Eric Lipton
Appearances
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
The thing that is most striking to me is just the number of places that he, through either contracts or regulatory investigations, that they are looking at him at the same time as he now has the power over them. It's the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Interior.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the Employment, you know, EEOC, NLRB, the FEC, the SEC. I mean, there are so many acronyms, so many places that either regulating him or paying him at the same time as he has this immense power to help decide what their regulatory powers and budgets are.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
It's just how does one single person do all those things without having a massive conflict of interest?
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
The Congress is controlled by Republicans, so therefore the Democrats who might be more critical of him don't have subpoena power, and they don't really therefore have significant investigative powers. And the Department of Justice is controlled by someone who's completely loyal to Trump.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
If you look at the first Trump administration and then went into Biden, it's really striking the extent of the pendulum swing. I mean, so many of the regulatory rollbacks that Trump implemented were then rolled back by Biden. The thing that really is going to make determine the course of history is what the courts decide now.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Because if the courts side with Trump and realign the constitutional powers in a way that Russell Vaught and others in the Trump administration believe, then that really is going to create, it's not going to be a pendulum swing anymore. It's going to be a fundamental change in the distribution of power in the United States.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And all of these lawsuits, while they're annoying to the Trump administration and to Elon Musk, that's where the test is really going to come. And who knows how the court is going to decide. You know, it's really sort of hard to predict. But what I can say is that that's the thing that really is going to determine how consequential all of this is.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Because many of these things can be rolled back in whatever the next Democratic administration is. But if the courts decide that the executive branch really has these broad powers to decide the finances and the operations of federal agencies are, that's huge. And it will be tested at some point in the next four years.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
So there really is not much of an investigative capacity or an investigative desire beyond reporters that are attempting to drill into this without subpoena power.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
That's right. I mean, really, there's never been anything quite like Elon Musk. This is a guy whose companies just last year in 2024 received $3.8 billion worth of federal government contracts from And in the last five years, $13 billion worth of contracts. He has investigations pending of his various corporate entities in the dozens.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And it's just sort of an acronym soup of federal agencies that either have pending investigations, lawsuits. subpoenaing him, all kinds of things that are active and that are in play and therefore vulnerable to being shut down.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Not only therefore does he have billions of dollars at stake financially, but he has dozens of investigations targeting him at the same time as he has this immense power reaching across really the whole breadth of the federal government. There really has never been a conflict so broad in probably in American history.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Well, I mean, again, President Trump just neutered all 17 of the inspectors general who really had the greatest capacity to investigate potential waste, fraud, and abuse in his contracts.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And we know that multiple IGs had pending investigations, including the Department of Defense, which was examining whether or not he had violated the terms of having a top secret security clearance because he wasn't properly reporting engagements he had with foreign government figures previously. As far as we understand, there are still questions being asked relative to that inquiry.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
But the individual who oversees that office has been replaced. And therefore, it could be a dead end, even if staff is still working on it. So the short answer is, it's unlikely that he will be the subject of very close scrutiny, just like it's unlike President Trump will be the subject of close scrutiny, because there really is no one left outside of journalists to be asking hard questions.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Well, for example, during the takeover of Twitter and its transformation into X, there were employees who felt that they were being improperly treated. They were dismissed. They were being subject to internal investigations. And they felt as if they had been unfairly treated. And they filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
But what Trump then did in the last few weeks was to eliminate the quorum at the National Labor Relations Board by firing several of the commissioners. And so therefore, the commission can no longer act on recommendations from the staff to file a lawsuit against the target of any investigation or to agree to a settlement if there were to be a settlement proposed.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
So he's effectively frozen the National Labor Relations Board by removing the majority of its board.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Yeah, and Musk is taking a very similar approach to that which he took at Twitter and applying it to the federal government, which is to slash it radically and rapidly without much consideration for the consequences, both for the services that it provides and for the people that work there.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
You know, the Democrats in Congress can write letters asking for reviews, and they can have protests and press conferences, but that's about the limit of their power as well. They don't have subpoena power. And they cannot have bipartisan investigations into really anything at this point.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
I mean, the courts, as we've seen, are really the one place. And the state attorneys general, the Democrats, have filed litigation. And there are various nonprofit groups and employee groups and labor unions that have filed litigation. And that has actually made a significant difference so far.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
I think to some extent the strategy on the part of the Trump administration is just to blow through those district court rulings.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
to continue to operate the way that they are, to sometimes even potentially ignore the court orders and just wait for it to get the Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court to try to prove their argument, which is that the executive power is supreme and that they can largely do what they want. You know, Trump and Musk both have a history of basically doing what they want.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And despite inquiries or at times even, you know, court orders.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
I mean, they're mostly small bore things that people who bought cars were having disputes with the company over loans or the terms of financing or the cars were being repossessed because of potentially unpaid debts. That's not that unusual for a big company to have complaints like that. You can just go do a query on the CFPB's website. If it still is up when you do the query.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
He called for, he said the CFPB, you know, RIP. Now, whether or not he actually shut it down, he clearly supported it. He was mocking it and, you know, said RIP, rest in peace for the agency. Now, I can't tell you that he's the one that decided or that he's the one that executed on that shutdown, but he clearly supported it and played a role.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
In the fall of 2023, there was a launch of a 10-ton satellite into geosynchronous orbit, which is like 22,000 miles out there. And it's the largest satellite ever launched in terms of its mass to that orbit. And it's a pretty big deal. It was there for a satellite communications company. And that launch went off without really much public notice.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are launching so frequently now, we don't even almost pay attention to them. But what was happening behind the scenes was that even before that, as the countdown was underway, the FAA concluded that SpaceX did not have proper authorization for a new fueling system that they had built there at the Space Launch Facility in Florida.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And they were challenging the continuation of the launch, but the launch went ahead anyway. And so after it was over, the FAA said that was a safety violation and we're going to fine you hundreds of thousands of dollars. And Elon Musk was very angry at that. He was like, what do you think you're doing? You're interfering in our operations. There was no safety threat.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And the FAA is getting in our way. And he called for the firing of the FAA administrator, and he said, I'm going to sue the FAA. And then he went so far as to say, you know, they're preventing our efforts to get humans to Mars and, you know, our grand ambitions.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Yeah, it's trivial. I think the biggest thing that really frustrates him about the FAA is the amount of time it takes to get clearances to do new launches, particularly for the Starship, which is his newest rocket, the largest rocket that humans have ever built. And he is extremely frustrated at how long it takes to get clearance to do additional test flights of the Starship.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And he wants the FAA to get out of the way. He thinks that the FAA is slowing his effort to get humans to Mars.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And I mean, I think that that fine is really trivial and that that's just a kind of a small, you know, piddling thing that is a symptom of his bigger annoyance with the agency and also with the Department of Interior, which is looking at the environmental harm that the launches are causing in South Texas and the destruction of the habitat of threatened bird species, for example, which I've witnessed myself personally.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
I was out there for a launch and then walked the grounds with a wildlife biologist from the Fish and Wildlife, and we saw the destroyed nest eggs from the blast of the Starship, which basically threw gravel across a state park towards Federal Wildlife Refuge. So that damage is occurring, and the fact that people are even looking at that and questioning it really frustrates Elon Musk.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether or not Musk failed to honor a requirement to disclose at the moment that he obtained 5% of Twitter, he needed to make a public filing. And the reason you do that is that you need to share with other investors if you are a significant owner of any particular corporation. And that's relevant material information about the company.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
But instead of notifying the SEC and making that public disclosure, he continued to buy thousands and thousands of additional shares. And so effectively, he was able to buy those shares at a significantly discounted price, saving approximately $150 million as he accumulated shares of Twitter before he ultimately took over the whole company.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
So they filed a lawsuit saying you failed to honor the federal law that requires you to disclose once you exceed 5%. And Musk and his lawyers were like, this is a technicality. You're just being annoying. This is being done for political purposes to try to punish us when this is a minor violation that you shouldn't even be going after us about.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And now the two of the members of the SEC that voted to go ahead with that litigation are now gone. Now, in this case, it was not an action by Trump. This was Gary Gensler, the chairman, who was a Democrat who resigned and a second Democrat who, for personal reasons, left the agency. But the net result is that the Republicans now have a majority on the SEC.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And so the likely outcome is that this will be settled at a very modest penalty or maybe even withdrawn as litigation.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
Other investors would have likely bought Twitter stock at that point. That would have been a sign that Musk had the intention of potentially buying the company out. If you're going to accumulate that much stock, then that would have led other people to buy in thinking, oh, well, I better buy it now because Musk is going to be willing to pay a higher price to take the whole thing over.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And so he saved $150 million by getting the stock at a cheaper price during the period between when he should have filed a disclosure and when he actually did.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
In the fall, we spent a month looking at all of Musk's operations with the federal government, all of his contracts, all the investigations. We had a database that was built and that allowed us to quickly know what the pending lawsuits, investigations, and contracts were.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
So it was actually didn't take nearly as much time now that we knew where all the matters were to go back and look and see, okay, several members of the National Labor Relations Board have been fired and no longer has a quorum or two members of the SEC have left or the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission has just been fired or the head of the Office of Government Ethics has been removed.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And we were able to cross-reference all of these actions that Trump has taken and look at the investigations that we knew about and see that these have been disrupted. We did not find evidence so far that Musk reached in himself and determined these outcomes. But what we were able to establish is that he has clearly benefited from all of the disruption that has occurred.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
That's the somewhat startling thing to me as a reporter at this moment is that there's really no one else beyond us, the team that's working on it from the New York Times and other journalists. Because just in the last few days, Trump fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics. He's removed the inspectors general across the government, at least 17 of them.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
I mean, I think that this is going to be significant depending on whether or not it's not completely overturned by federal courts. But I think that this is going to be one of the bigger realignments in modern decades of the scale and reach of the federal government if they are able to play this out as they hope.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And I don't, you know, do I really believe that Musk is doing this to try to influence how his companies are treated? No, I don't. I think that he does think that the government has, you know, there's too much federal regulatory overreach, that there's inefficiencies.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
I mean, this is a guy who has the reason that he is so massively successful in building SpaceX is he built the most efficient spacecraft. commercial space company in the history of the space industry. And the cost of getting to orbit has radically reduced because of his efficiencies. He's a master at reducing the cost of assembly line operations and building rockets that get into orbit.
Fresh Air
How Did Elon Musk Become So Powerful In The Trump Administration?
And he's bringing that same approach to the federal government, and he's really disrupting it. But in the process of that, the disruption is benefiting his own companies, and that is a conflict of interest.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Thanks for having me.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
What we did was we sort of examined the breadth of Elon Musk operations across the federal government. And there are, you know, there are so many pending investigations, lawsuits, inquiries. And we looked at how many of them had been disrupted. And we were quite surprised at how many cases we saw where You know, we don't know.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
We never saw any evidence of Musk explicitly reaching in and, you know, using his cloud or powers to stop any particular investigation. But what we saw was that it again and again. Agencies that are targeting his companies have now had significant disruptions. The inspector generals, the quorums are gone. They can't, therefore, process any potential new lawsuits or settlements.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And, you know, it just shows you how never before have we had a situation where someone has basically $13 billion worth of federal contracts over the last five years, $3.8 billion just in 2024, and at the same time has dozens of ongoing investigations, that that same person would be given such incredible clout over the federal government. And that is a conflict of interest.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And now we're seeing the implications of that, where there are more than dozens of investigations that have been potentially disrupted because of the broad disruption that's happening in the federal government. And that's something that we really felt we needed to drill down on and understand and identify as many cases as possible where these disruptions have occurred.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And that's what we published in today's paper.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
I've been a reporter for three decades, more than three decades. I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen such a blatant conflict of interest. He is one of the largest contractors for the federal government. Again, $15 billion in contracts just in the last decade.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And the notion that an individual who could be running or founding or operating so many companies that have so many contracts with the federal government, and at the same time, deciding what the budgets of the federal agency should be or what regulatory powers they should have, and even what investigative and enforcement powers they should have,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And I mean, the thing is that even before the election, Musk was very clear that he had intense frustration with the Federal Aviation Administration, with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He wanted the FAA administrator fired. He called the SEC political. And, you know, he was very pointed in the Department of Interior.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
He was very frustrated with he blamed all of these agencies for, you know, we're never going to get humans to Mars at this pace. And it was very clear that he wanted to have the ability to to to, you know, to clash with these regulators and to rein them in. And now he has that power. And now these same agencies are having their powers curtail.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Now, again, we don't have evidence that he has directly reached in, but there is a correlation that that needed to be called out. And we've now called it out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Thank you.