How Elon Musk is Reshaping Politics | USAEMALL.com

He’s one of the most powerful and polarizing figures in American politics, wielding influence over media, technology and every corner of the federal government. “Yes!” In just a few short weeks since the inauguration, Elon Musk has taken a sledgehammer to the federal workforce and injected his companies into the center of the White House. He’s pushed legal boundaries and become one of the biggest donors in Republican politics, pouring his money into races across the country. And now his influence may be extending to one of the most influential and consequential departments in Washington, the Pentagon. The Musk effect is everywhere. But what does it mean? And what’s in it for Donald Trump? We’re going to discuss all of this today on our political roundtable. “So welcome, everybody — Zolan, Jess, Teddy. So we are just about 60 days into this Trump administration, which means we are just about 60 days into one of the most extraordinary governing partnerships, I think, the country has ever seen. I am, of course, talking about Elon Musk. This was quite a week in the annals of Elon Musk. He got a slap back from a court saying that his shuttering of U.S.A.I.D. violated the Constitution. But he’s also pouring money into all different levels of Republican politics. He’s calling for federal judges to be impeached. We’re going to talk about all of it. Zolan, I am going to start with you. You are one of our ace, very, very busy, White House reporters. Well, we’re very grateful to have you. Musk is a White House adviser. He’s one of the Republican Party’s biggest donors. He’s heading up one of Trump’s most prominent initiatives. I had our audience people pull this, which may be one part horrifying, one part gratifying to you. We’ve run 700 headlines about Musk since the inauguration.” “About, like, 500 of them Teddy does.” “7,000 headlines, right?” “7,000 of them, right? I think you’ve done some, too. But there are plenty of signs he’s ruffled feathers within the White House, outside of the White House. How much power does he really have right now? What is the dynamic?” “An enormous amount of power, right? I mean, yes, it’s — the title of adviser is accurate. But I — this is not a normal situation between a president and an adviser or a staffer in the White House. You have the world’s richest man side by side with the president of the United States. And to this point, based — when I talked to White House officials, when I talk to Republicans and allies of the president, there’s a through line here. The president and the White House view Elon Musk almost as an effective means to the end. This is somebody who is helping driving his progress on some of the — on some of his primary goals. That goes back to the campaign. You have a record amount of donations in the presidential campaign towards Trump. Trump made clear that he wanted to upend federal bureaucracy. Look at the agency that Elon Musk is currently leading in that effort. You have, pretty much, Trump trying to consolidate power in the executive branch at this time. That lawsuit that you mentioned — yes, it blocked Elon Musk when it came to U.S.A.I.D. I also thought it was interesting in the lead of our story that court order basically said that in Elon’s pursuit of stripping down U.S.A.I.D., they had robbed authority from Congress. Trump is basically, in a way, bringing all this power in the executive branch with the help of Elon Musk. There’s been some things that have frustrated some officials and ruffled feathers. But at this point — and I do still think the president likes having the world’s richest man by his side, even if he’s standing over his cabinet, not dressed in a suit, seemingly with a growing amount of influence here.” “But this is part of what I don’t get. Trump is a guy who we know loves putting his name on things. He loves putting his name on buildings, on stimulus checks. He loves getting credit for accomplishing things. And Musk is accomplishing things. Whether people like it or not, he is. So why do you all think Trump is allowing this — the world’s richest man to, at some point, almost appear to overshine him, even in the Oval Office?” “Trump loves a convert. When you think about the people who are around him right now — JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Elon Musk — these are all people who have, at one time, been pretty serious critics of Trump and have now come around into the fold. In some ways, it’s a way of really displaying his power. And I think another piece of it, and I bet Teddy can speak to this, as well, is that Trump was deeply flattered that Elon Musk wanted to come and work with him, wanted to be part of his government. And I think he’s deeply flattered that he’s sticking with him. And so because of that — Zolan talked about how he’s a means to an end for doing these cuts. But Trump has, by the same token, I think, really become one of Musk’s biggest defenders.” “I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people. And I just want people to know that you can’t be penalized for being a patriot. And he’s a great patriot.” “I also wonder if there’s a heat shield element. When you talk to Democrats, they see Musk as — I have Democrats — top Democrats are so eager to talk to me about Musk. If I mention that’s what I want to talk about, everybody’s calling back. So I wonder if there’s a little bit of a political heat shield going on, where the president sees