Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
The House authorized
an impeachment inquiry,
Israel's relentless bombing
of Gaza continued
despite overwhelming international
opposition,
and Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor
and his cousin's ex-husband,
was in court over his defamation of
these two Georgia election workers.
Now, Giuliani has already
been found liable.
This trial was just to determine
damages,
which ultimately came
to 148 million dollars.
And he frankly didn't help himself
by showing no contrition,
and actually repeating his claims
outside court on Monday.
Just watch as his spokesman
tries to shut him down.
I told the truth! They were engaged
in changing votes.
- There's no proof of that.
- You're damn right there is.
The Rudy Giuliani you see today
is the same man
who cleaned up the streets
of New York, took down the mafia.
- Stipulation isn't proof.
- Let's go, we're going to our car.
There's so much there
that is pathetic.
That man is desperately trying to coast
off the guy Giuliani was 20 years ago.
It is the rare attempt
to "Weekend at Bernie's" someone
who is still alive.
Also, he bailed on that defense
mid-sentence.
"Yeah, I was gonna get to 9/11,"
"but this has been a disaster,
just get in the f*cking car, Rudy."
And look, much as though I would love
to talk more about Giuliani,
I could do 20 minutes
on this courtroom sketch alone,
instead, we're gonna dive straight in
with our main story tonight.
This is our final show of the year,
so we thought we'd focus on someone
who's had a pretty big 12 months,
Elon Musk.
A man who can pull off pretty much
any bad-guy-in-a-movie look.
There's Lex Luthor posing for the cover
of Metropolis Maniacs Monthly,
there's, "Why no, Mr. Bond, I and
my child bride expect you to die,"
there's, "I just bought
your media company"
"and I'm about to strip you for parts,"
there's space's first r*cist sheriff,
and finally, the less fuckable
reimagining of Billy Zane's character
in "Titanic".
Truly, the man has range.
Elon has made news all year,
from test-launching
the most powerful rocket ever built,
to just this week, having to recall two
million cars due to safety concerns.
He even challenged Mark Zuckerberg
to a cage fight,
to which Zuckerberg replied,
"Send me location".
And may I suggest to both of them,
"interior, volcano".
And then, of course, there is Twitter.
He now calls it X, but the rest of us
still call it Twitter.
He officially acquired it
it has been one fiasco after another,
with the most recent coming
when he tweeted his agreement
with this antisemitic post,
calling the great replacement theory
"the actual truth".
That caused many big advertisers
to flee.
And then, in the midst of denying
any antisemitic intent,
Elon decided to taunt the sponsors
who had left.
Don't advertise.
- You don't want them to advertise?
- No.
What do you mean?
If somebody's gonna try to blackmail
me with advertising,
blackmail me with money?
Go f*ck yourself.
Go f*ck yourself.
Is that clear? I hope it is.
It is hard to say what's most
embarrassing there,
the fact that the world's richest man
is playing
the "you're not breaking up with me,
I'm breaking up with you" card,
or that he's doing it to confused
silence while wearing a jacket
from Ralph Lauren's midlife crisis
collection.
He's clearly going for "bad boy" there,
but ended up looking more like
red-pilled Chip from "Rescue Rangers".
Now, that clip actually made
the rounds, but for my money,
this exchange a few seconds later
is even better.
Look, actually what this advertising
boycott is gonna do,
it's gonna k*ll the company.
And the whole world will know that
those advertisers k*lled the company.
Everyone will document it
in great detail.
But those advertisers, I imagine,
are gonna say
"We didn't k*ll the company."
They're gonna say…
Tell it to Earth. Let's see
how Earth responds to that.
Yeah, tell it to Earth!
And I honestly hope he does that.
I hope he tries telling every living
creature on the planet,
including those weird deep sea fish,
all about how advertiser boycotts
are gonna k*ll Twitter,
just so one of them can open its
objectively horrifying jaws and say,
"Yeah, man, 'cause you said
that weird sh*t about Jews."
"We live in a black void"
"and even we understand
the order of operations here."
And look, I could talk for hours
about what Elon has done to Twitter,
many in the media do,
because it's where they spend
most of their workdays.
But the truth is, it's not the most
important thing Elon is in charge of.
It's arguably not even the most
important social networking site.
We all know the only social media app
that matters these days
is the comments section of Venmo.
