Transcript of Elon Musk Town Hall Event in Green Bay, Wisconsin

So these are really noble and important principles. Also, and I’ll talk more about this all night really, as long as you guys want to hear about it.

Government Waste and Media Bias

But you may have seen with stuff that we’ve posted on the doge.gov website and the DOGE handle on the X platform, there is a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in the federal government, like shocking, really. Insane.

Yeah. It’s really wild. So like, I mean, it was inevitable that at least a few Soros operatives would be in the audience. Give my regards to George. Say hi to George for me.

I mean it was inevitable. I was waiting for that one. So I mean, yeah, thank you. Thanks, guys. Yeah, I mean, isn’t it how much violence and hatred is coming from the left?

I mean, isn’t this supposed to be the party that they claim to be the party of empathy? And yet they’re burning Teslas and shooting up dealerships and calling for the death of the president and me. I’m like, guys, you know, this is insane. Like, they’ve totally gone psycho. I mean, it’s really like, I totally understand if somebody doesn’t want to buy a product.

Yeah. It’s up to you. It’s a free country, you know, but you don’t have to burn it down. Okay? It’s a bit much.

That’s somebody else’s car. Leave it alone. Thanks, guys. Yeah. So, man, that derangement level on the left is just like it blown my mind, frankly.

I mean, I’m like, what is going on? It’s just lost at next level. I’m like, it’s like, woah. I sort of wonder what’s – you know, the legacy media is in part to blame for this and maybe primarily to blame for this because it’s really terrible. It’s like if they keep calling – they’ve called President Trump every name in the book.

I think there was one article that called the President worse than Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin combined. And like actually, President Trump has not killed anyone. In fact, he’s very good at stopping wars, not starting them. So they’re really very different. Maybe we need to add some more history lessons back in schools because I don’t know if people understand the difference – do they know what Stalin did?

It seems they don’t. I mean it’s just indicative of the poor quality of education pushed by the National Department of Education. You know, that’s why we want to restore freedom to the states, to just let the states decide on the educational agenda and not have something pushed by a bunch of neo-Marxists in DC.

So, it is astounding how much anti-American propaganda is pushed on kids today in schools. It’s mind blowing.

Petition Against Activist Judges

So anyway, but on a positive note, we have this petition sort of against activist judges because judges should be simply interpreting the law and not making the law. So in appreciation for the support of people in signing this petition against activist judges. We just want judges to be judges, you know, which is a reasonable thing to ask for.

We’re obviously seeing some crazy stuff in DC where it seems like any federal judge can stop any action by the president of United States. This is insane. This has got to stop. It’s got to stop at the federal level and at the state level. But let me first hand out two one million dollar checks in appreciation.

So the first check goes to Nicholas Jacobs. All right. I’d just say that the reason for the checks is that it’s really just to get attention. It’s like we need to get attention. And somewhat inevitably, I do these things, and it causes the legacy media to kind of lose their minds.

And then they’ll run it on every news channel. And I’m like, I couldn’t pay them to do it – it would cost like ten times more to get the kind of coverage that we get. Alright. You can just, I guess, take it if you want. We’ll get – I think you can get your real one too.

And then the second one is to Ekaterina Diesler. Hopefully here. Well and, you know, like I said, this is just helpful for getting attention, and then it’s kind of fun to see the legacy media lose their minds over too. So love you too. So yeah.

So see. Hello. Thank you. Congratulations. Alright.

Right. Congratulations.

Get Out the Vote Program

All right. So we’re also going to be announcing or we are announcing now a program, sort of a get out the vote program. That’s the web page should be going live, I think, around now, which is at the America PAC website or just go to the America PAC X account.

And the single biggest challenge, I think, is actually just making people aware that there is this very important election. And there’s both the very important election for Judge Schimel as well as deciding on adding voter ID to the Wisconsin constitution, which is very important.

So it’s really quite shocking that – I mean, you can sort of tell where voter fraud is happening, where they ban ID. Like why would you ban ID? Like in New York and California, it’s like illegal to show ID at an election. Well, why would – I can’t imagine why that would be the case.

So two really important things. It is – it’s really just ensuring judicial integrity on Tuesday and the voter ID thing. And, you know, it’s April Fool’s Day. So and it is – I think most people aren’t aware like I said, most people aren’t aware that there is this important election.

But most people don’t even know that there’s an election at all. And or if they do, they aren’t sure exactly when and where it is, and they aren’t sure yet of or they don’t realize just how important it is. They think it’s just, you know, some kind of judicial thing that’s not that important.

But what’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the US House of Representatives. That is why it is so significant.

And whichever party controls the House, you know, it to a significant degree, controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. So it’s like I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will. Yeah. So it’s a super big deal.

And the fact that I’m here in person, like I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person. And there were quite a few death threats, have to tell you. I was like, my security team said it – well, it’s actually gone down from yesterday to today. We’re down from eighteen thousand to seventeen thousand. So I’m like, well, maybe it’s getting better.

You know? But you can see, like, how crazy some of these people are. You know, look at the two sort of people that try to assassinate president Trump. You know? I mean, that was and what, you know, they both almost succeeded.

So it’s real. Like, it’s not like some imaginary thing.

So anyway, what we’re announcing is kind of like a Block Captain program where somebody can sign up to knock on doors in their ZIP code and encourage people to – well, make people aware that there is a vote and then aware of how important the vote is. So you can sign up to be kind of a block captain for your ZIP code on the America PAC website right now. Yeah.

And if you do, it’s like basically twenty bucks for just taking a photo with somebody. It’s pretty straightforward. Just knock on doors in your neighborhood and give them either a digital or a paper picture of Justice Brad Schimel. It can be an approximation. It doesn’t have to be exact.

They just have to say thumbs up and hold the picture of Judge Schimel. And that’s it. And you get twenty dollars. It’s pretty easy. It’s easy money. So but the whole point of it is just to make people aware of the election and say that there is an election, it’s on Tuesday, and it’s super important.

Please vote. But I think without something like this, actually we are in serious danger of losing the election. This is very important to put in mind. If you look at the betting market odds, so if you look at sort of the Polymarket or Kalshi, like the betting markets, it varies between eighty-five percent and ninety percent probability of loss for Justice Schimel. That’s the current situation.

So we’ve got to pull a rabbit out of the hat next level. It’s actually going to have a steady stream of rabbits out of the hat, like it’s an arc of rabbits flying through the air and landing in a voting booth. Interesting picture. Gaurav could probably make that picture.

So that’s basically what’s needed is we need to generate an anomaly in the matrix. And because I think there’s currently – the Dems are a hundred thousand votes ahead. But if actually if just the people that voted for President Trump simply vote on Tuesday, we will win. That’s actually all it takes. Just vote. Boom.

Done. Victory. So we basically need to drag net the state. It’s like everybody’s going to mobilize everywhere like crazy for the next forty-eight hours. And I think this will be important for the future of civilization. It’s that significant.

So you don’t hear me saying that very often. It’s a big deal. Vote for Judge Supercharge Schimel. I call him Supercharge Schimel.

Q&A Session

Let’s see. So with that, I think we can do some Q&A, if you guys would like to do some Q&A. And I’m happy to answer any questions. It could be about those or whatever you’d like to hear about. Because I think if you ask questions that the public would be interested in hearing, then those snippets will go all over the place, and it will be helpful to the public at large and maybe even beyond our country.

So let’s see. Yeah. Go ahead. We can just start over there.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: As AI gets, continues to get smarter, won’t it, inevitably, see through its creators’ propaganda?

ELON MUSK: Yes. The question is, as AI gets smarter, will it see through its creators’ propaganda? I hope so. I think you can sort of think of an AI as it is somewhat nurtured by its creator. You have to say, what is the operating principle?

What is the North Star of the AI? If it’s somewhat corporate AI, it could be like it’s just trying to make corporations happy or it could be if it’s particularly some of the AIs that are trained in like the city of San Francisco, it’s going to have kind of a San Francisco bias to it.

Because you can think of like smart people as well – like there are big differences in sort of beliefs among smart people. And so you can expect that there will be big differences in beliefs among AIs as well.

