yourself. And you can run this – like you can think of this thought experiment on sort of a micro scale or small scale and then expand that and say, where does the – at what point does the thought experiment no longer prove to be valid? Now, let’s consider the case of you as an individual. Imagine you have to do everything yourself. You have to farm. You have to grow chickens. You’ve got – you’ve got eggs. You’ve got to build your own house. You’ve got to do your own electrical repair, your own plumbing, everything yourself. Everything. Now, that would be impossible. Okay. Now, let’s expand it to – okay, there’s 10 people. Now, you’re going to have some specialization of tasks.

Okay, well, maybe one person can be really good at construction. Another person can be good at farming. But still, 10 people is not enough. So let’s go to 100 people. Now, let’s go to 100 million people. Now, let’s go to a billion people. And you still get the economics of specialization, like specialization of labor where people become expert at particular things still matters at a billion people or at 8 billion people, which is us. So you still want – you do want specialization of labor. You do want countries to be really good at a particular thing and make that thing. Also, it encourages innovation if you have competition. If the Germans are making better cars, we have to make better cars. We have to compete with them, which is, like, one of the things that happened during, like, the 80s and 90s when America was making crap cars and Germany was making much better ones.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, the Japanese car – I mean, yeah. I mean, basically American car industry got really lazy in the 70s and 80s, and then the Japanese and German car companies came in and just cleaned the clock. And there was, like, an old joke from the – that is kind of telling. It’s a very old joke where it’s, like, why did the Japanese car companies beat the American car companies? Well, it’s, like – well, in the Japanese car company, you had eight people rowing and one person steering. And in the American car company, you had eight people steering and one person rowing, if this was a boat. So imagine a boat race.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. A boat race, a Japanese boat. You’ve got eight people rowing and one person steering. In the American boat, you’ve got one person rowing and eight people steering. And when the American car company loses the race, they fire the rower. And it’s, like, okay, that was actually kind of true. Like, everyone wants to be the boss and not everyone wants to do the work type of thing.

Concerns About Automation, AI, and the Future of Work

JOE ROGAN: One thing that a lot of people are concerned about is the potential disruption that’s going to come about with automation and AI. That a lot of these jobs, manufacturing jobs, Teamsters, all that stuff, is going to be eliminated. What – I mean, you’re at the forefront of this. So how do you see this playing out and what do you think that can be done to mitigate a lot of the loss of purpose that a lot of people are going to feel? Loss of income. Obviously, universal basic income is being floated about. But that seems to me to only be part of the problem. Another big part of the problem is people losing a sense of purpose.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Now, we’re talking about something which is still pretty far in the future.

JOE ROGAN: How far do you think it is?

ELON MUSK: Well, I mean, it’s probably, I don’t know, 15, 20 years of the thing. So we’ve got, like, immediate issues. We’ve got short-term issues that are, I don’t know, one to three years. Medium-term issues, like, five to ten years. Longer-term issues, for sure, like maybe 20 years. Longer-term, I think there is this question, if you have AI and robotics, how do you find meaning in life? If the computer can do everything better than you can and the robot can do everything better than you can. But we’re still – we’ve got a long way to go before that. And I do think it’s, like, 80% likely to be a good outcome, like maybe 90. So I think everyone is going to have their own, like, personal robot. And I think at some point, like, wouldn’t you want to have your own personal C-3PO R2D2? So it’s going to be essentially just like everyone has their own phone.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, everyone will have their own robot buddy, like literally.

ELON MUSK: Well, it would be great if it protected you. Like if you walked down the street of New York City and you have a Terminator with you.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know about the Terminator. Hopefully, we’ve got to avoid – we don’t want this to be the plot of a James Cameron – more Gene Roddenberry than James Cameron movie situation. But it would be fascinating to watch some rich person walk down the street of New York City flanked by two giant Tesla robots, jacked Tesla robots that would protect you.

ELON MUSK: Like Robocop or something?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Somebody fully robot there to protect you from a bad neighborhood.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. That would be very interesting. I mean –

JOE ROGAN: You could potentially see that.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Restaurants would probably have no robot rules. You can’t bring a robot. You leave a robot –

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, leave a robot outside, robot standing by the table. Man, the future is going to be wild. It’s going to be wild.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. It’s going to be really unpredictable. I think – I don’t think – I mean you probably have a pretty good sense of it, but I think most people don’t understand the wave that’s coming.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And how it’s going to kind of completely drown society and change it forever.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean it’s – we have a – like I said, it’s not going to happen like overnight, but it’s 20 years from now. I’m like – I feel like 20 years from now, I think there’s going to be more humanoid robots than there are humans.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

ELON MUSK: Yes. More humanized – that’s so crazy. So it’s like more guns. We have more guns than people in America. We’ll have more robots than people in America as well.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. You’ll have a bunch of old robots nobody wants anymore. I guess. Early versions or something. In a historical timeline, 20 years in the past has not been that big of a deal. I mean this is a big deal, but you go from like 1900, 1920, not that big of a deal. 1920, 1940, kind of a big deal. 1940, 1960, things start getting weird. 60 to 80, wow, that’s a big difference. 80 to 2000, holy shit, now you have the internet. 2000 to 2020, whoa, this is nuts. You have propaganda, social media, YouTube streaming. 20 years from now, like what are we even talking about? It’s going to be that much of a shift.

ELON MUSK: Like it’s all accelerating. And we’re in the middle of it, so it’s very difficult to sort of like feel it while it’s happening. It kind of just feels like life. And you just get adapted to the changes.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. I mean people’s phones at this point are a super computer in their pocket, like an Oracle that can answer any questions. People just take it for granted.