That is where the real drama is.
But what Musk's time at Twitter
has definitely changed
is how many people perceive him.
Because for a long time, he was seen
as a one-of-a-kind genius
who'd save humanity, and was
described as a "real-life Iron Man".
It's a comparison
that he even welcomed,
cameoing as himself in "Iron Man 2".
Although I never really liked
those comparisons.
As far as I'm concerned, the only
real-life Iron Man is Troy Hurchubise,
who spent his life designing a suit
of armor that could withstand
a grizzly bear att*ck, and was
kind enough to film the tests.
Are you ready, Troy?
- I'm ready.
- Here it comes.
Yes! That is the hero we deserve.
That is my Iron Man.
Still, for a long time,
Elon's public image was that
of a maverick celebrity inventor
who cut through red tape,
revolutionized space travel,
and made electric cars cool.
And he does do a lot.
In addition to Twitter,
he's the head of five other companies:
Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company,
Neuralink, and xAI.
And thanks to their rollercoaster
fortunes,
he can claim the twin distinctions
of being both the richest person
in the world and the first person
ever to lose 200 billion dollars.
Which is hard to even wrap
your head around.
It's like hearing someone
won a marathon
after accidentally running 200 miles
in the wrong direction.
And to hear Elon tell it,
he's been doing this, at least in part,
to benefit humanity.
He recently said of Tesla,
"I've done more for the environment
than any single human on Earth",
demonstrating a pretty strong
messianic streak.
In fact, Sam Altman,
the CEO of OpenAI,
who's both worked with and clashed
with Musk, has said,
"Elon desperately wants
the world to be saved."
"But only if he can be the one
to save it."
Which is a pretty big asterisk.
It's like Jesus says
in the book of Matthew,
"Love thy neighbor,
but more importantly, me,"
"and if you don't, f*ck you, find
your own heaven, J-Crizzle out."
And I know there are people
who love Elon,
and people who utterly hate him.
And there are gonna be parts of this
piece that irritate both groups.
There are also people who would,
understandably, rather just ignore him
but as you will see, we might
have passed the point
where that is an option for any of us.
So tonight, let's look at Elon Musk.
And let's start with how he earned
his "business genius" reputation.
And I'm gonna skip over
the early years,
the growing up
in apartheid South Africa,
then emigrating to the U.S. via Canada
during his college years.
You can read any number of books
on that,
or just ask your next Bumble date
who turned up in a fedora
and a "Release the Snyder Cut"
T-shirt,
ready to spend the entire night
talking about him.
Elon first earned his fortune from
creating a company called Zip2
with his brother, before going on
to help run PayPal
alongside Peter Thiel.
And if I could only have been
a fly on that wall,
I'd have flown straight
into a hot light bulb.
He then invested that personal
fortune into SpaceX,
a company that would create and launch
its own rockets and spacecraft.
And that is a pretty gutsy move,
to go from an online payment system
to literal rocket science.
Although, as some point out,
SpaceX wasn't exactly starting
from square one.
What SpaceX has been very successful
at is taking
basically off-the-shelf technology,
stuff that was developed by NASA
So, in that way, he's kind
of the Henry Ford of space,
because Henry Ford didn't invent
the automobile.
He just figured out how to make
the automobile commercially viable.
Yeah, like Henry Ford, Elon Musk
managed to build on the technology
that others had invented.
That's not actually the only way
he's like Henry Ford,
which you'd know if you'd ever
Googled either of their names
and the word "antisemitism", but let's
not get ahead of ourselves here.
The point is, Musk took a big risk
on starting a rocket company,
which nearly didn't work. His first
three attempts to launch one failed.
And then he made
a truly audacious gamble.
When you had that third failure
in a row,
did you think, "I need to pack this in"?
Never.
- Why not?
- I don't ever give up.
Eight weeks later, Musk bet
the company on another flight.
We have liftoff.
This time around, everything worked.
Perfect.
If that fourth launch hadn't worked,
that would have been it.
We would have not had the resources
to mount a fifth.
You couldn't have gone on at that point?
Yes. Death would have been,
I think, inevitable.
That is genuinely impressive.
Although, there are less weird ways
to say
"we would have gone out of business"
than "death is inevitable".
Phrasing matters. It's why people say
"we just had a baby"
instead of "Lisa sh*t life
out of her hoo-ha".