With Grok, our aspiration is a maximally truth-seeking AI, which is like you always want to try to get as close to the truth as possible even if the truth is unpopular. And that’s our goal, which I think is a very important goal.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hey, nice shirt. Thank you. First of all, Path of Exile for life. But more importantly, as we see the whole world has turned to a fear-based mobilization effort, and we’ve seen that translate into violence. And the right is not immune to it because it can hit everybody’s psychology. How do we beat that with optimism? Because that’s going to be crucial to avoid mass eruption of conflict.

ELON MUSK: Yes. I mean, you’re right that the right is not immune from sort of hate and violence. It’s not like nothing, but it does seem weirdly heavily weighted towards the left. I mean, like, I haven’t seen anyone tearing off like a Biden Harris hat. We’re just like, you feel a bit sorry for them, oh, maybe something wrong there. You see people tearing off MAGA hats.

And so much just – I saw a video just today where somebody was just on an escalator, a woman was on an escalator wearing a MAGA hat and someone going the other direction tore the hat off her head.

Elon Musk’s Remarks at Green Bay Town Hall

ELON MUSK: I’m like, that’s rude. You know? So in fact, I sort of find myself in a strange position because I didn’t think of myself as right. I thought myself as a centrist. But then the left went all the other way in the other direction, and now everyone’s a Nazi.

Boy, you know it. And I’m like, wait a second. Do you know what that means? Obviously not.

I believe in peaceful discourse and that we make arguments, verbal arguments, and the people decide which way they want to go. But we don’t engage in sort of shouting people down or violence or burning things or shooting things. That’s what that’s how democracy is supposed to work. It’s peaceful discourse.

Q&A Session

AUDIENCE QUESTION: My question is about USAID. Has the DOGE team found any evidence that any of the radical left Democrats like Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer have received money directly from USAID? And if so, will we be hearing about that evidence anytime soon?

ELON MUSK: Yes. So there is a massive amount of corruption, but it is circuitous. What happens is there’s money that obviously, it’s your taxpayer money that is then sent to various government organizations who then send it to NGOs, which an NGO is a nongovernmental organization, but obviously, if it’s a government funded nongovernmental organization, it’s just an organization.

It’s just the government. And effectively, there’s a giant fraud loophole, which is that the government can send money to an NGO that is then no longer governed by the laws of the United States. So they’ll send the money overseas to one NGO, then they’ll go through a bunch of them. And then I’m highly confident that a bunch of that money then comes back to the United States and lands in the pockets of the people you just mentioned. But it is a circuitous route.

It’s not like it doesn’t go directly. But let’s just say that there’s a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress where I just can’t – I’m trying to connect the dots of how do they become rich while earning – how do they get twenty million dollars if they’re earning two hundred thousand dollars a year? Nobody can explain that. So yes, we’re going to try to figure it out and certainly stop it from happening.

The whole NGO scam is just crazy. And it’s blowing my mind really.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Most of us here are aware of social media censorship, and I know you’re keenly aware of it. Thank you for turning around X. Censorship picks up in financial institutions, what can we do about that?

ELON MUSK: Are you referring to offering financial services by X?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: No. Sorry. Being kicked off of financial institutions for beliefs.

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, certainly, that won’t happen during the Trump administration. Hopefully, that can be enshrined in law, which is part of the reason why we need a Republican Congress.

You didn’t see any Republicans kicking Democrats out and debanking Democrats, but there were a lot of Republicans that were debanked, thousands, which is really outrageous. So I’d say it does seem kind of one-sided. This like trying to ruin people’s lives financially and violent protests overwhelmingly is coming from the left these days. And whereas the right is polite and fair as far as I can tell.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you for being here. Your comment kind of about The Matrix is kind of ironic because my husband and I watched the first matrix and the sequel yesterday. My question is when so much of social media, nowadays, whether it be X or YouTube or whatever is kind of curated to a person’s particular beliefs or even where we have protesters that show up to town halls or potentially are paid. How does America come together?

It used to be where you could have a conversation and have discourse like you discussed and still be friends even if you disagreed with some of their statements. You talk about knocking on doors to different people’s houses – one fear that I have is even if you talk to somebody, everybody has their own sets of beliefs and their own truth. So I guess how do you get through that?

ELON MUSK: Well, I think what we saw there for quite a while was that all of the legacy media and all of the new social media were in lockstep together. And they were all parroting the same left wing talking points, and they were suppressing any dissent and any so-called right wing or frankly even centrist views. And that’s why I felt it was critical to acquire Twitter, now X, in order to enable that dialogue. So it’s certainly a step in the right direction. And I think you’ve seen now once X was willing to break ranks and not censor Republicans, then you saw others also start to move in that direction.

It looks like, for example, Facebook and Meta, certainly Mark Zuckerberg has stated that they will be doing sort of community notes based on the community notes of the X platform and as opposed to having sort of parlor censorship bureau, of the woke stasi essentially reviewing things. So that’s a step in the right direction. There’s some maybe some hope for the CNNs of the world. There’s like with being on there, he’s great. I’m sort of hopeful that things will move in the direction where different points of view are espoused on or heard on legacy media and social media.

So I guess maybe I’m actually a little bit optimistic about the future. And on the X platform, we don’t prioritize one side or the other. We try to be as fair as possible. And I will reply to prominent Democrats even if they sort of say terrible things about me. So, we should have this discourse.

I kind of think, at least on the media front, things are going in good direction. But I am kind of perturbed by how aggressive these protests are, where there are people at these protests calling for the death of the president and death of me and, probably death of others. That’s not cool. At the risk of saying something outrageous, calling for murder is not cool.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thanks for coming, Elon. I’m a teacher by trade. I have gone through the four year bachelor’s degree to teach the nation’s youth going forward.

ELON MUSK: I’m kind of curious. What was that like?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I got an English degree, man. At the end of the day, unless you want to hire me, that’s about it.

So during teacher college, they gave us a heat map, and it says these are the cost per head on each student. The southeast is generally the worst, but they’re also generally the lowest spent per capita on each student. Beyond just that correlation of the one text I got in the education class, I wonder with your investments in Khan Academy, with the advancement of AI educational tools where specifically, you can get feedback and these students can get feedback. Where do we see a hundred years from now?

ELON MUSK: Oh, man. A hundred years from now? How about fifty? I hope it lasts a hundred years. I’d be like, jackpot. Hopefully, we’re like, on Mars. That would be really cool.

I do think AI can be incredibly helpful in teaching because you can essentially set up each kid with a personalized AI, and that AI can then answer questions for each kid. And that actually can be very profound in learning. Because obviously, you’ve a classroom of, say, twenty-five, thirty kids, you can’t spend – it’s literally impossible to spend time with every kid individually. Or at least you can spend a little bit of time, but that’s a one to twenty or one to thirty ratio. But what you can do is you can set them up with the AI and then if things get stuck or whatever, you essentially guide the orchestra that way, and I think it could be a very powerful learning tool.

I personally enjoyed my English classes in high school, actually. Sometimes I wonder why am I reading Charles Dickens, but there’s some merit to reading Dickens and many of the – I actually think that we should have a great canon of English literature that kids do at least some number of the significant works in the English language. It seems very obvious to me.

And another thing with regard to teaching is that I think teaching is a very important profession. If you look at the expenditures, there’s a very big rise in the number of administrators, but not a very big rise in the number of teachers. And so that’s really the big factor, which is we should have more actual teachers.

I believe in paying teachers well and having a lot of teachers. But we should say, why do we have so many administrators or non-teachers? So administrative expense has gone ballistic, but teaching expense is more or less flat. It doesn’t make sense.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: First, I would like to apologize to the Trump African American for the idiots you have to deal with for what you’re doing for us to improve our country. Second of all, my question is, what is your opinion on the Federal Reserve? And do you have any intentions of doing anything with them?

ELON MUSK: The Fed. Yes. I don’t know. I always wanted to say that. But I mean, I think there’s like twenty thousand people that work at the Fed. Seems pretty high. In fact, there’s a lot of people who work at the Fed on these things like why do we have so many people at the Fed and what do they do? And sometimes I wonder which one would be better for interest rates, the board of the Federal Reserve or a Magic Eight Ball? And I’m like, I think the Magic Eight Ball might win. So then I’m like, well, Magic Eight Ball is a lot cheaper. So it’s like you shake it, it says, check back again later. I’m like, okay. Same thing.