Musk as someone that can take some of the political incoming and, if necessary, he can sever the relationship and have Musk take the political heat. But that brings me to my next question about this really fascinating relationship for you, Teddy —” “Sure.” “— which is, why is — what does Musk get out of this? He’s losing what? He lost something like $120 billion since the administration began. There’s Tesla riots. One of my favorite headlines was that the Vancouver Auto Show yesterday said, No, we’re not showing Teslas because it’s too politically incendiary. This has not been great for his business interests — or has it? And what does he get out of this whole thing?” “I think he’s been consistently very driven by relevance. And he is more relevant than ever. Ten years ago, when I was graduating college, we considered inviting Elon Musk —” “Is that a little age — are you doing an age flex?” “Last year, when I graduated college, we considered inviting Elon Musk to be our commencement speaker. And we decided against it because we thought not enough people knew who he was.” “Really?” “Yeah, 2014.” “Wow.” “And now, that’s obviously preposterous. But he’s inescapable in the culture. If you thought he was inescapable in the culture two years ago, when he bought Twitter, I think Musk is loving the fact that we’re talking about him right now. And he is everywhere. And that, I think, is what drives him — is his ego and the fact that he has us kind of enraptured. And I think Elon Musk, based on people I talk to, is just plainly having fun — he is, obviously, he’s enjoying the power. He doesn’t have to go on ‘Hannity,’ like he did the other night. He is having an experience that he can write home about. But he also, I get the sense, is reveling in the attention he is getting offline.” “The relevance is across the globe, too. It’s not just in Washington. We’ve seen him weigh into these different elections in Europe and what have you. And I did mention that, from the reporting, Trump still likes this dynamic. But I do think we’ve also had signs that that doesn’t mean that all of his cabinet officials do as well. And there was a cabinet meeting where Elon Musk was pressing Marco Rubio on the progress here and some of these layoffs that we’ve seen and trying to trim down the federal bureaucracy. And the tensions definitely came to the surface there. And that is something I don’t think Trump likes, the appearance that someone from the outside is now — honestly, or that any tension with somebody from the outside would result in any negative headlines about the administration.” “So Musk and DOGE have caused all kinds of reverberations in Washington and, really, around the globe. But this isn’t a total surprise. There was a case that was built for this work during the campaign. And there’s voters who wanted this. What is the case that DOGE is making and Musk is making for their own work?” “Trump — when he was campaigning, he did not specifically say, I am going to put Elon Musk in charge of this initiative. He’ll be a special adviser, et cetera. He never said that exactly. But he did campaign against the idea of the deep state. He did campaign on the idea of shrinking the federal government. He never exactly said how he would do that. And we’re seeing that now. But I think he hit on something that is a belief that is shared somewhat widely among American voters. And that is that the government spends too much money.” “It’s so interesting. In the polling, when you ask people about DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, it’s popular. When you ask people about Elon Musk’s DOGE, it’s not popular. So it is interesting how much coupling the initiative with his persona will cost it popularity. But I do think you’re right. People generally don’t like government. But they also generally don’t always understand what it is government is doing for them.” “Right, right. Absolutely. And I think on the specifics, too, the more specific you get when you talk about cuts, oftentimes the less popular they become. And this is a long-held Republican belief, that the government is bloated and —” “Spends too much.” “— spends too much. And it’s something that certainly Trump talks about, even as he has himself grown government spending and grown the deficit. There’s a little bit of irony there. But it’s something that he certainly wants less regulation, more efficiency, all the standard Republican Party.” “All things, to your point, that he also forecasted during the campaign, too, and should have been expected, in a way. I think it’s true that part of the message, and one that many voters and his supporters probably agree with, is that the federal bureaucracy does need to change, that it could be cut down, that it is too bureaucratic. I do think it’s also true, and two things can be true at the same time, that this effort to upend, really, the federal bureaucracy and — is also about — it’s also helping Trump achieve a goal of ridding the federal government of dissent. The Trump administration — President Trump feels that his first-term agenda, in many cases, hit roadblocks because career officials who he would call part of the deep state, but federal employees who felt they were looking at the law, stopped his agenda at times and slow-rolled it. And in this case, now you have somebody who is, many in the White House would say, effectively trimming down government. What comes with that is also a lot of those career officials that you