Same meaning, different feeling.
And that trend continued through
SpaceX's subsequent efforts,
something that, as this former head
of NASA points out,
is not something they would ever
be able to get away with.
If we lost rockets at the rate
that Elon Musk loses his big starship,
NASA would have been out of business.
Congress would have shut us down
if we lost one starship,
let alone six
or however many it's been.
We can't do that.
The U.S. government can't waste billions
of dollars just blowing things up
in the vague hope that it'll somehow
turn into a success, unless,
of course, those things
are Iraq or Afghanistan.
So, SpaceX began with a big gamble,
had a flirtation with disaster, and then
became a massive success.
And that pattern persisted
with Tesla.
That company was funded, in part,
by pre-selling cars to future owners,
only to run into repeated production
delays and spiraling costs.
Just watch Musk at one meeting
of those early buyers,
where he told them that the price
had gone up,
on the cars that they'd already bought.
We took faith in you,
and now you're just turning around
and changing the price on us,
not telling us,
and then we find out about it…
Everyone's hurt
because we weren't told.
We can't sell cars for, you know,
less than they cost us to produce.
If anything, what we had,
more than that occurred,
then it was an accident.
Well, that's why there was a bunch
of comments after it that all got…
There seemed to be a little bit of anger
from some people in the room
who felt that we'd kind of done
a bait-and-switch.
It's a little bit true that there
was a bit of a bait-and-switch.
That's, I mean, kind of what happened.
That was very tough.
Yeah, you can see how baiting
customers with one price
and switching it for another might
be considered a bait-and-switch.
There's actually a great econ book
on the subject,
entitled "Words Mean
What Words Mean".
And yet, Tesla is now a big success,
with factories on three continents
delivering over
a million vehicles a year.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is currently
valued around 150 billion,
making it one of the most valuable
private companies in the world.
Although it is worth noting that his
boldness sometimes comes
with a tendency to overpromise,
and show off products
long before they are ready.
Like in 2019, when Musk decided
to demonstrate
how indestructible
his new Cybertruck was,
by having its chief designer chuck
a steel ball at its window.
Franz, could you try to break
this glass, please?
- Sure?
- Yeah.
Well, maybe that was
a little too hard.
Yeah, not great.
But also, kind of charming!
I'll be honest, there is something
I kind of like about the Cybertruck.
I mean, I don't want to own one,
or drive near one,
it's basically a 7,000-pound
smushed-up refrigerator
moving at 60 miles an hour, being
driven by a real piece of sh*t.
But there is something appealing
about a man so passionate
about his idea that he's willing
to ignore questions about aesthetics,
performance, durability,
practicality, safety,
and who on Earth actually wants
to spend up to 100,000 dollars
to drive every child's first attempt
at drawing a car and build it anyway.
And that's not his only embarrassing
product launch.
Two years ago, he introduced a Tesla
robot by showcasing a prototype
that was just a dancer
in a robot bodysuit,
and it was exactly as dumb
as that sounds.
I absolutely love it!
Apparently, all you have to do
to launch a robotics company
is invest in a spandex
bodysuit and a dancer.
So, with that in mind:
behold my new creation!
The robot race is on, Elon!
The race is on! Look at him go!
Okay, okay, enough! Enough, robot.
Enough, enough!
You can power down, robot,
thank you for your service.
But look,
embarrassing moments aside,
there is a lot to like
about Elon's companies.
SpaceX has made real achievements,
like reusable rocket technology
and making space easier
and more affordable to access.
And Tesla has pushed automakers
to take electric cars seriously
in a way that would have seemed
impossible 20 years ago.
But as one of Elon's critics points out,
there are costs to that progress
that often get overlooked.
Is Elon Musk a net positive for society?
I would argue he is.
I think the EV race is a great thing.
Space exploration is really hopeful
and just kind of inspiring.
The problem is with the word "net"
and that is, once we decide
an individual or a company
is a net good for society,
we don't want to hold him or the
company accountable for anything.
Right. Even if you think Elon
is a "net positive",
it doesn't mean that we shouldn't
talk about the harm
that he's doing along the way.
And let's start with his employees,
many of whom have called Elon
a nightmare to work for.
And not just at Twitter,
where he fired most of the staff
and ordered the rest to work in quote,
"extremely hardcore" mode.
