Elon Musk sits down with the Wall Street Journal to talk about his views on China and the need for government subsidies to his own company, Tesla. He also talks about why he thinks Joe Biden should go to jail for his own crimes.
00:00:43.900We put effort onto the video side, of course, and sometimes if it's a found video in the field of something going on, you really need the video to understand it.
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00:00:55.140It's $8 a month, which I hope is affordable for you, but I have to tell you, it really adds up for us.
00:01:01.220And it allows us to be as independent as we are.
00:01:04.260You know we would never take a dime from Trudeau's media bailout.
00:05:26.180In fact, if I may elaborate on that, the deficit is more than $3 trillion when you look at the future obligations.
00:05:32.420So it's $7 trillion of current expenditures, but it's much more than that if you look at future obligations for Social Security, Medicare, and so forth.
00:05:42.700So we're running this incredible deficit.
00:20:43.660And so, if they, if they, if we live forever, then we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.
00:20:52.540So, um, but I'm not, I'm not putting fun at aging.
00:20:57.200I'm just saying, um, you know, if, if we've got, uh, people in, uh, very important positions that have to make decisions that are critical to the security of the country,
00:21:07.940then they need to have sufficient, uh, presence of mind and cognitive ability to, to make those decisions well, um, because the whole country's depending on them.
00:22:26.500The guy loves to take action on, on whatever his heart desires and his brain suggests.
00:22:32.540So I think he's one of the freest men in the world.
00:22:35.140He's beholden to no one, certainly not to the president of the United States and certainly not to any subsidy.
00:22:40.820But he was asked about China and immediately he changed.
00:22:48.120And I think we see the one place where Elon Musk does have a master.
00:22:52.820Of course, he is trying to break into the massive Chinese market.
00:22:56.380He has a gigafactory in China, if I'm not mistaken.
00:22:59.080And so you can see when he's asked a question about China, he gives a very vague and meek answer, not as obedient as, say, Disney or the NBA would.
00:23:09.800But you can see that for the first time in the half hour conversation, suddenly he's thinking, hmm, what will happen to my stock price if I give a politically incorrect answer?
00:23:20.820The United States has been the world's largest economy for as long as anyone can remember.
00:23:27.740You know, I think U.S. became the largest economy, I don't know, probably 120, 130 years ago.
00:23:34.120And there's nobody that old really anymore who can remember a time when the United States was not the world's biggest economy.
00:23:42.000Now we're heading towards a situation where China is going to be probably have an economy two to three times the size of the United States.
00:23:56.060I do think there's, you know, there are a lot of people in the government in China who kind of grew up with China not being, with China being a small economy.
00:24:06.600And maybe you feel like China was pushed around a lot.
00:24:12.720But they haven't fully appreciated the fact that China really is going to be the big kid on the block.
00:24:20.580And so, like, if you're going to be the big kid on the block, then you can really be pretty chill about things.
00:24:29.320You know, you don't have to worry about, like, other countries are not really a threat to you if you're by far the biggest kid on the block.
00:24:36.480And, you know, so I would say it's, that's kind of an important mindset change, hopefully, that China goes through is just, you know, to think, like, if you are the biggest kid, like, how would you want the biggest kid on the block to behave?
00:24:56.140And now, if you are going to be the biggest kid on the block, then wouldn't you want to behave like you'd want, like you would have wanted the biggest kid on the block to behave?
00:25:11.600I mean, overall, you know, I think, like, Tesla has a good relationship with China.
00:25:17.800And I don't mean to endorse everything that China does.
00:25:21.340Anymore than I would say endorse everything the United States does, or any country.
00:25:25.840But, you know, overall, I think, yeah, we are headed to an interesting and different world.
00:25:36.500And I hope that we can remember that, you know, we're all human beings.
00:25:44.100And, you know, let's just try to have as positive a relationship as possible and, you know, and work towards mutual prosperity of humanity as a whole.
00:25:59.920That last answer, would you agree with me, of the 10 clips I showed you, would you agree with me that the last one was the most guarded, the most finessed, that he really thought, well, I better choose my words very carefully.
00:26:11.760Oh, well, I don't endorse everything they do.
00:26:15.060Not that I endorse everything America does.
00:26:16.900And I just hope that we're mutually prosperous.
00:26:24.820The one meaningful idea he had was when you're not the biggest kid in the block, you hope the biggest kid in the block is nice to you.
00:26:33.880When you become the biggest kid in the block, hey, still think like you're the little guy.
00:26:39.000That works maybe for democracies, but it doesn't work for communist dictatorships that are militaristic, expansionist, and have a chip on their shoulder.
00:26:49.300I think he sort of gave away the game there.
00:26:52.300When China is the number three or number two banana, it'll act a certain way.
00:26:56.780But the minute it gets dominance economically, militarily, diplomatically, and it's on the cusp of all of those things, do you really think China is going to be meek and mild?
00:27:07.680I think Elon Musk himself does not believe it.
00:27:11.140That was more a hope he expressed than a prediction.
00:27:15.020Well, I have to say, Elon Musk is a fascinating man.
00:27:19.440He's an individual, an independent thinker, much more than Jeffrey Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or the horrific Bill Gates.
00:27:30.680I think he believes in liberty much more than the social media tycoons do.