felt stopped your agenda are now getting put on leave.” “This great little fact that someone slipped Jess and I from internal Democratic polling when we did the story about politics and Musk — what was that — I don’t know. What is time?” “A couple weeks ago.” “Two weeks ago — is that his name identification is 10 points higher than JD Vance, the vice president. It’s unbelievable. So more people —” “7,000 headlines help.” “I know. Your 7,000 headlines have probably helped. But I also — I was talking to a Democrat this week who’s known Musk for quite a while tangentially. And this person was arguing to me that there’s also a philosophical thing going on here for him. It’s not just relevance. But he has this larger view of how bureaucracy has hampered what he sees as innovation and getting humanity to Mars and all these things. And I was wondering — I know you’ve thought about this a little bit, Jess — if you think there’s any truth to that. Is there a larger vision here, or is it just wanting to be Teddy’s commencement speaker?” “Someday.” “Unfortunately, it already happened.” “I see it as a mix of things. He has beliefs about technology that are pretty unusual, pretty different. And those have gotten him into some hot water with other allies of Trump. His Neuralink company — they are implanting chips in people’s brains. He’s talked about how he thinks that that’s going to be a key piece of helping humanity keep up with A.I. This is the kind of thing that some people around Trump, including Steve Bannon, really don’t like, his transhumanism. It’s caused big tensions. So there’s a piece of his belief system that I do think makes people around him, around Trump, in the world of Washington Republicans uncomfortable. It’s really new. It’s really different. And they don’t quite know what to make of it. He talks at length about the deficit, about government waste, about saying — he describes his project in cutting government waste as being existential. One thing he does not bring up when he talks about that is the billions of dollars that have flowed to his companies.” “Yes.” “And when we talk about his business interests, yes, we are seeing Tesla’s stock fall. We are seeing Tesla’s sales fall. We’re seeing that company hit some rough waters. But others of his companies do really well with government contracts. And I think even when we think about electric vehicles, it’s important to remember that as much as Tesla might be suffering right now, his competitors in that space, those other electric car companies — they stand to lose more from tariffs. They stand to lose more from subsidies. So his competitors stand to lose a lot from this administration, even if Tesla is hitting bumpy waters.” “I’m glad you brought that up because the contracts are a piece of this. And some of those 7,000 headlines have been about the various contracts that his companies have gained or stand to gain. What do we know about that? I don’t know that we can quantify it. But how beneficial has this administration, the early days of this administration, been for Elon Musk‘s business interests?” “We can all take a stab at this. To some extent, it’s hard to know because we’re just starting out here. It’s mid-March. But there’s also — there’s been tons of investigations that have been coming from the alphabet soup of federal agencies into Tesla, into SpaceX, into X for a while now. And the status of all those investigations is, obviously, under — is not clear. Also, several of the people that have been leading those investigations have since lost their jobs. So you can do one plus one there. And on the contracts point, yes, SpaceX and Tesla would have gotten federal contracts under a President Harris, got contracts under Biden and Obama, Democrats.” “And actually, it was Obama who helped kick off the whole electric car business for Musk.” “Right. Sure. What’s interesting to me, though, is also how Musk seems to try to capitalize not just on the direct economic impact of Trump being in office, but also indirectly, Twitter, or now X, is, at least according to their latest financials — seems to be approaching a valuation that they enjoyed when Musk bought the company in 2022, in part because there’s a lot of pressure from corporate America to get on board with Elon Musk. And if you’re an advertiser who wants to appeal to a conservative audience, or at least have the perception in Trump world that you are not woke and don’t retract our funding for whatever, Elon Musk is an avenue and Elon Musk companies are an avenue to getting in good with the Trump administration. So there’s not only the direct economic benefits of here’s an investigation we’re going to close or here’s a subsidy we’re going to offer you, there’s also just getting in good with the first buddy that Elon is taking advantage of.” “It bears repeating, too, again, that the agencies that had investigations underway into these companies — many of them have been impacted by these DOGE cuts. There is a transparency issue here, too. The administration has given Elon Musk this special designation in a way, which, in layman’s terms, means that we don’t have all of his financial disclosure forms at this point as well. That’s also an issue, particularly when we’re talking about somebody that oversees these companies that have direct business with the administration that he’s currently gutting. So we actually — it’s — we don’t know, is the answer. We don’t know.” “We don’t know all the answers.” “We