He's been like this at every company,
as this early employee
at SpaceX will attest.
It was not unusual to have a phone call
from him at three in the morning
on your cell phone.
You better, by God, have that next
to your bed to answer.
He's just gone into yelling fits
against me,
telling me I'm stupid and
I don't know what I'm talking about,
and I've seen him do it
to other very intelligent people.
So, he'll definitely find your weakness
in your personality,
in your character,
in your spirit,
and I wouldn't say exploit it,
but you'll definitely cr*ck.
Well, that sounds unpleasant!
Not just your boss calling to abuse you,
but because there are only two reasons
someone should be calling you
at three in the morning and they are:
because, A, a loved one is having
an emergency and needs your help,
or your house is on fire, and even then,
that could've been a text.
And the damage isn't just emotional.
Workers at his factories complain
of immense pressure
and unrealistic deadlines.
A report a few years ago
on his Tesla factory in Fremont,
California found employees complaining
that "style and speed trumped safety,"
and that "workers there had been sliced
by machinery, crushed by forklifts,"
"b*rned in electrical explosions
and sprayed with molten metal."
One worker claimed that
she had been told,
Elon didn't want signs or anything
yellow like caution tape in the factory.
Which isn't good,
because caution tape is important.
It lets people know something might
be dangerous and unstable,
like a skull and crossbones
on a bottle,
or this jacket on a middle-aged man.
Tesla does deny that,
but its claims about its factories
can be hard to verify.
Even when regulators try to get involved
at Musk's companies,
they can be strongly resisted.
For example, his Nevada Gigafactory
at one point denied entry
to state OSHA inspectors for "nearly
three months". Which is ridiculous.
The word "Gigafactory" alone should
be enough to warrant
an immediate inspection.
But it's not just workers
who Musk is willing to put at risk.
Sometimes it's his own customers.
He's long been developing self-driving
car technology
and has sometimes knowingly
exaggerated its capabilities.
The two pieces of software available
are called
"autopilot and full self-driving,"
but "despite their names,
neither system can drive a car
on its own."
Yet, in this 2016 ad, it appears
to be doing just that,
amplified by the introductory text
that Elon personally asked for,
which reads,
"The car is driving itself."
But that was extremely misleading,
it was driving along
a pre-planned route.
It was only self-driving the way that
your nana self-drives herself
up and down the stairs.
And Tesla will note, they "tell drivers
that they should keep their hands
on the wheel and take
over if anything goes wrong."
And I sure hope drivers do that,
because he's been inviting them to try
out "full self-driving" in beta mode,
having drivers find the bugs
in new software,
even on complicated city streets,
and with predictable results.
Now, we're gonna make this left turn.
And I'm getting honked at.
But now it's just turned right.
We're supposed to go left.
Ogan is not a professional test driver,
nor is he a Tesla employee.
Instead, he's one of the over 50,000
customers that Tesla has allowed
to access FSD beta.
We just ran a red light.
That is pretty alarming,
especially the moment where
you see people pushing a stroller
way too close to that car.
Because even if Tesla drivers
volunteered to take part
in this high-stakes experiment,
the people around them sure didn't.
No one got a push alert on their
phone saying, "Hey, Tesla here!"
Please consent to take part
in the beta test
that is currently hurtling towards you.
Do hurry, time is a factor."
And Musk has taken a pretty blithe
attitude toward self-driving deaths.
In 2016, when concerns
were first emerging,
he told reporters that "if they wrote
stories that dissuaded people
from using autonomous
driving systems,
or regulators from approving them,
then they would be k*lling people."
Essentially, arguing that any deaths
in the present day
will be more than offset by lives
saved later.
And just this week, when
The Washington Post noted
that they'd tallied "about 40 fatal
or serious crashes
involving Tesla's driver assistance
software,"
Tesla responded by saying,
"we believe it is morally indefensible
not to make these systems available
to a wider set of consumers,
given the incontrovertible data
that shows it's saving lives
and preventing injury."
But rather than producing that data,
it promised "more detailed information
will be publicly available
in the near future."
Which, I'm sorry,
is just not data bitch behavior.
And that is coming from
TV's number one data bitch.
Anyone who collects
"incontrovertible data"
would give you a more specific date
than "the near future."
Because data b*tches, as we all
know, are also calendar b*tches.
And look, I know myself!
