A big part of those $5 billion was not having to pay sales taxes on possible future Gigafactory production, for example, but that gigafactory never reached the initally planned size AFAIK.
Some of it is a loan, I know Tesla had a loan from the govt, they paid it back early if I remember correctly.
Plus all of that is in the past. What would be a huge problem is if the federal govt started throwing grant money at Tesla now, while Musk is running around playing in the govt.
All that said, I think it's a terrible state of affairs we find ourselves in, but I mean we voted Trump into power, what did we expect would happen? Rainbows and kittens?
Luckily, that is unlikely to happen again. Now, the broligarchs are in power and the LA times has been captured and turned into a propaganda tool.
WSJ also reported in October about how Musk has been in regular contact with Putin.
That's probably why he's at USAID, and not the SEC.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/world/africa/elon-musk-so... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_N._Haldeman [3] https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-world-accor...
PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT: Inspection of USAID's Oversight of Starlink Terminals Provided to the Government of Ukraine May 14, 2024
The contract value is less than $1 mill per year, and SpaceX initially provided it for free so clearly not designed as a money maker.
Oh, well if you say so.
> SpaceX initially provided it for free so clearly not designed as a money maker.
That's literally the same approach drug dealers use. "First hit is free!"
More plausibly, USAID was a focus over the SEC because it had 20x the budget of the SEC and $16b of that goes to Ukraine.
what mental gymnastics are you having to do to believe Trump, who is a proven pathological liar -- I mean, come on, that's not even a question of debate
I believe 0% of what Trump says.
But even if that were true, it doesn't resolve the conflict of interest story. Gov money being cut from _fill in blank of gov agency_ means that there's more money available for what's important to Musk (corp tax cuts, for example; gov spending that benefits his company, his business interests in China, etc.)
Not really. Government spending doesn't need to be balanced like a household budget. Whether or not policies are enacted which financially benefit Musk is not dependenant on whether he can find savings or not.
Right now all we have is speculation on your behalf that Musk is acting unethically by ignoring a conflict of interest, versus a public statement from the president that he's not being permitted to do so.
I'm inclined to believe the speculation.
You can set your defaults to 'trust Trump/Elon' if you really want to I guess, but that's a highly unreasonable default (to put it mildly). Both have a long and clear public history as bad actors.
At it's most benign, this is dangerous clownishness mostly for show, but even that is far too charitable.
Anyway, you're clearly in the "I trust Trump" camp, so whatever. It's a small shame that you'll be disappointed in the end. But the bigger shame is all the lives that will be destroyed because of his self-serving policies.
I actually don't have much of an issue with the GOP as a party (other than their groveling to Trump once they realized their only political choice was to serve him or die). But Trump is a disgrace and could not even get a job as the principal of my child's primary school--that's how low his supporters set the bar for their president.
... virtually every position, on both sides of every issue.
Come the fuck on.
This is a man who sharpies extra lines onto weather maps so he doesn't have to say "whoops, made a mistake in my tweet". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alaba...
Secondly, I don't believe Musk has any direct authority to make any changes within these agencies whatsoever. DOGE is only permitted to review agency operations and make recommendations, not to execute them.
The changes that are being attributed to Musk, are perhaps being done at his recommendation, but there is an agency director signing off on all of this.
If we're honest this is all just unfounded speculation.
Financially, he's likely going to benefit from a deregulatory agenda, but is it enough to offset his investments to get Trump elected (buying Twitter, America PAC)? Who knows
Is his work at USAID in any way related to his financial outcomes? Who knows
Would he make just as much sitting on the couch while the republicans do their thing? Probably
Does he even care about making more money, given he's got more than he can possibly spend already? Who knows.
If I were to guess, he's at a point in his life where money isn't his main motivator, and instead he's seeking to make an impact.
It seems pretty clear by now that this never happens with billionaires.
Bill Gates is giving his money away to charity as quickly as he can do while maintaining effectiveness.
Sergey Brin is goofing around with airships.
Plenty of examples of billionaries living life rather than focusing on making more money.
With the goal of making money.
> Bill Gates is giving his money away to charity as quickly as he can do while maintaining effectiveness.
Perhaps the best example here, but he's still working quite a bit to make money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BENlabs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Ventures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Energy
> Sergey Brin is goofing around with airships.
With the goal of making money.
We also know that he has no moral compass and no qualm whatsoever using any lever he can to make money. The moment to worry about this is before he leaves with the till. Because everyone knows he will, and by then it will be too late.
We don't know that.
Musk has several times lobbied against EV subsidies which would directly benefit Tesla, because he viewed the subsidies as excessive.
Of course he wants to kneecap his emerging competitors in the space.
Same technique OpenAI is using with advocating for AI regulation.
You can find the executive order on the whitehouse website.
Technically it's a renaming of the USDS
Bad news: this limitation will be enforced by… Musk himself.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-05/white-hou...
> The White House said Elon Musk, the billionaire leading President Donald Trump’s government cost-cutting efforts, will determine if there are conflicts of interest between his work reviewing federal spending and his overlapping empire of six companies.
Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. That's taxpayer money. Plus there's the SpaceX contracts--not saying those are unwarranted, certainly SpaceX deserves the contracts more than Boeing--but my point is that it's a huge conflict of interest.
A person receiving very large amounts of money from the government is now deciding which parts of the government should be cut in order to "save taxpayers money".
If this sounds like something that would only happen in a place like Russia, or the DRC, it's because it's something that would only happen in those places.
In other democratic countries you go to jail for this sort of thing (i.e., Nicholas Sarkozy in France--not saying the situation is exactly the same, but there's an actual judicial system in place that doesn't exonerate someone just because they're president, like our SCOTUS did).