During a recent Tesla shareholders meeting, billionaire CEO Elon Musk recently detailed his conversations with former President Donald Trump. According to Musk, the presumptive Republican nominee will “call him out of the blue,” seemingly for “no reason” just to chat.
Musk said, “I don’t exactly know why he… it’s a good question. I mean, you know, I have had some conversations with him, and he does..he does call me out of the blue for no reason. I don’t know why, but he does.”
The Tesla founder further added that Trump is “very nice” during their conversations, where he is even a fan of Musk’s latest Cybertruck. “He’s very nice when he calls and, you know, in electric cars, I think we’re pretty good for the future, America’s leader in electric cars, you know, you know, by America and stuff. And I think he actually…a lot of his friends now have Tesla. He’s a huge fan of the Cybertruck…I think those may be contributing factors,” Musk said.
In the past couple of years, Elon Musk has seemingly become more conservative; for example, he purchased Twitter in 2022 to champion free speech and combat social media censorship. The American Tribune also reported on recent comments from Musk, where he criticized the burden of over-imposing legislation that stifles innovation.
In particular, Musk called out California, from which he relocated to Texas, where the state has spent billions of dollars on a high-speed rail. However, the regulatory environment has created “gridlock” that has led to virtually no progress on the project.
“You know, in the West, I think we have created regulatory gridlock where just almost everything is illegal. This is why they can’t build a high-speed rail in California. They spent $7 billion and there’s 1600 ft section, it’s all they have to show for it and it doesn’t even have rails on it. It’s really too absurd for parity,” he said.
Musk emphasized that regulations throughout the West have made “large projects … essentially illegal.” He further suggested there needs to be some sort of mechanism that would scale back unnecessary rules and allow for innovation. Watch Musk’s comments regarding his conversations with Trump below:
“Large projects are essentially illegal in California and much of Europe and other countries. So there has to be some garbage collection process for removing rules and regulations in order for society to function and not to get hardening of the arteries to the point where you can’t do anything,” he continued.
In a separate instance Musk addressed the high-speed rail again, stating, “Year after year, there are more laws, regulations passed and more regulatory bodies created, eventually everything will be illegal. And that’s why you see the California High Speed Rail has made a tiny section of that doesn’t even have rail on it. And for, I don’t know, several billion dollars, because everything’s at this point, California has made almost everything illegal, so you can’t make progress. Most poignant example that I can think of that happened this week was this, the sad picture of the California High Speed Rail, which is, you know, it’s just billions. of dollars spent for practically nothing. But it’ll only get worse, year after year. So, we must have a regulatory sort of clearinghouse, garbage collection process. This is essential, or civilization comes grinding to a halt.”
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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