History is littered with titans
of business who were shitty
or broken people,
from Thomas Edison through
Henry Ford through Steve Jobs.
The difference is, by and large,
they didn't open up their brain
to let the whole world
have a constant look inside.
But Elon does, and the glimpses
we get can be terrifying.
And that brings us back to Twitter.
Musk has been a heavy user for years,
putting out classic tweets like,
"I put the art in fart",
"69 days after 4/20 again haha",
and "technically,
alcohol is a solution,"
which technically, isn't a joke.
And his biographer will tell you,
he's addicted to the app
to a genuinely problematic extent.
One day he was traveling with
a friend, Antonio Gracias,
and Musk had kept tweeting
late at night,
doing these ridiculous tweets,
sometimes very harmful ones.
And so, the friend said,
"Let me take your phone
and I'm gonna put it in the safe
here in the hotel room."
Friend punches in the code,
and he said,
"That way you can't use it
late at night."
At 3:00 in the morning,
Musk calls hotel security
to get him to open the safe,
and he starts doing tweets.
He was addicted to tweeting.
Look, I'm sure when the average
security guard is called
up to a billionaire's hotel room
at 3:00 AM,
they have a list of things to expect,
and it begins and ends
with "dead body".
So it must have been a pleasant
surprise when he wheeled
an empty garbage bin into the room
only to find Elon Musk
punching random numbers
into his hotel safe
just 'cause he thought
of "I put the art in fart",
and the whole world simply
had to know.
And look, Elon's tweets
were never that great.
Not like mine, of course, which are
banger after banger
after banger after certified banger.
I don't miss! But in recent years,
they've taken a turn toward
the nasty and conspiratorial,
getting increasingly into the realm
of right-wing trolls.
And many point to one particular
moment as the turning point here,
the pandemic lockdowns.
California's 40 million residents
are in lockdown.
At the time, the government had ordered
Musk to close his Tesla factories
in California.
He was pissed that his factories
were kind of forced to close.
Yes, ultimately, yes.
That's the thing.
He wanted them there
and he wanted them working.
He thought it was an existential crisis
if Tesla didn't succeed.
For the world, for all of us.
And then it got weird.
Free America now.
Give people their freedom back!
Hospitals in California have been
half empty this whole time.
Now give people back their freedom.
Musk told his employees that he
intended to defy orders and go to work.
CEO Elon Musk tweeted, "I will be
on the line with everyone else.
If anyone is arrested,
I ask that it only be me."
What that really drives home is just
how different Musk is
from the rest of us,
because there is "rich and detached,"
and then there's "I've asked the cops
not to arrest anyone else,
so we should be good,"
rich and detached.
And, look, let's admit,
a lot of our brains got a bit broken
during the pandemic.
I think we can all agree
that it'd be really cool
if the entirety of the pandemic chapter
in future history textbooks
simply read, "Weird time, had
to be there, we did our best."
But Elon didn't channel his anxiety
in one of the normal ways
like spraying groceries
with disinfectant,
getting really into sourdough
bread-baking,
or tracking down and purchasing
one-of-a-kind rat erotica.
You know, normal stuff that we all did.
Instead, his brain broke
in the direction of right-wingers
who were loudly opposing
the shutdowns.
And once he started siding
with them over those complaints,
he found himself sympathizing
with their broader concerns
about a "woke mind virus,"
and that they were being mocked
and shadow-banned and generally
disrespected by Twitter.
And since he was also the richest man
in the world,
he could fix all of this
by simply buying the whole thing,
which is what he then did.
And I don't have time to run through
every bad decision
that he's made at Twitter,
although, real quick, he cut
about 80% of the staff,
dissolved
the Trust and Safety Council,
blew up the verification system,
exercised the same censorship
he claimed to be against,
reactivated the accounts
of various white supremacists,
released The Twitter Files,
in which he basically mistook the emails
of various feckless left-leaning
tech weenies struggling
with the impossible job of content
moderation for a vast elite conspiracy
to silence right-wing dipshits,
changed the name to X,
put a gigantic "X" on the building
which he then took down,
and, just this week,
reversed his earlier decision
and let Alex Jones back onto the site.
A decision that's been met
with resounding praise
from "Big Loud Fucks Quarterly".