ELON MUSK: Yeah, it’s normal. They get mad if it doesn’t work. It’s like Louis C. K.’s joke about using your phone when you’re on a plane. Fucking piece of shit. You’re in the sky. You’re floating in the air.

Starlink’s Satellite Internet Capabilities

JOE ROGAN: And now it will work with Starlink too.

ELON MUSK: What’s that?

JOE ROGAN: It will work with Starlink. The Starlink connection, it will be like being on the ground.

ELON MUSK: Well, I was telling you how I used Starlink when I was in Utah. I was in the mountains of Utah. There was no cell phone service anywhere near. And we had full YouTube. We had text messages, FaceTime, everything. Phone calls. It was nuts. And it was as big as that cigar box. It’s crazy. It’s so light. When I brought it out there, like that’s it. This is it. Just plug it in. And the guys I was in camp with were like, this is crazy. The whole camp was like sharing it. So like 10 people using the Wi-Fi signal. It’s nuts.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And then, you know, that’s the beginning. I mean what you’re at right now is like what version? This is Starlink mini, right? So this is like a very small version.

ELON MUSK: How much smaller can it scale down from that?

JOE ROGAN: Well, there’s a certain area that you need. Like the bigger the area, the more you can.

ELON MUSK: Higher bandwidth?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, because you’re like trying to catch these like photons essentially. So you can think of like the area of the antenna is like the more area you have, the more photons you can catch. But we have a direct-to-cell capability as well. We’ve been launching that. It will turn on probably in a few months. That will actually connect directly to a cell phone unmodified. But because the cell phone is a much worse antenna than a dedicated antenna, it will be about 100 times less bandwidth. But still, you know, you’ll be able to like do text messages, you know, pictures, like medium resolution videos, that kind of thing.

JOE ROGAN: One of the cool things about the new phone, the new iPhone, the iPhone 16, I got it and I was in the mountains last month and I was text messaging with satellites.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. iMessages.

JOE ROGAN: Right. And receiving them. But just text.

Future Prospects for Human Civilization

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, just text. Yeah. Yeah. I mean what are we going to be looking at 100 years from now? I mean when you…

ELON MUSK: 100 years from now, I hope civilization is around. Yeah, that will be a win.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah. What are the chances that we fuck this whole thing up? 50%? It’s hard to say.

ELON MUSK: I mean… I guess, like I don’t think civilization will be totally destroyed unless there’s like some really massive global thermonuclear war. But, I mean, Stephen Hawking, he would say that there’s like at least 1% chance of total annihilation every century. That was his rough estimate. But there’s a much bigger chance of civilization being less capable than it is today. So, you say like, well, because you could say, you know, these various civilizations throughout history, whether it’s like ancient Sumerians or the, you know, Egyptians, the Romans, like there’s like a life cycle to civilization. They reached a peak and then they started to fall apart. So, I think a bigger question is like, well, will our technology level be better or worse than it is today in 100 years? I think it’s probably going to be better. I think… But any estimates are going to be so… There’s so many dependencies. Like an estimate, I think, is… I’m not sure it has any meaning because it’s like there’s so many things that can happen in 100 years.

JOE ROGAN: Well, the logical hope is always that people pay attention to history and they recognize the patterns and how civilizations have collapsed.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And they recognize what’s going wrong in the current system. And say, “We have to do our best to mitigate this. And we’ve seen this happen before. Let’s, of course, correct and let’s sort of manage what we’ve got here now and maintain what we’ve got here now because it’s pretty extraordinary.”

ELON MUSK: Yes. This is what we’re hoping for with this election. This is what we’re hoping for with the future. Something can be done right now. And it might be the only moment in history where this is possible because if they do, lock the country down and make it so that voting is kind of bullshit. You’re only voting for primaries. And the people that they put in the primaries, they’re controlling that in the first place. You don’t really have democracy anymore.

JOE ROGAN: You don’t have democracy. And it’s going to be the next election. And so I think that there’s a little bit of hope. There’s a little bit of hope. It’s going to be a really interesting election. You’re only voting for primaries. And the people that they put in the primaries, they’re controlling that in the first place. You don’t really have democracy anymore. You don’t really have choice. You don’t really have freedom.

ELON MUSK: That’s right.

The Importance of the 2024 Election

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I think freedom is fundamentally at stake in the election tomorrow. And we’ll know. I think we’ll know by the end of the day tomorrow. I don’t think it’s going to take – it’s not going to be like days after the election. I think we’ll know tomorrow.

ELON MUSK: Are you optimistic?

JOE ROGAN: I am currently optimistic. But the biggest factor here is that men need to vote. That is the biggest issue. So I don’t know what the reason is, but men just vote at a much lower rate than women. I think it’s like 9%, right? Someone just told me that today. It’s a big difference.

ELON MUSK: And I’d just like to send a message to the men out there. Vote like your life depends on it because I think it does. Vote. Vote tomorrow like your life depends on it. Nothing is more important.

JOE ROGAN: I agree. Listen, man, thank you for being here. I know you’re busy as fuck, so I really appreciate your time. You’re welcome. And again, I thank you so much for buying Twitter because I really do believe that you’ve changed the course of history. I really do think you’ve created a pathway where people can actually express themselves and actually exchange information that really didn’t exist before. And I think it was dangerous.

ELON MUSK: It is dangerous. Hopefully I live long enough to see my kids grow up and people on Mars. That would be cool. That’s what I’m asking for here. I don’t think that’s too much, Dan.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Sean. Thank you. All right. All right.

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