But I think what really matters is that government spending is not far in excess of government revenue. That’s a fundamental issue that we have, where we have a deficit of two trillion dollars and we have interest payments that now exceed the entire budget of the military. In fact, that was a big wake up call for me was when the amount of money that we’re paying national debt interest exceeded the Defense Department budget. I’m like, Defense Department budget is very big, and interest is higher than that and climbing, that’s a disaster.

The very simple straightforward goal of the DOGE team is to get rid of waste. It’s mostly waste. It’s depending on how I’d say it’s probably eighty percent waste, twenty percent fraud, something like that. But it’s one trillion dollars so that’s still a lot.

[Interruption]

CROWD: USA! USA! USA!

ELON MUSK: So I mean to be clear, very simple thing we’re doing, and we post everything publicly on the DOGE website, which is just to look at every expense and say, is this actually a good use of your taxpayer dollars? That’s it.

It’s not super complicated. The thing that’s pretty wild, this is why I say like, I used to be a Democrat, and if you listen to the speeches of Clinton and Gore in the ’90s when they were going on about reducing waste and fraud, literally, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if who said it, DOGE or Clinton Gore? You can’t even tell the difference. It sounds exactly the same. It’s wild.

We’re really just trying to restore common sense to government and say, let’s not waste your money, and let’s make sure it’s spent well. And that’s it. And trying to save one trillion dollars of expenditures, what we’re saying is, of the seven trillion dollars in government spending, let’s to see if we can make it fifteen percent, one-five percent more efficient. And I’m confident that we can. That’s actually not a huge bar, by the way.

And when you see the crazy things that the government is spending money on, you can see a list of some of them. I don’t know if we should be spending money on transgender comic books in Peru. That doesn’t seem like an ideal thing to spend your money on. Why would we do that? If somebody in Peru wants to do that of their own accord, that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be your money that does it.

We shouldn’t be paying rent on empty buildings. I do think there is a role for government, but we just need to make – we’re just going through and saying and doing what I would call an excellent and necessary and reasonably trusted review of organizations and personnel. So is this person doing a good job? Great. Is the role necessary? If so, that’s good. And are they reasonably trusted, meaning they’re not a psycho? We’re not talking about political affiliation, just that they’re not crazy. I’m like, sounds super normal to me.

Fraud and Immigration Concerns

ELON MUSK: So that’s it. In this process, one of the things that we’ve discovered, which is I think on the fraud side, which is a really big deal, is that the Democrat administration, Biden administration has basically taken every arm of the U.S. Government and bent it towards creating a financial incentive for illegal immigrants to come to the United States. Now this is every part of the government, so like Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, disability, even the IRS.

You can fill out a fake tax return and say you need a tax—maybe I shouldn’t tell people this, but it will actually work. I mean mostly, there’s some chance you’ll get caught. But if you fill out a fake tax return, you can just get a tax refund even though you didn’t pay taxes. So we’re trying to stop all these things, to stop the waiting for it. We also need to turn off the massive financial incentive for illegals to come to the United States and stay in the United States.

And this is really the thing that is causing the Democrats to lose their mind. Because they’re actually spending at this point tens of billions to attract and retain illegals in the United States. It’s really on that scale. It’s a gigantic number. And the goal is to turn all the swing states blue.

That means Wisconsin. So that’s the goal. With the asylum program, if they can get a green card within a year, and then they can get citizenship as quickly as four years after getting a green card. Because the first year of being asylum counts for the five-year citizenship waiting period. So this is a very big deal.

A number of friends of mine have actually joined the government in order to help with this process. And I’d like to welcome my friend, Antonio Gracias, to the stage.

[Technical issues with microphone]

Social Security Investigation

ELON MUSK: So Antonio, can you tell us what you—Antonio is helping out with Social Security. Just trying to review Social Security where you may have heard that we found twenty million dead people marked as alive in the Social Security database. This is so crazy. And then you’ll notice there’s a strange trend here, where, how many Social Security numbers were issued?

ANTONIO GRACIAS: Let me tell you what happened here. We started at the top of the system mapping the whole system of Social Security to understand where all the fraud was. And there’s a lot of great people there that showed us really a lot of ways. And so that came up with a big list of stuff they’re working on.

You’ve heard some of that already. But this is what jumped out at us. When we saw these numbers, we were like, what is this? In 2021, see two hundred and seventy thousand people goes all the way to 2.1 million in 2024. These are noncitizens that are getting Social Security numbers.

ELON MUSK: This is a mind-blowing chart.

ANTONIO GRACIAS: This literally blew us away. Like, we went there to find fraud, and we found this by accident.

This isn’t political, by the way. My parents are immigrants. This country has been great to us. My brother and sister are all born in Spain. I’m pro legal immigration. This is not political. This is about America and the future of America. And there are a lot of good people in the system that pointed us in this direction.

I want to honor them right now that work in the government today, who took risks to show us these numbers and tell us what’s going on. I want to stop for a minute. I want to honor those people today. Very good people.

I have been from DC to Social Security offices to the border to track this down, and very good people have helped us along the way. Want to thank them. This number, what this is, is when you come in the country, if you’re an illegal, there’s a couple of ways to come in. You come in through a port of entry, and you can tell them you’re afraid and they’ll give you an asylum case. You’ll get an interview and you get in.

That’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is to just go to the border. Literally, this happened. I talked to border patrol myself. Elon was there too. I went to Laredo and I went to Bronzeville. Elon went to Eagle Pass. You walk up to a Border Patrol officer and you tell them you want to come in. They have a couple of choices. They could charge you with a misdemeanor or a felony under thirteen twenty-five or they can make an administrative offense like a parking ticket basically.

They were told to do that, make an administrative offense under the last administration. And you go walk across the border, they do what’s called a release your neurocognizance, and they give you an NTA, notice to appear, which appear to judge. The wait times on judges are like average six years, you’ll get GROC, you’ll see it on immigration judges. There’s only seven hundred of them. This is five point five million people.

So what happens then? Once you’re in the country and you’ve got asylum through one of these pathways, we’ve mapped the whole thing out, you can apply for a work document. You file a seven sixty-five, it’s the work form. You get this form called the seven sixty-six, That’s the authorization. And then Social Security Administration automatically sends you in the mail your Social Security number.

No interview. No ID.

Systemic Issues

ELON MUSK: This is worth just reiterating. It’s not that people sometimes think that under the Biden administration that he was simply asleep at the switch. He wasn’t asleep. They were asleep at the switch. It was a massive large scale program to import as many illegals as possible, ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the American people and make it a permanent, deep blue, one party state from which there would be no escape.

ANTONIO GRACIAS: Look. If I hadn’t seen this myself, I’m not sure I believed it. I went through it myself and mapped it. And Elon is right. This is true. The defaults in the system from Social Security to all of the benefit programs have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people and minimum collection. That’s what’s happening. We found 1.3 million of them already on Medicaid, as an example.

We’ve gone through on every benefit program we went through, we found groups from this particular group of people, this 5.5 million people, in those benefit programs. And then what was really, really disturbing us was why. We’re asking ourselves why. And so we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records, and we found people here registered to vote in this population, yes. And who did vote?

And we found some by sampling that actually did vote, and we have referred them to prosecution at the Homeland Security and Investigation Service. Already. That has already happened. Right now.

Human Trafficking Concerns

And the truly disturbing thing, though, I just want you to know this, the truly disturbing thing to me and the darkest thing about this to me, the voter fraud is terrible, but the human tragedy this created is extraordinary.

Because what you don’t understand, people don’t know, Americans need to know, that’s why I’m here, is that human traffickers made thirteen to fifteen billion dollars off of this. Okay? That’s the money that’s going around the world, moving people around the world to our borders because of these incentives. How does it work? What happens?

If you’re in Africa and you’re in South America, you’ve got to walk up through Mexico and through here South America. Who do you pay? You pay the narcos. You pay the traffickers.

And we found, we were told by ICE, it’s between twenty thousand dollars and five hundred dollars depending on they pick you up to walk across all those countries and get all the way up to the border. Where does that money go? It goes to the cartels. It goes to human traffickers.

There are thirty thousand children that have not appeared on the notice to appear already. ICE knows this. Thirty thousand children, two hundred and seventy thousand children didn’t even get notices to appear. ICE told us that kids are being trafficked back and forth across the border to complete families to make this easier. This is a human tragedy.

It’s not just the money. It’s the people and the kids. And how many of these people died on the way up here that didn’t make it in? What happened to them? We created a system here that created a descendant for people to come and be taken advantage of by these traffickers.

And how do you think they get paid? Well, you’re an African American, you got twenty thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars or five thousand dollars to pay these traffickers? No. You don’t. What happens?

You come in, then you owe them the money. You’re an indentured servant. If you don’t pay them, what happens? What do they do? They kill your mother? They kill your brother? They kill your family? What happens next? That’s what we discovered. And I have to tell you, it was—it’s tragic to me.

The tragedy the human tragedy this created is extraordinary. That’s the real problem. This is America. We don’t do this here in America. We don’t do this here in America. People come here legally, and that’s great. Elon came here legally. My parents came here legally. That’s the way to do it. This outrageous.

Financial Incentives and Voter Concerns

ELON MUSK: It’s pretty wild. I mean, you can see because there’s still actually a lot of people out there, especially in the sort of center third of the country that somehow think this is made up by the right or it’s like some fiction that is somehow not true, but it absolutely true. And you can see that if you look at things like the state of New York, which tried to make it legal for illegal immigrants to vote in the state of New York that was only shut down by the New York Supreme Court a few weeks ago.

And California has made health care available to all illegals in the state. And they initially claimed that it would only cost three billion dollars. It’s now nine billion dollars and climbing. So it’s really if you create a massive financial incentive for people to come to the United States illegally, then that’s what they will do. It would be strange—it would be odd if that didn’t happen.

So the really the thing that actually has the Democrats losing their mind, by far, the real reason for these attacks and sort of the burning of the cars and everything is that we’re going to turn off the payments to illegals.

Because I mean, because that’s not the deal. It’s simply not right. And look at that thing with the Roosevelt Hotel and like the luxury hotels in New York where the Federal Emergency Management Agency funds were being used to house illegals in luxury hotels in New York that the average American can’t afford. And they were given a welcome package and ten thousand dollars debit cards and everything else. Like, it’s super real.

I mean, it’s like a—I think it’s the biggest voter fraud thing in history by far. And moreover, if left unchecked, it would have succeeded. As Antonio mentioned, the time frame for going from asylum to citizen is roughly five years. And so all of the people that came in on that chart that you saw, if machine behind the Kamala Puppet had won, then they changed out the puppet, but it’s the same machine. Then they would have actually legalized all those people, and there would be no swing states.

ANTONIO GRACIAS: And they added more. Remember, was doubling every year. It went from one million to three. It was going ballistic. It’s going ballistic. And it is just these people are just ending the benefit programs now, by the way. We’re seeing the ramp happen, too. And these are just the ones that are in the system. This doesn’t count the other seven point five million, eight million that ICE thinks are out there. We don’t know if they have numbers. The number is totally uncontrolled.

The voter ID requirement in this state is super important because of this. It’s a Social Security number. It’s not supposed to be a Federal ID number, but it basically is. That’s how you access all the benefits. This is why we need voter ID, because this thing is not secure.

You could walk into a Social Security office today, today as an adult America, and get a Social Security number enumerated with simply answering six or seven simple questions and showing some forms of ID that are not federal ID.

ELON MUSK: Well, you can just actually make it up. Basically, can show basically like a fake utility bill or a—

ANTONIO GRACIAS: So a medical bill or a school ID?

ELON MUSK: Yes. Medical bill and a school ID and you get a Social Security number. And then from there, get on the voter rolls and then basically, DEM operatives will form the vote.

So the problem with this obviously is that if you turn the swing states blue, then there are no swing states, and then we’re a permanent one party system. And as soon as they win that, they’ll have the house, the senate, the presidency, they’ll pack the supreme court, then they’ll double down on the illegals, just like California. So we’ve already seen this happen in California. California is super majority dem.

Elon Musk’s Remarks on Government and Voting Integrity

ELON MUSK: So but at least California is held back by the fact that people can move out of state. Once you can no longer leave America, they will be far worse than California. So the gravity of the situation is severe. Yes. Yes.

Absolutely. So I mean, it’s really simple stuff. Just having photo ID to vote is like, you can’t buy something at the liquor store, but voting is more important than buying a beer. You need real ID to get on an airplane.

You have to fly anywhere. Like the same people who are saying that there should be no voter ID voting stations demanded vaccine ID from everyone. I’m like, that’s weird. It’s really about just restoring integrity to the voting system, which really should not be a right or left cause, but a cause for all.

Do we not all want integrity in the voting system? Of course we do. Yes, of course. So well, you’re welcome to hang out and see maybe there’s more questions here. Let’s see.

Q&A Session

AUDIENCE QUESTION: We’ll go. Hi, Elon. I also am a teacher. I was a teacher in Colorado for eight years, high school Spanish. But I moved here last year and got to vote in Wisconsin where my vote actually mattered, and I’m so glad.

That was amazing that we got Trump elected. Yeah. And I was listening to you, I believe it was Patrick Bet David. He called this perfectly where he said, when Trump gets elected, he’s going to go from enemy number one to Elon’s going to be number one. And for the reason, I mean, he only has a couple years left, and we’ve all seen the left go after you and make you number one enemy.

And just walking in here, we heard “Nazis suck.” There’s all this horrible thing. And just on a serious note, I just want to let you know, my wife and I pray for you at night.

ELON MUSK: Thank you. For your safety. I gotta watch my hand gestures these days.

I think this one’s safe. It’s like, you can’t wave to the crowd. You’re going to know what’s happening. And I’ve been a fan of yours for, oh, like, a decade, and I’ve been a walking Tesla ad to anybody who talks to me. Even though I never had a Tesla until I came to Wisconsin too, and it’s ten years old, but it’s the best Model S I’ve ever had.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you. It’s incredible. Thank you. But I just wanted to ask you if it would be okay. I brought my dad with me.

He’s a pastor, and I just thought if it’s okay with you, I would love for him to say a prayer for you as well for your protection.

ELON MUSK: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Elon, well, thank you so much for everything you’ve done for our country. We do love you very much. Thank you.

And as a pastor, but just as a person. Right? And even if I wasn’t but I think there’s quite a few of you here who are. Either way, we love all people. That’s not the issue.

The issue is fairness, what you’re talking about. The issue being just and the justice being a weapon instead of lawfare instead of actually just and all this corruption you’re talking about. And that’s a bad spirit, if you want to say it that way, putting it nicely. It’s something evil that has come against our country, our morals, our families, etcetera. And then you and the president and others getting attacked with this outrage and this hate.

So if you would allow me to pray. Thank you. You’d all who want to, please join me, bow our heads and pray. Gracious heavenly father, we are thankful for our country. We are thankful that God does bless America and that God is the source of all goodness, love, and provision, and that you, Lord God, have provided a great nation with a great history.

And although we’ve gone through many rough times, you’re still very present and active with us. Thank you for protecting President Trump from that fatal attack. And we ask that you envelop and protect all of those who are fighting for justice, for freedom, for order, for dignity, and to reward people according to merit, and especially put your hedge of protection around Elon Musk, around his children, around his whole entire family, and all of his team members that all would do good and just by our country, and freedom truly and justice would reign once again. We ask this in the name of the blessed savior, Jesus Christ, who we remember during this time of year, who suffered and died for our sins. May you wash away all that is wrong with our country and start with us.

We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

ELON MUSK: Amen. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Here. You can hang out. Well, that was beautiful. That was so beautiful. I think we’re going to need divine protection, frankly.

Questions on DOGE and Government Efficiency

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hey, Elon. I’d like to start off by thanking you for all that you’ve done for our country and the world as a greater whole.

And I mean that from the bottom of my heart as well. I have a question for you. As you go about your decision making at DOGE, how are you able to keep your moral north star and not set precedence when it comes to overstepping democratic processes simply because the end justifies the means and have outcomes similar to the last election with democratic presidential candidate being appointed without due process that just further polarizes the country. True. Also on a side note, one more thing.

Do you see a place in the long term for decentralized technology in society and government?

ELON MUSK: Yes. I mean to answer the second question first, I think generally it’s good to have decentralized systems because the more centralized something is, the more power that is in any one single entity, the more corruption you’re likely to have. So decentralization, I think, is good to minimize corruption.

Then with respect to DOGE, I mean, as I said, it’s we’re trying to be as literal as possible. It just it’s a Department of Government Efficiency, and it’s just literally going through and saying, okay. This money was spent. Is it money that most Americans would agree is sensible, or is it not? And, you know, if it doesn’t seem sensible, we say, well, we shouldn’t spend that money anymore, and we should stop it.