And notably, his time in charge
of Twitter has seen a rise
in unpleasant rhetoric
from Musk himself,
including boosting a transphobic
documentary saying,
"every parent should watch this,"
responding, "Interesting,"
to a tweet reading, "blacks k*ll
each other, whites k*ll themselves",
and boosting this "Office" meme
falsely implying there had been
a coverup about Pizzagate.
I didn't think it was possible, but it
genuinely makes me miss the man
who once posted
"Send me your dankest memes!"
and this picture of a turtle on wheels
with the message,
"Science has gone too far."
And while Elon will dispute that there
has been a rise in hate speech
on the platform,
or that he has pandered
to white nationalists,
you know who disagrees
with him on that?
White nationalists.
Just listen to Nick Fuentes telling
Richard Spencer
everything Elon has done
for their movement.
It's only been a year since Musk
acquired Twitter,
which is not really a long time.
And the changes didn't even begin
to roll out until less than a year ago.
And yet, the change has been dramatic,
how much the window has shifted
noticeably on issues
like white identity, which apparently
is suddenly mainstream.
It wasn't for a long time.
It seemed like Charlie Kirk said one
or two things about it last year,
and then this year,
now everyone's a white nationalist.
Now everyone's a white identitarian.
You open up one of the social platforms.
It's so hot, it's so fast.
It changes public
opinion virtually overnight,
and really in our favor.
All of that is horrifying, but the use
of the term "white identitarian,"
is just not fooling anyone.
That is what the word "r*cist" writes
on a job application
to make it sound like
it went to college.
And the fact Elon seems to be getting
increasingly radicalized
is a big problem.
Because we've put a lot of power
into his hands,
and much more than you may realize.
Remember when I said that no one
is taking the big swings that he is?
That includes the government.
And over the years, that means a lot
of things that this country relies on
have been outsourced to Musk.
Every day, Musk's companies control
more of the internet,
power grid, transportation system,
objects in orbit, the nation's security
infrastructure,
and its energy supply.
To take just one example,
SpaceX has now put
more than 4,500 Starlink satellites
into orbit,
meaning that Musk's company
now accounts for over half
of all active satellites.
And that puts the U.S. government
in a bit of a bind.
Just watch a National Security Council
spokesman try to explain
why it wouldn't be acting in response
to Elon's boosting
of that great replacement theory tweet.
There's innovation out there in the
private sector that we'd be foolish
to walk away from.
I'm not aware of any specific efforts
to address
our concerns over his rhetoric,
but that doesn't mean that we accept
or agree with
or condone in any way that antisemitic
rhetoric that he pushed.
Yeah, we're now at the point where
the government is explicitly saying,
"We've chosen to look the other way
on the antisemitism thing,"
or as it's more commonly known,
a "Daddy's Home 2".
And the problem isn't just the optics
of having someone as erratic as Elon
in charge
of half the world's satellites,
his opinions can change
the shape of world events.
When Russia invaded Ukraine,
one of their first actions
was to sever its internet access.
Now, Musk, to his credit, agreed
to provide Ukraine
access to his Starlink network,
and donated hardware,
enabling them to reach the internet
via satellite.
And they were very grateful.
Lieutenant Taras Berezovets is a
spokesman for Ukraine's m*llitary.
He told us Starlink is crucial for
commanding troops on the b*ttlefield.
SpaceX, Elon Musk.
We've been so grateful to SpaceX
and to Elon Musk.
Without Starlink, none of our
offensives would be so successful.
It's true! The Ukrainian m*llitary was
grateful to SpaceX and Elon Musk,
which is one of those headlines
that even a few years ago
would have sounded impossible,
like "Panera Bread's Lemonade
Linked to Second Death,"
and "Henry Kissinger:
Finally Dead".
And, by the way, I'm pretty sure
it's the lemonade that got him.
But as time went on,
Elon toyed with the idea
of withdrawing Starlink's service,
complaining that the cost was too high,
even as he seemed increasingly
Russia-friendly.
At one point, he said Russia should
be allowed to annex Ukrainian land,
and tweeted a proposed peace plan
that would essentially just give
Russia everything they wanted.
Perhaps most notably,
he "refused a Ukrainian request
to activate Starlink in Crimea,"
enabling them to launch
an att*ck on Russian ships,
reportedly because
a Russian official warned him
that that could lead
to a nuclear response.
And I guess that must be true. Right?
What are Russian officials gonna do?