00:28:14.780Well, the formerly fascist countries of Austria, Germany, and Italy are trying on that old outfit again.
00:28:23.740Getting the band back together as they're bringing in the most vicious vaccine mandates ever seen.
00:28:30.200I think they're actually more strenuous than anything that China itself has done.
00:28:35.380And now in New Brunswick, Canada, grocery stores have been given the power to ban unvaccinated people from even shopping for basic needs.
00:28:47.240What's going on in the United States, though?
00:28:49.260The most important country in the world by many measures and, of course, a country whose lead Canada often follows.
00:28:55.740Joining us now via Skype is Janine Younis, a lawyer with the new Civil Liberties Alliance, who's been a leading American activist on this file.
00:30:15.420You're shutting people out of public life, and now you're putting parents in the position of having to make their children's lives miserable or give them a vaccine that really has not been adequately tested on children.
00:30:25.800You know, to the extent there are issues with adults in terms of how long this vaccine has been tested and how extensively, those issues are writ large for children.
00:30:34.140There have been no studies conducted of children with natural immunity, for instance, getting the vaccine.
00:30:39.420And the studies on children have been much more limited in nature.
00:30:45.540So this is just a shocking development.
00:30:47.780And, you know, children face such a low risk of COVID that what's going on here is a bunch of scared adults are using little kids to protect themselves to feel better.
00:30:56.600It doesn't even work because we know these vaccines aren't very good at stopping transmission.
00:31:01.100But what they're doing to children is sickening.
00:31:05.980Let's get back to the point you made earlier about requirements on private companies.
00:31:10.780If I heard you right, does that mean if you're a worker, like you work in, like, let's say, a local – New York has so many little corner stores that have a – it's a little bit of a corner store.
00:32:18.740We're seeing it in other places as well.
00:32:20.640We're actually seeing it with the federal mandates, although thankfully the courts have been, you know, quite good at reining that in.
00:32:26.940We'll get into those federal mandates in a minute.
00:32:29.900I just got one last question for you because I've been looking at the different kinds of groups that are hesitant to take the vaccine.
00:32:38.680And although in the media party, as I call it, the narrative is, well, it's those right-wing Republicans, you know, the MAGA hat supporters.
00:32:51.460If I'm reading my statistics right, the groups that are the least likely to be vaxxed include African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.
00:33:02.060You'll correct me if I'm wrong on that.
00:33:04.720And, again, that gets back to these corner stores, which are often visible minorities, new immigrants just working hard, often a family business.
00:33:12.520And the idea that they could be fired from, like, I don't even know how that would work in a family business.
00:33:19.420If you've got a family business, do you have to fire your own kin because they're not vaxxed?
00:33:26.160And this is going to hit those immigrant families the hardest.
00:33:28.880I mean, I care about everybody, but this is a very anti-progressive thing for a so-called progressive mayor to command.
00:33:37.480Well, this is just along the lines of all of the other policies that so-called progressive politicians have been implementing under the pandemic.
00:33:46.740I mean, lockdowns harm the poor in the working class the most.
00:33:49.720Mask mandates harm the poor in the working class the most.
00:33:52.280You know, I have to wear a mask when there's a mask mandate in my city for a few minutes going into a grocery store.
00:33:57.340The grocery store workers, on the other hand, have to endure them all day long.
00:38:16.200I mean, I think that a lot of moderates are very sick of this.
00:38:20.760And frankly, I know a lot of Democrats who—even people who are as progressive as me.
00:38:26.260I mean, I voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016, who are, you know, planning to vote Republican or voting Republican.
00:38:32.440You know, those are sort of—that's sort of anecdotal, so it's hard for me to get a handle on precisely what percentage of the population it is.
00:38:39.020And obviously, there's a reason that I'm talking to these people because we all feel similarly.
00:38:43.140So—but I think—I think they'll be pushed back.
00:38:46.360And there are just a lot of people who are afraid to speak up and, you know, realize we're living in this cancel culture.
00:38:52.180We're even suggesting that masks don't work very well to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
00:38:55.780It's considered heresy, and they keep their mouths shut.
00:38:58.080But they know at the end of the day it's crazy, and maybe they, you know, like certain things about the Democrats.
00:40:25.020I mean, most of the people that I've been collaborating with in all my anti-lockdown work are Republicans.
00:40:29.220And, you know, there's a sort of subset of us who relate to each other because we're, you know, feel very betrayed by the Democratic Party.
00:40:37.000And so they're not living up to the principles that were the reason that we belong to them in the first place.
00:47:44.240I was a professor of ethics at Western University until I was fired for choosing not to take one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
00:47:53.440I made an ethical choice and it cost me my job.
00:47:57.200COVID-19 has caused a crisis in healthcare, but it has also triggered a crisis in other institutions we regard as essential to civil progressive society.
00:48:10.180Academia, especially the sciences, journalism, government, the law, and more broadly, civil discourse, how we talk to each other.
00:48:18.240In my new book called My Choice, The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates, I discuss how the response to the pandemic is ushering us into a new era,
00:48:30.000away from the classical liberal world we are leaving behind, and why I think we are living through a pandemic of coercion and compliance.
00:48:38.600I explain how we have gotten here and how we can grab hold of a safer, freer, more hopeful future.
00:48:45.820You can get your copy of the book by going to mychoicebook.ca or bookstores everywhere.