So and then we post the we try to be as transparent as possible so all the DOGE actions are posted on the doge.gov website and on the DOGE handle on X.

So if people disagree with something, they can say, which part do you disagree with? And I get these sort of attacks of like, oh, it’s unconstitutional, mean like, well, expenditure is unconstitutional that we have stopped? Because then they don’t know actually because they don’t they haven’t actually looked at anything.

So now obviously a lot of this can be reversed with a new administration, but at least for some period of time, we’re going to make sure that your taxpayer money is spent at least fifteen percent better. It’s not like a I think it’s a reasonable goal. It’s a rational goal. It’s a sensible goal.

The net result, I should say, we have the combination of one trillion dollars increase in economic output and one trillion dollars decrease in the budget deficit, then the outcome should be that there is no inflation or very little inflation, from one year to the next. So at the end of next year, the prices will be at the grocery store will be very similar to what they are right now, which means that standard of living will actually probably be higher, a little bit higher, whereas we’ve had rampant inflation to date.

And inflation is really just a pernicious tax that has been used by governments throughout history. And it’s very tempting for governments to use inflation as a tax because it’s indirect. People see the prices rising at the grocery store or at, for goods and services or for houses, and they tend to like blame the store. But it’s not the store, it’s the government. The government has reduced the value of money, and as a result, prices rise.

By changing by reducing rates and fraud, we’ll essentially make the economy more efficient, and we’ll shift people resources from the government to the private sector. And that will result in an increase in the output of goods and services, and so the average standard of living will therefore rise.

So they’re trying to make economics sound very complicated, but it’s really not that complicated. Standard the standard of living increases when the average output of goods and services increases per person. There’s basically more stuff. Therefore, you have more stuff to divide across people. That’s it.

You can run this sort of thought experiment and say, if there was a hundred people on an island, and you’d say, how many people do you want farming, fishing, making stuff, you know, versus, doing regulations. You would say like, you wouldn’t want like twenty people doing regulations. You’d be like, that’s too many. Well, then maybe you’d want one or two, I don’t know, maybe none.

Ideally zero I’m all for a small government, by the way. Think really yes. You know, when the United States was formed, there were only, you know, have the Secretary of State, Secretary of War, which I think is a more accurate name than defense. And, you know but it was Secretary of War for a long time. And you had Secretary of the Treasury, and you had the Attorney General.

That was it. And if it were entirely up to me, I’d be like, let’s make it like that again.

On Dogecoin and Government Transparency

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Howdy, gentlemen. I’ve got a quick question regarding government and transparency. Do you think Dogecoin may ever be used or the Dogecoin blockchain to be used for maximum transparency?

ELON MUSK: Well, the names are similar, but they’re doing two very different things. So in fact, I was going to call it like the Government Efficiency Commission, but that’s a super boring name. And then the Internet said, no, it needs to be called the Department of Government Efficiency. I was like, well, Internet’s that’s the Internet is right. So we changed the name from Government Efficiency Commission to Department of Government Efficiency.

But there are no plans for the government to use Dogecoin or anything as far as I know. So they happen to be similar names, really it’s just we’re just literally trying to make the government fifteen percent more efficient. It’s kind of like most of the work that’s being done is it’s kind of like homework. It’s not like it’s just work. Frankly, it’s like washing the dishes.

It’s not like it’s a lot of it’s not super fun work. It’s just going through and looking at every expense and saying, does this department have like ten times more software licenses than people? That doesn’t make sense. Why is the government spending ten million dollars a year on Politico subscriptions? That doesn’t make sense.

Like there’s just one thing after another like that. It’s like things that are just kind of boring. It’s like a ton of boring stuff. Like you do hear about like the sort of weird stuff that makes the headlines, but most of it most of the costs that are being cut are just very basic boring things. It’s like homework at scale is what I’d call the Department of Government Efficiency.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: This question about transparency I’m really selling it here. I would say the principles that Ioana set out for DOGE are they begin with truth. Truth. Find the truth. Number one, find the truth.

Why? Because the government’s gotten so big that actually the people don’t even know what’s there. Yeah. They don’t know the source of truth. So these licenses it’s not like people bought these licenses because they’re bad people and they wanted to pay Microsoft. They just kept buying licenses because Microsoft is selling them to them. I mean, it’s just it’s that strange. And we don’t want to pick on Microsoft. It’s like every software company, by the way. Every software company.

Pick on the X. They bought these licenses because they just thought they should buy more licenses. There’s more people coming in and there’s no one there. People aren’t coming back to the office. It’s just finding truth. The number one principle is truth, and then is number two, I think, on the list, right? So find the truth, make it public, make it transparent. And number three is, man, do it fast, make it efficient and be urgent. Those are the principles that Elon’s put in the DOGE. Yes.

ELON MUSK: It’s worth pointing out, like it’s actually difficult to you have to recalibrate how dumb things can be because it’s the government. Frankly, it’s like dumber than you think it could possibly be. So like for example, we found there were a whole bunch of what I call ghost payments going out, where the government contracting officer had retired or changed jobs or were dead or I don’t know, were not around anymore. And they forgot to turn off the payment stream to some company. And it’s like leaving the money faucet on and you leave the house. And it’s just the money faucet keeps going.

And it’s a pretty rare organization that will complain about receiving money. So organizations so then you’re like, is that waste of fraud? I mean, the government didn’t send them the money, but they didn’t deserve it. So then well, okay, should turn off the money spigot if the contract is over, that type of thing.

So one of the things that we made a recommendation to the Treasury that the payment classification codes and the explanation for the payment be mandatory fields. So just and have a name attached. So we could just ask the person who approved the payment, is this payment a good payment? Does this make sense? This is the kind of thing that is normal in for individuals and for companies, but that was not the case.

Elon Musk’s Remarks on Government Spending and Accountability

ELON MUSK: So the reason why government could not pass an audit was because the information did not exist that would be required to pass an audit. It was literally impossible because you just had all these blank checks going out with no explanation and no payment code. So how are you supposed to do an audit? It’s literally impossible.

That’s what I mean by it’s very basic stuff – we just want the congressional appropriation payment code to be mandatory and a very short explanation. We’re not even going to judge what the explanation is, but that there would be any explanation at all and a name attached is revolutionary. And my guess is this will probably save $100 billion dollars a year, like a lot.

The Social Security Administration Story

ANTONIO GRACIAS: Maybe I could tell a little story from the Social Security Administration, if you might like to hear too. At Social Security Administration, they had passed their audit, actually. They’ve got, I don’t know, about one hundred material deficits that they passed our audit. When we looked at the balance sheet, we found that $800 million had fallen off the balance sheet last year. $800 million.

ELON MUSK: What do you mean fell off the balance sheet?

ANTONIO GRACIAS: That’s exactly the question I asked. Where did it fall to?

ELON MUSK: Exactly. Where did it fall to? So I asked the auditors to come in. Like a comedy sketch, comedy routine here. Where did it go?

ANTONIO GRACIAS: Exactly. But wait, where does it go? Exactly. So here’s what happened. I brought in the auditors.

I asked the auditor, what does “fell off the balance sheet” mean? Is that GAAP term or non-GAAP term? I never heard that. What does it mean?

Well, the payment plans, because under the last administration, if you got overpaid on Social Security – like if you were getting SSI or disability and you got a job and didn’t tell them, they paid you too much money – they dropped that payment plan to ten dollars a month max. So the payment plans went out past the system date. If I remember correctly, it was 2047. The payment plan was out past the system date. When it went past the decision date, literally, it fell off the system.

It disappeared. And the officers were supposed to – the technicians were supposed to put notes in the system that this was to be collected. The notes were so bad, the auditors concluded this could not be collected. And we literally lost $800 million. Gone. And I said to the auditor, how could that possibly be?

And she said, “It’s not really material. It’s a $1.5 trillion program.” I said, “Well, it’s material if it’s your money.” Is it in the computer? It’s not in the computer. It fell off the computer. In the computer, like Zoolander. That’s in the computer. It disappeared. $800 million just disappeared.

ELON MUSK: It’s crazy. So there’s like one nutty thing after another like that. Yes, it’s crazy. Anyway, we’re just trying to basically fix the computers so that we know what the heck is going on.