Lie to an easily flattered CEO
to get exactly what they want?
Nah, I don't see it.
And look, Elon still insists
that he is pro-Ukraine, and, okay.
But U.S. officials are now in the
awkward position of having to defer
to him on policy.
One Pentagon spokesman even said
that he'd let a reporter interview
an official only
if Musk gave permission, saying,
"We'll talk to you
if Elon wants us to."
Which isn't great!
"You know, before I respond on behalf
of the mightiest m*llitary on Earth,
let me just run this up the chain
and make sure it's cool
with Admiral Dank Memes 420."
Elon Musk could not have humiliated
the Pentagon any more
if he had opened up his own building
next door
called "The Hexagon:
The Pentagon That Fucks".
Now, the Pentagon has since signed
a contract with Starlink
to take over certain services
and rely less on Musk's whim.
But even Elon's own biographer
has expressed unease
about just how important
he's become.
So how does Elon feel about
having this much global power?
You know, he says to me, "How
am I in the middle of this?"
But frankly, he loves it.
He loves drama.
He loves being the epic hero.
I think it is a little bit dangerous,
because he loves it too much.
Wait, he "loves drama?"
I'm really not that comfortable
with one of the most powerful people
on earth being summed
up the same way you'd describe
Andy Cohen on New Year's Eve.
Look, the fact is,
whether we like it or not,
and the answer is absolutely not,
a huge number of very important things
going forward are going to depend
on how Elon is feeling.
Which is a terrifying thing to say
about anyone,
but especially this guy.
So what can be done here?
Well, it's actually simple:
we just create a robust infrastructure
economy that can resist
easy monopolization by private firms
headed by overconfident billionaires,
and we do it about 15 years ago.
Two problems with that:
one, time machines don't exist.
And two, the only person with the
resources and ambition to build one
is the last guy that you'd want
to do that,
because he'd probably use it to go
back in time and high-five baby h*tler.
And look, I'll be honest, my feelings
about Elon changed a bit
in the writing of this piece.
I'm probably now more impressed
by what he's doing,
but more worried by the fact that
he's the one who's been doing it.
Because he cultivates an image
that he's simply too visionary,
too original to play
by other people's rules,
and he waves away the damage
that he does at the cost of innovation
and saving humanity.
But the truth is, that way of thinking
isn't remotely original.
We've seen it so many times before.
The least surprising thing on Earth
is a middle-aged billionaire CEO
with self-serving libertarian views,
increasingly r*cist politics,
and a messiah complex.
And it is long past time that
he faced the kind of accountability
that should come with that,
and not just from the echo chamber
that he bought himself online,
but from everyone whose lives
are very much affected by him.
And I know Elon might be unhappy
with this piece.
He might even permanently delete
my Twitter account,
which is fine by me.
After all, when this absolute treasure
is gone,
Elon's the one who will have
to explain why to the Earth.
And he might say he's saving
humanity, what have I ever done?
What industries have I revolutionized?
Well, I admit, nothing yet,
but may I remind you,
I've already taken the first step
toward building a robot empire.
Bow down and worship
your metal gods!
Bounce! Bounce!
And now, this.
And Now: People on TV Do Not
Understand This Holiday Dessert.
I don't think
I've ever tasted fruit cake.
Well, I did once,
and I never will again.
Well, I tried the fruit cake once
and I was like why? I don't get it.
- Have you ever had a good fruit cake?
- I've heard they exist.
That fruit cake that they would
make would last until July 4th.
It's a nuclear w*r food. I put it
in the category with Twinkies.
It can survive anything, and for that,
I do not want to eat it.
I brought a fruit cake to the dinner.
I think people do that.
I think they do. I think that's a thing.
I think they know
no one's gonna eat it.
Here's what you do with fruit cake.
You make it and then you put it
in the garbage.
- I mean, who buys that?
- I don't know, but stop it.
- What exactly is pound cake?
- Delicious.
- Really?
- Yeah. What do you mean by "really"?
Isn't that the one with the fruit gelled
inside of it?
That's a fruit cake.
No, that's trash.
Moving on. As I said, this is
our final episode of the year,
and we had a lot of fun.
We talked about everything
from dollar stores to McKinsey
to why Ron DeSantis
shouldn't be president,
which seemed at the time
like an important thing to do,
although he's now making that argument
pretty effectively himself.
