Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a knack for saying the things many Americans are thinking, wishing they had the same platform the billionaire does to say it.
The world’s richest man unloaded on President Joe Biden in a podcast interview Monday, seeing the same vacant stare that millions of Americans see in the commander in chief. Musk was critical of the near-record high inflation, pointing to Venezuela as a warning that things will get worse if the U.S. government continues printing money
As for Biden, Musk suggested a commonly held view that the president’s handlers are really running the country.
“The real president is whoever controls the teleprompter,” he said. “The path to power is the path to the teleprompter.”
“I do feel like if somebody were to accidentally lean on the teleprompter, it’s going to be like Anchorman,” Musk added, this being referencing the 2004 film in which anchor Ron Burgundy, played by actor Will Ferrell, reads whatever comes across the teleprompter — to his own detriment.
The full podcast can be viewed below:
“This administration doesn’t seem to get a lot done,” Musk said. “The Trump administration, leaving Trump aside, there were a lot of people in the administration who were effective at getting things done.”
Musk said the Democratic Party is “overly controlled by the unions and by the trial lawyers, particularly the class action lawyers,” arguing that goes against “the interests of the people.” Not that the Republican Party escaped unscathed, as Musk noted that the GOP is often misguided by “corporate evil and religious zealotry.” He also noted that he “might not have ever voted for a Republican.”
“In the case of Biden, he is simply too much captured by the unions, which was not the case with Obama,” Musk said, describing Obama as “quite reasonable” — in a recent tweet, Musk said he “strongly supported Obama for President, but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by extremists.”
The billionaire suggested Biden’s American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief stimulus bill was largely responsible for the near-40-year-high inflation seen in April.
“I mean, the obvious reason for inflation is that the government printed a zillion amount of more money than it had, obviously,” Musk said.
“So it’s like the government can’t just issue checks far in excess of revenue without there being inflation, you know, velocity of money held constant,” he noted. “If the federal government writes checks, they never bounce. So that is effectively creation of more dollars. And if there are more dollars created, then the increase in the goods and services across the economy, then you have inflation, again, velocity of money held constant.”
The concept is not “super complicated,” Musk stressed.
“If the government could just issue massive amounts of money and deficits didn’t matter, then, well, why don’t we just make the deficit 100 times bigger? The answer is, you can’t because it will basically turn the dollar into something that is worthless,” he said.
“Various countries have tried this experiment multiple times,” Musk pointed out. “Have you seen Venezuela? Like the poor, poor people of Venezuela are, you know, have been just run roughshod by their government.”
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Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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