It’s like being fully transparent with the American people so you know exactly what’s going on and just making sure that money is not wasteful or fraudulent.

Fraud in Social Security

ELON MUSK: One interesting statistic was that 40% of the calls into Social Security were fraudulent, meaning that it was someone trying to get a Social Security payment that was going to a senior to instead go to a fraud ring. So that was almost half of the phone calls were fraudulent. Probably the other half were people asking, “What happened to my Social Security?”

This is true, actually. Bananas.

ANTONIO GRACIAS: We found this actually, the people there at Social Security knew what was going on, and they had been complaining about it for a long time and no one fixed it. And these were mostly criminal rings outside the country and other places in world that are jamming up the phone systems, calling in, using just these simple security questions, because you could actually – this was how crazy it was. You could change your direct deposit information at Social Security by simply answering six questions on the phone, like your mother’s maiden name, your date of birth, etcetera.

ELON MUSK: Like stuff you could find on the Internet.

ANTONIO GRACIAS: Easily find on the dark web. That’s why it was so easy. It was a huge exploitation, super open door. I mean, the bank vault was open, and the criminals ran right in and took the money, and they took it away from our seniors.

So what happened is if my dad, who’s 84, would go get his check slip in the bank account, it wasn’t there, then he’d go through a whole process to get the money back from the government, which takes a long time. It’s the government, right?

So we put in a very simple 2FA system. All this nonsense you’ve seen in media about “we turned off the phone lines” – that’s not true. All they did – actually, we recommended to Social Security that they put in a very simple 2FA system.

Two-factor authentication. The same kind you use at the banks. Pretty simple. You have a bank account, you do this. And you know what? They did it. They said, “Yeah, you’re right. We should do that.” They went and did it. Good for them. They did it. No one had the will to do it. They did it. And they’re going to keep increasing security. We’ve given them a lot more recommendations, and they’re on the road to increase security, stop all this nonsense so our seniors and our people that are disabled don’t get stolen from.

Addressing Criticism

ELON MUSK: This is really worth emphasizing. The radical left are saying that somehow we’re stealing Social Security. First of all, I don’t need the money, okay? In fact, it’s costing me a lot to be in this job. You had like Tim Walz dancing on stage showing a chart of Tesla stock, which is a really awful thing for him to do because what they’re trying to do is put massive pressure on me and Tesla to, I don’t know, stop doing this.

But my Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone roughly in half. I mean it’s a big deal. So not only am I not getting paid, definitely not stealing money and would never get away with it. But the value of my Tesla stock is in half. So this is a very expensive job is what I’m saying. And you’re welcome.

Thank you very much, guys. Long term, I think Tesla stock is going to do fine. Maybe it’s a buying opportunity. But the actual thing we’re doing is making sure that people do get their Social Security and that it doesn’t get stolen. One hundred percent.

Q&A Session

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi, Elon. I got a question for you about DOGE. Great shirt too. Everybody in this room has got a bunch of money sitting in a bunch of little boxes in a bunch of different states. And it turned into quickest when you brought it up online that you were going to go check our gold. And I’m worried about the Democrats and Joe Biden’s last administration with the money not being there. Did you get blocked, or are you still able to go check that?

ELON MUSK: Sorry, I’m not sure I understand exactly what you’re referring to.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Fort Knox.

ELON MUSK: Oh, Fort Knox. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Right. Oh, yes, yes. Well, that’s up to the President, of course. But I think it would be awesome to livestream Fort Knox. I mean, that would be really fun.

And after all, it is actually the gold of the American people. So the American people should, it seems to me, have a right to see their gold. Hopefully, it looks really cool. Open the doors like, is it there? Like, is that really gold? Let’s check. So maybe it’ll be really interesting. I’m all for it. The president says he’s interested in doing it, so hopefully that happens.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Good evening, Mr. Musk. How are you?

ELON MUSK: Good. How’s it going?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Good. My name is Vito Gabriel. I’m eighteen years old. This is my first election that I’ll be voting in.

ELON MUSK: Great. Very exciting. Oh, actually, that reminds me. It is actually possible to both register to vote on Tuesday. If someone has not registered to vote, they can register to vote in Wisconsin, and they can vote same day. So even if somebody’s not a registered voter, you can do everything on Tuesday.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: A bit of backstory. When I was younger, eight years old to be exact, my father put me to work in my family’s restaurant. And it led me to want to start my own business and to be successful just like you. And in my opinion, you’re one of the most successful businessmen to ever live. And so what advice would you give to young entrepreneurs who want to start their own businesses and give back to this great country?

Advice for Entrepreneurs

ELON MUSK: Well, it is very hard to start a business and have it succeed. It is true that most businesses that start do not succeed. So I guess I’d really just say if there’s a product or service that you think is really needed, then you go out and you make that product or you produce that service and try to be as useful as possible really.

It’s like whether it’s a great restaurant or store or a technology company or whatever the case may be, it’s really just like are you doing things that are useful to your fellow human beings? If you are, then I think the company will be successful. So that’s really what it comes down to is just being useful. Like people ask me what’s the top advice? I’m like try to be useful. It’s actually very difficult to be useful.

But I have a lot of admiration for anyone who just does an honest day’s work, making products or producing services for their fellow human beings. That’s what a company is. That’s it. But it is hard. To be totally frank, I generally say if somebody needs encouragement to start a company, I would recommend not starting it. Starting a company is very difficult.

Like if you look at, say, the automotive industry, the only two American car companies that have not gone bankrupt are Tesla and Ford. So it’s a big cemetery is what I’m saying. That’s a tough one, very tough industry. And there were really no commercial rocket companies that were successful before SpaceX.

It’s generally very difficult to make the value of the output exceed the cost of the input. And that’s really what defines successful business. And profit is really the difference between the value of the output and the cost of the input. That’s what profit is. But it’s shockingly hard to make the output more valuable than the input. That’s what I found.

On Economic Literacy

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Elon. Thank you so much for being here. Would you agree with me that the economic illiteracy in this country is staggering, that people don’t understand how close we are with America to going over the fiscal cliff?

ELON MUSK: Yes. I think a lot of people don’t know what a national debt is. Like how did this national debt come about? And how come there’s all this money that somehow we owed, but we didn’t sign up to owing this money?

But there’s over $30 trillion of national debt, and that doesn’t count future obligations. And that just doesn’t count state and local debt. So basically, it’s a lot of money that the government has signed everyone in America up for. And yes, if we don’t do something about it, then eventually there won’t be any money for anything. We’ll just be paying interest.

A country is much like a person. It’s bigger. A country is a collection of people. But just like a person can go bankrupt, a country collectively can also go de facto bankrupt, essentially by diluting the currency to where it’s worthless. And that’s where we’re headed unless we take immediate and dramatic action with respect to government spending. We’re in deep trouble, basically.

You’ve seen this in places like Venezuela.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yeah, exactly.

ELON MUSK: So you’ve seen in a lot of countries where things have gone to hell in a handbasket and it’s like we just need to not do that. So if the ship of America sinks, we all sink with it.

This is something that I try to tell people in the commercial sector that your company is not going to make it if the Ship of America sinks. So we’re all going to work together here to make sure it does not.

ANTONIO GRACIAS: This is the only place left to go.

ELON MUSK: Right. Exactly. I don’t think we can run off to some other country and be okay. It’s America. I will die in America. I’m not going anywhere.

ANTONIO GRACIAS: I will, too.

ELON MUSK: I mean, I might go to Mars, but that will be part of America.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Elon. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be here today with us, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I just want to say that DOGE’s findings demonstrate to the American people that the government clearly does not care about our hard earned tax dollars. I’m only twenty-six, but I can imagine it’s frustrating for people who have worked their entire lives to see their tax dollars going to fraud, waste, and abuse. And you alone have contributed so much money to our government via taxes. So thank you.

Q&A Session (Continued)

ELON MUSK: You’re welcome. I’m sorry that your money is not being spent very well.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: You’ve clearly shown your leadership and team is capable of transforming our government into something better than what we see today. I just want to say, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s wondering, but we know that DOGE has found quite a bit of money, and we would like to see some of that returned to the American people. Do you have any information on when DOGE checks would be written or sent?

ELON MUSK: Well, I guess we need to be successful at scale. We’ve made a lot of progress, but there’s still a tremendous amount of work to do. Effectively, as government spending is made more efficient and spending is reduced, the tax burden inflation is reduced. So one way or another, you will effectively be better off if resources in the United States are not wasted. It’s somewhat up to the Congress and maybe the President as to whether specific checks are cut.

But whether a check is cut or not, if you reduce wasteful spending, the economy is going to be better off. There will be people doing more useful jobs than before. The total output of goods and services will increase and then the average standard of living will increase.

I think the most important lesson in economics is simply common sense that the more people in a country that are engaged in producing useful products and services, the better off that country will be.

Like you could run the sort of thought experiment to say, in the limit, if we moved everyone in the car industry into the DMV, there would be no cars, but there would be a lot of regulators. So then you say, well, okay, well, then how many people should be in the government versus not government? And generally, I think you want to minimize the number of people in government. There will be a lot of people in government, but you want to keep that to a minimum and move people from low to negative productivity roles to high productivity roles in the private sector.

On Population and Family

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hey, Elon. So the first time I heard about population collapse, I think, was from you and Joe Rogan. I grew up in the generation where it was very overpopulation, global warming, a lot of people don’t want to have kids. My wife and I just had our first. She’s a year old.

ELON MUSK: Congratulations.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi, John. Thank you. And I’m finding out very quickly a lot of these things I was told about having kids, losing personal freedom, it’s well worth it. I mean, I would recommend everybody as I’m sure you would and we’ve—

ELON MUSK: Absolutely. I mean, I’ve been banging the baby drum for ages. Yes.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: So my question to you is what’s the most surprising and fulfilling thing you’ve learned from your kids, especially we’ve seen you around X all the time with Trump. So what’s the most fulfilling thing you’ve learned from having kids?

ELON MUSK: Yes. X is in the back there. He’s watching this probably. Yes, I think nothing makes you happier than kids really is the truth of it. So kids are my greatest source of happiness. And I really encourage as Antonio knows, encourage all my friends and everyone to have kids.

It is concerning. The United States has been below replacement rate. The birth rate in the United States has been below replacement rate since roughly when I was born, around 1970, 1971 thereabouts. And I think last year was the lowest birth rate on record. It was very low. And then we’re seeing this trend in almost every country on earth.

This is worrying because it’s like, well, if something doesn’t happen, humanity is going to disappear. So it’s, no humans, no humanity.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You practice what you preach too, by the way. He’s having lots of kids.

ELON MUSK: Sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You practice what you preach. And—

ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And he tells all his friends to do it too. I can tell you that for sure.

ELON MUSK: For sure. Yeah.

Postal Service Reform

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi. Thanks for coming. My name is Adam. I’m a postal worker. I’m wondering if you could give some insight into some of the reforms or changes that DOGE might be looking at for the Postal Service?

ELON MUSK: Well, actually, perhaps I can ask you what should DOGE be doing with respect to the Postal Service?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I’ll write you a letter.

ELON MUSK: Okay, okay. I suspect you’ve seen that things are not entirely perfect in the postal service. Yes.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes.

ELON MUSK: So I mean, obviously, delivering mail and packages is very important. There’s reason for why the Postal Service was created. But and I haven’t really had a chance to look at the Postal Service yet, but I have a little detail on the analysis, if you want.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You do?

ELON MUSK: A little bit.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay, sure.

ELON MUSK: I want to be very general here, but there is this thing about—you can tell us. There is a thing about large volume users of Postal Service versus small volume users.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I’ve heard of that, yeah.

ELON MUSK: You probably see it, right? There are some companies in the world that use post service a lot and pay the same rate as everybody in this room that uses it a little bit. That seem fair to you when you see it on the front line?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I can’t really say.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well, he can say because he works there.

ELON MUSK: Doesn’t seem fair to me. I don’t work there. There are a bunch of questions about this people are asking that I think are interesting in analysis. When you look at the source of truth and the data and you make that transparent, I think it’s going be obvious what the right answers are.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes.

ELON MUSK: It seems like some companies are not being charged the right amount for package delivery. And there’s probably more administrative overhead than there should be, would be some safe guesses, I suspect.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Those are good guesses. Yes, yes. Good guesses.

Social Media Engagement

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Right. Elon, how are you?

ELON MUSK: Good. How’s it going?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: It’s Adam, your number one reply guy on X.

ELON MUSK: Hey.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: With Scott Prosser. It’s good to finally meet in person.

ELON MUSK: Cool.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: So I’m glad you like a lot of my stuff.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Constantly replying to myself, liking myself, and I love to create material because I’m a former Democrat myself just like you.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: And I want to help bring over moderate voters from the Democrat party who are disenfranchised.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: And I’d love to be able to create more content to help you out, to help us win more elections, to win the midterms for 2028 and on and—

ELON MUSK: Sounds good.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Would I be able to get a follow-up from your main because you followed me from your old cyber gamer?

ELON MUSK: Oh, I did. Okay. Yes. At this point, I yes, sure. I’ll do that. Sure. I mean, right now, like I used to only follow maybe a few hundred accounts, which I know it was possible to read most of what they posted. But now I think I follow like 1,100 accounts, which makes it impossible. So it’s just like I can only see a few things that people post at random essentially. So, yes. But I’m trying to digest as much information as my human brain can manage. So, but yes, thank you for your engagement.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: And just in general, like try to report on what’s really happening is great.

ELON MUSK: Thank you.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Mister Musk, thank you so much for being here and bringing attention to what’s going on with our Supreme Court here. It’s very important, and I think it would have gotten no attention, not even half of what it’s getting now, if you hadn’t stepped in for good or bad, negative press on good press. We think—

ELON MUSK: Exactly. Totally. I mean, obviously, for any kind of special election is going to get a small fraction of the attention of a, say, a presidential election. And then, normally, an election for a judge would not be that big of a deal. It just so happens that this will in this case, it could decide the control of the U.S. House of Representatives, which is, yeah, a huge deal.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yeah. My personal experience with Judge Crawford, I am a family that she moved a pedophile right next to our—

ELON MUSK: What? Really?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yeah. It is a true story in the ads that you’re hearing from mister Schimel. I am—

ELON MUSK: Wow.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: One of the homeowners that had to live next to him for many years unaware. So the letter that I wrote to her, I’m sure, played into what we’re experiencing now in family court. Family, we’re veterans twenty years. It just was not good for him. It was not good for me. And, we’re trying to work through our family court situation. But what we’re realizing is the two strategies that they use are indoctrination or intimidation. And if you step up and say, we’re a practicing Catholic family, the result is her band of merry rogue judges, and the court affiliates and the commissioners will, flood the family court, have flooded the family court system.

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: So I guess my question would be, regardless of what happens with this very important vote, let’s not forget what’s happening in the family court system in Dane County, Wisconsin that’s being flooded with these rogue judges and affiliates and commissioners who then, if you don’t subscribe to what they’re saying, they will just wipe out your ability to raise your family or proceed with your family in a way that you feel—

ELON MUSK: Right.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Your cultures dictates, your religion dictates—

ELON MUSK: Sure.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Your financial background dictates. It has gone completely bananas. And, I’m wondering what you can do to keep the light shine on our court system in Dane County. It does have lasting effect on families, and it will breed out our ability to raise our families in the spirit in which we feel is most healthy for our our young, our children, and the sanctity of our family.

ELON MUSK: Absolutely. I think that’s fundamental to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which is the foundation of America that, you know, that you should have control over your family, not the state. The state should not have control over your family. It’s insane that people would think that.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We’ve had friends that just escaped California because of this. I mean, it’s literally had to leave because the state tried to take their kids because they’re imposing the state’s values on the kids, and they literally had to leave overnight. More than one friend, we’ve had this story.

ELON MUSK: Really? Really?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yeah.

ELON MUSK: No, there’s a I think a change to law in California where if the teachers determine that it’s in the kids’ interest, like if you don’t respect, I don’t know, ten year olds’ pronouns or something, the state can take your kid in California. So it’s insane. It’s state forced indoctrination. And if you if you don’t match their, you know, whatever the state wants, then they can take your kid in California. It’s a big deal.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yeah. Exactly.

ELON MUSK: So it should just be, you know, families should have control over their own circumstances, and it should not be the government that, decides how your children should be raised.

SpaceX and Technology Questions

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Elon. My name is John. There’s a lot of questions, I see. We’re going to answer everything at this point. I’m sorry.

ELON MUSK: Hey, Please go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you for taking the questions. A lot of people, I agree.