We made our own episode
of "Thomas the t*nk Engine",
which meant that our staff could play
with trains for a week.
Wanda Jo came back to help me start
a timeshare exit company exit company.
We hid an entire episode
on Chuck E. Cheese inside an episode
about homeowners associations,
which you can actually still watch
at Last-Squeak-Tonight-dot-com.
I set fire to a lettuce for reasons
that I don't fully remember.
We challenged an Austin, Texas
plumbing company to create an ad
based on the movie "Magnolia"
and they f*cking delivered
on that challenge.
And we announced plans to steal the
"Steamboat Willie" Mickey Mouse
ahead of him entering public domain
next year,
which was, I admit,
a little bit legally dicey.
And speaking of which, hey, Mickey?
Mickey, did Disney ever sue us
over that?
Nope!
So, should we take that as a green light
that we can do whatever we want
with you in the future?
I don't see why the f*ck not!
Me neither,
that's good news, buddy!
And of course, we entered New
Zealand's Bird of the Century contest,
and got hundreds of thousands
of people to write
the Puteketeke
into bird history books forever.
By the way, I'm excited to say our giant
Puteketeke puppet is going
to New Zealand to be put
on display there.
We don't know exactly where yet,
but we do know that Air New Zealand
has offered to fly it for free.
So let me just apologize in advance
to all of its seatmates.
That's gonna be a rough flight
for all of you.
But this was also a weird year for us.
Because, as you may have noticed,
we were off the air for five straight
months, as for 148 days,
all 13 of our writers were on strike,
and we truly,
sincerely missed eight of them.
And while I'm happy the Writers Guild
eventually got a good contract,
I'm a little disappointed the strike
meant that we couldn't do
some of the stories
that we'd planned.
Although, I will say, some cases,
I was actually pretty grateful
that a story didn't run.
Like the one we'd planned for in May
about how the future of private undersea
exploration is the Titan submersible.
That could've dated pretty badly,
so I'm glad it didn't happen.
But there were others I really
wish that we could've aired,
like our piece on pet insurance,
or elder abuse in dentistry,
or floors, the butts of houses.
We all have floors, but most of us
think about them so little
that you didn't even realize that's not
a floor. That's a ceiling, you idiot!
I got you! I got you so good.
There were so many stories
that we couldn't do,
and while I can't recap them all,
I will try and knock out
a few as quick as I can.
There was bee theft. Beehives have
been stolen across the country.
They're valuable because
of how critical bees are in pollinating
California's almond crops.
And the fact that bees
are all but untraceable
makes bee theft a lucrative crime.
There was designer dogs,
why rich people like making golden
retrievers and poodles f*ck.
That one would have ended
with a live dog orgy on stage.
We still had the orgy,
we just didn't do the show.
Blood oranges. Spoiler alert,
they're not called that
because of their insides.
The Statue of Liberty.
She actually coughed once in 1967
and no one is talking about it.
We had a whole story on Unilever.
One company makes mayonnaise,
Q-Tips, and Klondike bars?
That's f*cked up!
Probably. Honestly, we never got
to the bottom of that one,
and now we never will.
Finally, headlights. You're not wrong,
they are actually brighter now,
for reasons including the rise
in the use of bluer LED lights
and issues with headlight aim
and alignment,
all of which makes everyone driving
at night feel at best, blind,
and, at worst, completely insane.
We planned to motivate lawmakers
to move faster to address this
this by pointing blinding floodlights
at congressional offices,
but we ran out of time and money
and also,
legal flagged that move
as "terrorism".
Sadly, none of those stories
will see the light of day.
If you're thinking, "couldn't you just
do them next season?" No, we can't.
We have a tradition of shredding all
our scripts at the end of every year
and starting over fresh.
Our process is our process.
But with that, that's it,
all that's left to do at the end
of this, our 10th season,
is to say goodbye to our giant puppet.
Safe travels, my friend!
Save travels to you.
We will miss you,
but you're going where you belong.
And remember, you will always be
New Zealand's Bird of the Century,
whether they like it or not.
But that is it!
Thank you so much to everyone
for watching this year!
Thank you to our staff for working
so hard. We'll be back next February,
and we'll see you then. Good night!
Fly away! Puteketeke!
10x21 - Elon Musk
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American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver.
American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver.