news clip Making the rounds Sunday morning, CNN’s Dana Bash spoke with New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, about Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest. After all, here’s a billionaire with a massive federal contract through SpaceX. Their automaker, Tesla, would not have survived without generous state and federal subsidies. It serves as an advisor to the next president on what the government should do. Spend money or not.
Sununu told Bash that he likes that Musk is an “outsider” (interesting choice of words) who is “not looking for anything.” When she challenged that idea, he responded that “he’s worth $450 billion,” so “he’s too rich to be immune from potential financial repercussions.”
“I don’t think he’s doing it for the money,” Sununu said. “He’s doing this for a bigger project and a bigger vision for America.” This exchange is worth listening to.
What this tells me is that Sununu doesn’t understand the excessive wealth mentality and probably shouldn’t talk about it on the air. In a sense, he’s right that Musk isn’t doing this for the money. I mean, he could probably afford Greenland. But what about “bigger projects and bigger visions”? That’s Colonel Potter from some kind of ridiculous old TV series. mash Best of all, it would have been called “horse hockey.”
Musk is doing this for that strength—Opportunity to dominate your peers. Let’s not forget that joining forces with Trump would put Musk’s wealth on a very steep upward trajectory, at least on paper. I haven’t done the math, but I’m pretty sure he’s now the richest person who has ever lived on Earth. He doesn’t need money to buy things. He needs it to feed his narcissism.
While researching my 2021 book, I interviewed quite a few super-rich people and those in their immediate orbit. jackpotAnd we talked a lot about these issues. It becomes clear that once a person has achieved a certain level of wealth, further asset accumulation is a game. It’s about score keeping and social comparison. It also maintains dynastic status by creating trusts to avoid gift and estate taxes and by pushing for the maintenance of ridiculous loopholes such as discounted tax rates on retained interest. He was part of a group that made an annual pilgrimage to DC to lobby, but it was “bullshit.”
The following is a summary of one of our interviews with Richard Watts, a Southern California lawyer who serves as a conservator for some of America’s wealthiest families. Here he was talking about the conference he had just spoken at. It was an annual shindig hosted by Mitt Romney and attended by former presidents, senators, and other powerful figures, in addition to countless Fortune 500 CEOs and billionaires you know.
“I don’t have to work or do anything like that because I’m very wealthy. And there is a beautiful house under the sea. But when you spend a weekend with people with a net worth of at least $500 million, you have to leave at some point. Because in a discussion you may feel that the scale depends on your size.
In such situations, it always matters what amazing thing you have done, invented, created. What do you do? “Well, I own 35 mobile home parks for free and we built them and we’re going to make them all green. It was really great and amazing.” And the guy is 40 years old and it’s a true story…
Now, if you’re Jamie Dimon, everyone wants to know what you think, and you’ll say, “Hey, that guy is a good guy.” “I want to be next to that person.” And let’s say it’s the governor of Maine or Mitt or Paul Ryan, these are really interesting people. What’s interesting is that they don’t want to have that discussion, but everyone is having that discussion. So things like, “Paul, what are you doing this year since you left your position as Speaker of the House?” “Oh my god, I’m on the board of Fox News.” (Of course, Murdoch was also lecturing.)
And the only measure in the room is, I don’t mean they’re always like this, I’m just saying when they get together. It’s about who has the biggest belly. There are a lot of nasty methods out there, but the biggest boats are identified pretty quickly.
A month before the election, Elon Musk’s estimated net worth was about $263 billion. Now, at the end of the year, it’s worth $437 billion. The ‘largest ship’ has been confirmed. It’s Elon and it’s not even close. Musk wants to keep it that way. And his relationship with Trump helps him do that. So Sununu can stop giving us the “bigger project” bullshit.
This is a penis measuring contest, nothing more, nothing less.