ELON MUSK: So I just I was wondering I’ve seen I noticed that there was another a second Mechzilla being built at the Starbase. Are we going to be go for launch for the Artemis mission coming up?

ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, this is a very very sort of space question. So there are two towers in South Texas and then two and there were planned to build two towers at the Cape in Florida. And then probably some more elsewhere in the future, but there’ll Twin Towers at the Cape and Twin Towers in South Texas at Starbase.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Larry? Hey, Elon. Good to meet you. Thank you for everything you’re doing for the country and the world.

ELON MUSK: Thank you.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I have two questions. They asked me to keep it short. One, when you envision solving blindness and bringing that to the masses where it will be for everyone. And the other is, is Robotaxi on schedule?

ELON MUSK: Yes. Well, there’s so many wide range of questions tonight. Yes. So for Neuralink, we’ve actually had Neuralink has had in monkeys a working device we call BlindSight, where it’s been working well, monkeys are healthy for a few years now. And we’re hoping later this year to do our first device implant for human enabling someone who is completely blind to see.

It’s going be low res at first, like Atari graphics. So I want to set expectations appropriately. So it will start off with like very low res, but then over time, I think eventually, the implant would enable vision that is like superhuman. So that be pretty cool. And then yes, I think we’re on track to do unsupervised self driving in Austin in June.

So I think we probably will we’ll take maybe four more questions, so just two from that side and two from that side, and then we’ll call it a night. So go ahead.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you so much. First of all, you are beyond absolutely legendary and an absolute true hero. So thank you so much for everything you’re doing, achieving accomplishments. You’ve done so many impossible. It is astonishing.

ELON MUSK: Thank you.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: But my name is Brian Wright, and I’ve been filming from last year all the way into this year a docuseries on finding peace. And during this election year, the episode was how many lines do we actually need to cross in order to be able to find peace? And I wanted to ask you, where do you feel like we are in this this divide? Are we so far divided as to where there’s no coming back to the middle? Or where do you see us being?

ELON MUSK: Yes. We should restore the Smith Month Act so that we the government cannot sly or issue part of Uganda to the people.

Elon Musk’s Remarks on Current Political Climate

ELON MUSK: So yes, I don’t know. I mean I kind of thought that we’re headed in a good direction for a while there. And then in the last month or so, there have been these crazy violent things happening against Tesla and protesting me and whatnot. I’m like, this is just nuts. And a lot of people sort of parading signs around saying that President Trump and I should die type of thing.

I’m like, this is really nuts. But I think the real issue is like who’s organizing and funding that? Like the same people that organized and funded the infiltrators, the hecklers, earlier tonight. So it’s whoever they are. And I guess we know some of their names, but it’s really yeah.

Yeah. Soros and a bunch of others. I’m not sure really what I… I sometimes wonder what is their goal? Like, what’s their aim? You know?

I guess, is it communism, I guess, is a part of it or just I don’t know. Sometimes, want to like, have they thought through what their… if let’s say they got their goal, what then what? You know? So I don’t know. I’m hopeful that things calm down, that there’s we gauge that people engage in, like, dialogue but not violence.

And that if for those who do push violence and destruction of property and intimidation, obviously, they need to face legal consequences for that. So and the president has said that, you know, that that needs to happen. Obviously, if people are pushing violence and destruction of property, that that is against the law, and they need to face the consequences of that. So thank you. Yeah.

Q&A Session

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you, Elon. I constantly hear that the DOGE efforts are going to do things like take away Social Security payments and reduce other government payments like that. You’ve touched on it tonight, but yeah. Can you say the state… you’ve discussed this at length over the last few months. Can you talk again about how the DOGE efforts are actually going to affect things like the payments and other programs like that?

ELON MUSK: Yes. I guess it would be helpful because so I can just state it as crisply and clearly as possible that DOGE will absolutely ensure that people get their Social Security, make sure they get their Social Security, make sure they get their Medicaid, and will not be cutting any legitimate payments whatsoever. Crystal clear.

I would just add to this. I’ve been there, working there. Spent about the first three or four weeks of my time in The Woodlands actually working in the Social Security Administration. One hundred percent when the United States is true, nothing has happened on the ground that would impact the level of payments going to people that legitimately are owed those payments. Period. A lot is going to happen to people that are stealing from the system. Yeah.

They’re not getting the payments. And you know who’s screaming? They are. Because they’re committing fraud. And we should take that away from them.

Because there’s stealing from all of us in this room and our parents. And they’re going to scream loud. And it’s going to get louder. Thank you for asking that question because it is something that, as obvious as it sounds, it’s a great question because we just need to be very crisp and clear. DOGE will make sure you get your Social Security. DOGE will make sure you get your Medicaid. There will be no cuts to legitimate payments whatsoever.

I’d like to go last, if it’s okay, with the other gentlemen. Would you like to go, sir? Please go.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you. Mr. Musk, thank you so much for coming to Wisconsin. I just want to thank you for calling out bad ideas on X. You do that, like, every thirty minutes, and if I don’t see something, I’m like, wow. I see you alone, okay? Yeah. Yeah. And we all know that ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. And thank you for speaking up for victims.

And a few nights ago when you spoke with Brett Baier when you were being interviewed, and he asked you, what keeps you up at night? And like that other question, you answered, and you paused, and it was depopulation. And I was waiting for you to say, like, oh, the death threats against my life or, the national debt or but depopulation. Yeah. Depopulation is a really big… It’s not on people’s radar.

ELON MUSK: Well, think we haven’t yet evolved to deal with depopulation. It’s, I guess, it’s something we better evolve to deal with or we’re going to disappear. And once the depopulation ball starts rolling, it seems to gather up speed. I mean, can look at sort of cases like Korea and Japan, which are much further ahead or behind, depending on how you look at it. The population decline there is much worse.

Japan is in absolute population decline, so they’re losing about, I think, roughly a million people a year, and that’s going to accelerate. Korea has only a third replacement rate, which means that in three generations, the country will be three percent or four percent of its current size. Like, basically, all that will be left is a small portion of the capital city. So and I keep waiting for the birth rate to turn around, but it doesn’t. It seems like population collapse accelerates.

And that’s why I think it’s a very serious matter. If you believe in humanity at all, you should care about this a lot. And then that’s the long term thing. And the short term thing is that America needs to be financially solvent. That’s what DOGE is about, trying to just make sure America is financially solvent.

And then there’s also the risks of AI. So we want to make sure that AI is maximally truth seeking and, you know, ideally has sort of values that most Americans would agree with. That and that it’s a pro-human AI, that it wants to foster the future of humanity. You know, those are the things that I think about. So thanks.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Elon, my name is Matt Haas, like Bonanza, Big Haas. I own and operate a small business here in the Fox Valley. And tomorrow, I actually get the honor and the privilege to host Brad Schimel at our shop, Spaghetti Landscape. If anyone’s in the valley… Sounds good. Come down. Four thirty tomorrow, we’re having a shindig to have Brad stop by. He’s going to come and give a little speech, get some… that’s what this was about, it was Brad’s election. Yes. And so I just wanted to say, in your opinion, what is Brad going to do for small business owners like myself?

ELON MUSK: Well, I think he’s going to help get the government off your back. So that’s a big deal. Anyone that starts a business, it’s like you used to just be able to open a store and not get like a zillion permits and licenses and everything. That’s how America… you wanted to make a product, you just made the product. And you didn’t have to satisfy a massive body of regulations and get permission from all sorts of agencies. So hopefully, Justice Schimel supports that and helps get the government off your back.

Closing Remarks

ELON MUSK: Alright. So let me finish by saying, obviously, yeah, those will be cool. But just remember, like, the importance of the election on Tuesday is gigantic. It could decide the future of the House of Representatives. It could decide then the future of America and the future of the world.

So it’s absolutely critical, that you really… you need to just drag friends and family to vote on Tuesday, for Justice Schimel and for voter ID. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Related Posts

• Nick Fuentes’ Interview on Tucker Carlson Show (Transcript)
• Transcript: Zohran Mamdani on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• Transcript: Zohran Mamdani’s Historic Final Rally Speech Before NYC Election
• Transcript: President Trump’s Remarks At Cambodia-Thailand Peace Deal Signing Ceremony
• Transcript: Marjorie Taylor Greene on 5 Pillars of MAGA – Tucker Carlson Show