That’s the thing that has really stood out the most as he now constantly xhits himself: he’s really REALLY not that smart… Just impulsive, rich, and well-connected.
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Fucking hell. I saw the bit where Trump said climate change would only cause 1/8 inch sea level rise in 400 years, so it could be ignored. I guess it went like this?
Trump: “I don’t worry about climate change, it’s nothing. I worry about nuclear war.”
Musk: “Ackchyually, nuclear war isn’t that bad.”
Trump: “That’s great, I guess I don’t have to worry about anything, then!”
I can’t bear to watch the whole thing, but I also am perversely curious to see how they “out-idiot” each other for two hours. Here we have two of the (formerly) most powerful people in the world, and they’re complete fucking morons. Truly, the American belief that a child can grow up to be whatever they want is true*.
*So long as they’re a white male with wealthy parents and friends. But at least being “competent” or “smart” aren’t requirements whose lack impedes anything.
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It’s such a handy rhetorical device for the dim-witted and the dishonest: they assume everyone is as misinformed and uncurious as they are, and then when the “learn” something new they assume they’ve invented the wheel.
Even when what they’ve learned is so blinkered and half-baked that it’s not even wrong.
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Hopefully not immortal.
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Did anyone point out to these two chuckleheads that the bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small stuff compared to some of the things we have in our arsenals now, and that if something in the megaton-and-up range hits a major population center, it’s not going to be a “full city” again for a pretty long time?
Also, the rebuilding of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was possible because the rest of Japanese society, although battered by years of war and massive conventional bombing, was intact enough to make rebuilding an eventual possibility. If a major power ever decides to expend its full nuclear arsenal on a city-busting rampage, things might play out a little differently.
On the bright side, however, the world’s nuclear arsenals really did get trimmed back a lot following the fall of the Soviet Union. In terms of sheer megatonnage, we’re now at less than 20% of what we had to play with in the 1960s (where “we” is “all nuclear-armed states together”).
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Also, those bombs were in the 15-20 kiloton range. Currently North Korea has 200 kiloton bombs and the US, Russia and China all have bombs in the megaton range.
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Since he is a South African who likes to go forth and multiply, I wonder if Musk has heard of John Robert Dunn.
John Robert Dunn (1834 – 5 August 1895) was a South African settler, hunter, and diplomat of British descent. Born in Port Alfred in 1834, he spent his childhood in Port Natal/Durban.[1]: 24 He was orphaned as a teenager, and lived in native dress on the land near the Tugela River. His conversance with Zulu customs and language allowed his increasing influence among Zulu princes.[2]
He was able to identify and exploit various opportunities for trade. He represented both colonial and Zulu interests, and rose to some influence and power when King Cetshwayo became the Zulu sovereign. He acted as Cetshwayo’s secretary and diplomatic adviser and was rewarded with chieftainship, land, livestock and two Zulu virgins.[2]
In the run-up to the Zulu War, he was served with an ultimatum by the British at the same time as Cetshwayo. He had to forgo any position of neutrality and sided with the British. In the aftermath, he was allocated land in a buffer zone between the colony and Zululand. Besides his first wife Catherine, he took many Zulu women as wives and left a large Christian progeny when he died at age 60 or 61.
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What came before this statement? What was he comparing it to? Because I have a hard time believing that even these two chuckleheads think that even a limited nuclear exchange “wouldn’t be as scary as people think”.
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If I had to guess Musk was trying to make an argument for a pivot to nuclear energy.
Not to derail but many people do want this and plenty of people,
especially younger people, see it as worth investing in nuclear energy. Musk probably imagined he was trying to demonstrate to young people that Trump is hip on energy resources.
Personally I agree with this position although I don’t think either Musk or Trump are worth listening to about it.
Here’s the best context I could find in an article (I’m not watching the thing).
Mr Musk was talking about nuclear power with the former president when he said people have an unfounded fear of nuclear electricity generation. It is the “safest form of electricity generation”, he argued.
“People were asking me in California, are you worried about a nuclear cloud coming from Japan? I am like no, that’s crazy. It is actually, it is not even dangerous in Fukushima. I flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it," he said during the interview on his social media platform X on Monday.
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed but now they are full cities again,” the multibillionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X said.
“That’s great, that’s great,” Mr Trump responded.
“It is not as scary as people think, basically,” Mr Musk added.
They joked about nuclear power facing a “branding problem”.
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Also, we threw tons of money at rebuilding, because we wanted Japan as a counter weight to Communist China after 49…
We still have a shit ton of nukes, that can fuck up life on this planet. 
Well, it’s fine if you don’t give two shits about humanity. Then it’s perfectly easy to justify the deaths of even millions of people…
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What has either of them ever said that would give you that idea? Neither one has ever expressed empathy with another human being (except maybe a foreign dictator.)
I find it much easier to believe neither of them has ever given more than passing thought to the horrors of war. I also suspect they both think that a nuclear exchange is somehow “winnable.”
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Perhaps they took this to heart, where “terrace” is NZ, a seastead, or some such
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That makes sense in context, but it’s actually worse. I love me some nuclear power plants, but comparing their safety to the fallout from two nuclear weapons is like comparing the exhaust from a diesel truck to getting hit by a Ford F-350.
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Maybe these 2 fuckwits should visit The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum before shitting out opinions.
I was fortunate to spend my birthday on Aug6 there last year - and be reminded (quite effectively) the horrors of nuclear conflict.
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No, and speaking of things they don’t seem to know much about do they understand the difference between a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb? Clearly not?
Reducing people’s panic over power plants makes sense. Minimizing the impact of literally the most destructive weapons human hands can make does not make sense.
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From what I’ve read about this fiasco, the “interview” was basically:
Trump: outrageous word noises
Musk: Yeah
Trump: something stupid
Musk: I agree
Trump: something incomprehensible
Musk: Interesting
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It’s not a new observation, but the movie “Idiocracy” covered this perfectly.
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The thing to remember about watching civilization collapse from atop a terrace is that you have that much farther to fall when it all comes tumbling down.
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