Elon Musk and the “Can-Do” Optimism of the Expanding Trump Coalition

Tucker Carlson’s Oct 7 interview of Elon Musk on “X,” casts light on the growing coalition of extremely talented former Democrats now backing Donald Trump. Now we see that it is an alliance of builders—men and women who build and problem solve without regard to the opinions of the expert and bureaucratic class who opine endlessly without regard to the physical laws of the universe.

As that coalition has broadened from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, to Elon Musk, Silicon Valley titan David Sacks and many others—it has come to resemble the New Deal coalition of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt with Republicans such as Sen. George Norris, Secretary Harold L. Ickes, and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Together they rescued us from the hopelessness of the Great Depression, which caused most of Europe to go fascist. So it is today.

Tucker’s interview will live in history, and it deserves to be watched.  Here are my  quick notes as to its critical points:

Musk has thrown his lot totally in with Trump. As he said, “I’m all in.” Tucker responded ironically, “If he loses, it’ll be hard for you to pretend you didn’t support him.” To which Musk replied, laughing: “If he loses, I’m f***ed. How long do you think my prison sentence will be? Will I get to see my children?”

The writer David Samuels, in Tablet, has painted the picture of what it means politically:

“Very few Americans, regardless of race, gender or other identity-politics identifiers, want to live in a country where Elon Musk, the world’s single most effective and admired living innovator and builder, is forced to spend his life in a courtroom being prosecuted by Jack Smith or Fani Willis on trumped-up charges, which is how the Democratic Party has come to operate.”

Then why are you doing it? “Why are you taking the risk?” Tucker asked. Musk said he wants our country to remain a democracy. If Harris wins, this will be our last real election. Biden-Harris are shipping illegal immigrants into swing states in large numbers, such that soon there will be no swing states, only blue states. General elections will have no longer have any meaning—they will only ratify the results of Democratic primaries, as in California today. And free speech on social media, particularly Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) with its 600 million subscribers, will be ended.

Musk debunked the idea that his companies have grown thanks to government largesse, by showing that he has offered better products at lower prices. At a time when the US could only reach the International Space Station (ISS) on Russian rockets, Boeing and SpaceX were both awarded contracts to bring supplies and astronauts to the ISS—but the dollar-amount of Boeing’s contract was nearly double that of SpaceX. Since then, SpaceX has fulfilled its contract to launch and return astronauts eight times, while Boeing was able to bring them up only once—but not to return them to Earth. And so, as President Trump noted in Butler, today SpaceX alone launches over 90% of the entire world’s launches to orbit.

The World Needs More People

Musk refuted the anti-humanism of Paul Ehrlich and others who say the Earth is overpopulated—it is actually underpopulated. Europe’s biggest problem is that its fertility rate is half the replacement rate. It faces societal collapse as a result. He notes that efforts to reverse this have been unsuccessful. Musk went on to examine the problem and solutions from the viewpoint of the potential mother. I would add that when US government policy begins to reflect his “can-do” optimism, pro-natalist policies will have more effect.

Musk discussed Trump’s offer that he head what Musk calls “DOGE”—a Department of Government Efficiency. A vast proliferation of redundant, excessive regulations is making it effectively illegal to build anything in the US (or the European Union). Example: after 18 years and $11 billion, the California High-Speed Rail project has built a 1700-foot route with no rails on it. Trump and Musk propose to cut back unnecessary regulations and departments.

There was an extensive discussion of so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI), which cast light on the deep, bitter divisions inside Silicon Valley. Tucker showed an acute awareness on this issue. Personally, I agree with the late Lyndon LaRouche that there is actually no such thing as artificial intelligence—there is only human intelligence. I believe the vast sums pouring into it will soon prove to have been a gigantic bubble, as it is realized that it is not the holy grail of human knowledge. It cannot create, something only the human mind can do, discovering new ideas and the true principles and laws of the universe.

Musk seems to see it somewhat differently. It seems like he imagines the mind to be something of a brain constructed like a supercomputer processor. His concern, which is very real, is that the AI databank is presently being malevolently programmed to reproduce wokeness and without a kill switch to prevent it from being used for harm. He wants to program it to be truth seeking and to only benefit humans. As LaRouche emphasized, the use of machines to automate mechanical and repetitive process is useful and can free up humans from such types of labor. But the attempt to use machines to control human behavior is monstrously evil. Hence society must always be committed to fostering human creativity. Machines are only the servants.

In his piece in Tablet, David Samuels highlights the alliance of Trump and Musk as a grand alliance potentially representing the best of America’s past (rescuing its true history from the revisionists) and the bridge to its future which Musk and his young audience of explorers represent. If we set our sights on colonizing the Moon and using that base to colonize Mars, we will discover much about God’s laws, the universe, and life itself. If we can build beautiful cities on Mars, we can build them anywhere on earth and tame our environment so that every place on earth can enjoy full prosperity. That’s how builders and producers think; a mindset largely unknown in Washington, D.C., New York, London, Brussels, and similar places.