can’t figure out how much money this is making for him. We can’t do the calculation, the — how much he’s losing versus how much he’s making because there’s no disclosure.” “That’s right. That’s right. That’s right, which makes some of the reporting, the ongoing reporting, challenging, but even more important.” “But we do know that he’s getting the kind of publicity that — the saying is you couldn’t pay for. You have the president selling your cars on the White House lawn. But in fact, he may be paying for it because he is now the biggest donors to the Republican politics. And you had a couple of stories this week, and I know you’re working on other ones, about where that money is going. And I was wondering if you could talk about a little — that, and also why this interest. He was never a huge political donor before until fairly recently. So why this interest now?” “He’s pretty impulsive. That’s an understatement. And so this is not somebody who, I think, is really operating like Trump, with a long-term strategic view. I think he thinks he’s giving $100 million, as we reported, to Trump-aligned political organizations not because he’s thinking about the 2026 midterms or 2028 presidential election, but just because it helps him in that particular moment, where it helps him maybe after the cabinet meeting that Zolan mentioned. And he’s donating money right now, as we reported, to Republicans who are supporting his push for impeachment of federal judges not because he thinks that Lauren Boebert needs to win in 2026 or because it’s really that helpful down the line, but because he wants to send a message right now that this is an important push for me, and I’ll reward you financially. So he’s going based on moment-to-moment vibes. And lots of people do that.” “This is fascinating, though, because I said before the end — of the means to an end thing. And we talked about the agenda and the federal bureaucracy. What you’re talking about, donating to Republicans that are also threatening impeachment against a federal judge, by the way, that just issued a temporary block on these deportation flights that the Trump administration thinks is pivotal to its immigration agenda — now you’re talking about also helping Trump in terms of pressuring the judicial branch, as well, not just a matter of policies, not just federal bureaucracy, but also, more broadly, again, pressuring the judicial branch that, at this point, is trying to establish a guardrail on this administration and its executive power.” “I think for those of us who cover politics, which is basically everyone at this table, this is beyond the bounds of — we normally think of as political activity. Typically, it’s Democrats versus Republicans, elections, Congress, the White House. It is not the judicial branch. And that’s a really important point. It’s also interesting to me how Republicans are responding to all of this. And I was struck by — Murkowski commented this week that she thinks her fellow Republicans are afraid.” “And I’m not going to compromise my own integrity by hiding from my words when they — when I feel they need to be spoken. It may be that Elon Musk has decided he’s going to take the next billion dollars that he makes off of Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowski. And you know what? That may happen.” “You were on Capitol Hill a week or two ago, talking to Republicans. And they did offer some criticism. It was tempered. It was criticism that you would never even register as criticism from Republicans previously — now sounds like a bomb exploding in this era of fealty to the president in that party. But how do you think the Republicans are responding to Musk, both publicly and privately? And I suspect they’re different.” “They are. They are. And it’s a really interesting situation. I was on Capitol Hill a couple of weeks ago, when Musk was going to a Senate luncheon with Republicans. And in a way, this was an amusing situation. You think about this guy who — he wants to colonize Mars. He is the richest man in the world. And he is stuck at a Senate luncheon in a little room on Capitol Hill for two hours while Senate Republicans ask him question after question after question. And it’s moments like that that make me wonder if he might be learning a little bit about how being in government is really not that glamorous and you have to do a little bit of constituent management the same way that a Republican lawmaker has to. Musk was doing that. And so as lawmakers, these lunches are private. They do not allow us in. They certainly do not invite us in. And so we stand there, also in a very glamorous way, outside of the door, just waiting for people to start coming out and ask them.” “And then we rush them.” “What happened in there? And I was with colleagues on Capitol Hill. We positioned ourselves in different places so Robert Jemison could grab somebody and Catie Edmondson could grab someone else and I could be down by the elevator, get any stragglers. And so, anyway, what we started to hear from lawmakers that day was an undertone of discomfort. They were asking him questions like, ‘How do we communicate what you guys are doing? Help us help you.’” “Basically, sell this to our voters?” “Yes.” “Help us sell this.” “Help us sell this to our voters. And they wanted to know, if we have a problem, how do we contact DOGE? And I think in a sign that Musk realized he needed to do a little more to make Republicans happy, he handed out his phone number like he was a local lawmaker running for office, trying to pick up votes. But that’s created an interesting situation on Capitol Hill, certainly, which is that now Republicans have a pretty direct line to DOGE, a direct line to him. And we have seen some Republican lawmakers say — I have Tom Cole as an example here — say: ‘In my community, we’ve saved a National Weather Service station. We’ve saved a couple of other things. DOGE will not be cutting these institutions.’ Democrats, though, don’t have that same line of communication to DOGE. And that’s something —” “He’s going to his voters and selling the fact, don’t worry, I stopped this administration from undermining — you can see I’m animated there just because that, to me, seems like a striking message to tell your voters. Don’t worry. This administration I’m allied with — I stopped them from cutting this agency that would lose a bunch of jobs.” “Totally. And that’s because we know that and these Republican senators know that jobs getting cut in their home states is bad politics. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a super red state, told me that very bluntly, very openly, and said, there — we know there’s political risk here. But she also said that she’s committed to the mission of DOGE of cutting government spending. And she’s going to ride it.” “And you know who else thinks that’s very bad politics? Democrats — great politics for them, bad politics for Republicans. And we spend a lot of time talking about how disorganized the Democrats are. They don’t have a message. If there is one thing they’re unified around, it is attacking Elon Musk.” “— thing on my phone. I don’t know. Some of you know this on the iPhone. They’ve got that little stock app. I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day.” “$225 and dropping.” “And that’s another thing you saw firsthand this week —” “Yes. Yes, absolutely. — in Wisconsin.” “Yes. Yes. I am fresh off the plane back from Wisconsin, where I was in Eau Claire earlier this week for a town hall where Governor Walz was going to rev up Democrats for this State Supreme Court race. It’s on April 1. And Musk has, through groups that he backs, poured a lot of money into this one State Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. So I wanted to hear what that sounded like. And one of my first observations when I got there was the very first person to go on stage — it was — we did not hear about the candidates running for the State Supreme Court seat. We did not hear about the name President Trump before we heard the name Elon Musk. That’s how much of a focus Democrats have made this in this race. They are literally framing the race as the people versus Musk. So I think this race is going to be a real early test of, first, what does his money do in a local — or in a statewide race? And I know that’s something that Teddy can speak to. And second, how well does this strategy work for Democrats? Can you nationalize a race by talking about Elon Musk? Is it going to rev up voters and get people out there in a race when people don’t know that much about the candidates that are actually running? There’s polling that shows that. But they sure know who Elon Musk is.” “Elon Musk won the state of Wisconsin, not single-handedly, but for Trump six — less than six months ago, when his super PAC spent tens of millions of dollars in the state. But this is a race where Musk is much more proven. It’s not his first time doing this. It’s his second time doing this. But he is the main character in that race.” “Just as he likes it.” “Exactly. I’m sure — he has not been to Wisconsin. It would not shock me if he went at some point over the next two weeks. He has two groups that have spent over $10 million to try to help Republican or the conservative candidate win there. And the impression I get is that this is a playbook he’s going to repeat again and again with these people who are supporting impeachment procedures against federal judges. Those are Musk allies. Is Musk going to put in $500 gazillion into their super PACs and keep on running this playbook that he’s run a couple of times now? So we’re just getting started.” “Do you think the White House is prepared for this political backlash, or they don’t care, or how are they viewing this?” “You mentioned heat shield earlier. And that, I still think, is the state of affairs here when you talk about Trump and the White House. I think he is OK having Elon, like you said, the Democratic attack line, the one — when they have chosen to swing, it’s really been on Elon at this point. And that’s advantageous to some folks around Trump. The question is how this works a little bit more broadly in his administration, as you — we did see in recent weeks the frustration when he had — when he was going at Marco Rubio. And you saw that frustration there from the leader of the State Department. So more broadly, as we get deeper into the administration, do you start to see more tension with cabinet officials? Does that make its way up? That’s something we should watch, too. But at this point, I think that it’s still thought to be advantageous to have him there.” “I know everybody has to get back to writing their next 7,000 stories. So why don’t we end by just everyone tell me one thing you learned this week that might surprise — surprised you, might surprise our readers?” “Well, I can tell you about one thing I did not learn this week.” “That’s also good.” “I can tell you a lot of things I did not learn.” “I have a long list of those, too.” “But it was something I learned, and also something I did not learn. I write this newsletter about Elon Musk and the changes he’s making to government. And for what I thought was going to be a really easy line in a story, I was looking up, oh, what’s the total number of government jobs that DOGE has cut? And then I realized that actually finding a really precise figure is very, very difficult. It struck me that DOGE, an outfit that has talked a lot about its transparency — they said they put — they say they put everything up on their wall of receipts. They have not been tracking the number of jobs cut and people laid off in any central way. We have colleagues around the newsroom who have been working to track this number down. And we’ve been able to see different pieces of it. But not every agency responds to our queries. Some people are laid off and then rehired, and then they immediately get put on administrative leave. It’s literally a moving target. And I think the lack of clarity around this figure of true, true, precise clarity around this figure — it really speaks to the chaos of the way this process is unfolding.” “I got something.” “That you learned or didn’t learn?” “That we learned.” “Oh, good.” “I thought that was very interesting.” “Sure. Since I covered the Elon social circle and that’s my focus nowadays, I’m very interested in the people who are not Elon Musk who are coming with him on the ride. So we published a story that was a profile of this guy named Steve Davis, who you could argue is maybe, after Trump and Elon Musk — maybe the third most powerful person in Washington. He is basically the guy running DOGE day to day. And he’s never really photographed, never really talked about. I don’t believe Trump or Elon have ever uttered his name since coming to Washington. But Davis is basically the guy who’s making all the cuts, who is the intermediary between the White House and DOGE. And his official position is not even totally clear. I’m saying he basically runs DOGE. But he’s not the administrator of DOGE because that’s somebody else. And I thought it was a good look at who really runs things, and also just the Musk friends who are basically calling the shots because this is a guy who’s been with Elon Musk for 20 years who is, arguably, the third most person — important person in D.C. right now.” “The detail I loved in that story — it was an excellent story — was that his — he moved with his partner and their newborn baby and lived in the Twitter offices.” “There’s a lot of details we cut from that.” “But was there — I have a lot of questions —” “Sure, sure, sure.” “— that we can discuss at a later point in time about the logistics of having a newborn live in the offices of Twitter.” “Just something where I — so I had no idea that this would pertain to our jobs in particular. Part of our job as White House reporters is to go to the briefing room and ask questions of the White House press secretary and other administration officials and often will sign on to Wi-Fi in order to do that. Sometimes, I’ll bring my hotspot because the Wi-Fi in the room is a little bit iffy. And the other day, my colleague was in the briefing room. And he saw that Starlink was one of the Wi-Fi networks in the White House. But Starlink is, obviously, Elon Musk’s initiative with satellites across — or around the world, providing internet service. This has also been pivotal in conflicts like in Ukraine, where he’s providing Starlink satellites. I did not realize that Starlink was now providing internet not just across the United States, but including for the White House. I also did not realize that in order to do this, apparently, a DOGE employee went to the rooftop of a building adjacent to the White House and had an encounter with a Secret Service agent who was wondering, Who are you? And why are you on top of this building right now?” “Wait. And that person installed the —” “He was attempting to go and, basically, try to install — or see the internet connection of the White House in the pursuit of this. And a Secret Service agent —” “They’re engineers, a lot of them?” “Sure.” “I couldn’t see what the internet — if I went to the top of the building, I would not know.” “Oh, you’re asking the wrong person for the ins and out of the technology.” “But just the — that feels like some — yes.” “And even the Secret Service was surprised to see this person there. I think that we are talking about somebody that is doing work that has an impact not only across the world and is impacting human lives across the world, and life-saving programs in some instances, but also is now becoming an incredibly central and influential figure in Washington, from his own technology and his own companies surrounding the actual building of the White House to also him standing in a cabinet meeting and pressing some of Trump’s top cabinet officials as well. I think it shows the range of his influence.” “He’s literally inserting his business into the White House.” “To the surprise of some people charged with protecting the White House as well.” “Great. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I know you have to get back to writing your next 7,000 stories. But we really appreciate the time. And this was fascinating. I definitely learned a lot of things.” “Appreciate it. It was fun hanging with you guys.” “Sure thing.” “Who was the speaker?” “Al Gore.” “Really?” [SOFT MUSIC]