About a week ago, billionaire Elon Musk has offered
online to give 1 million Dogecoin to anyone who can prove the validity
of the rumor that's been going around the internet for a number of years.
That his family made a bunch of money in the emerald mine business.
He responded to Doge Designer because I never want you to forget that
despite the fact that he is the richest man in the world,
his life is responding to accounts called Doge Designer.
So Doge Designer had said that he would offer 69,000 or
whatever, and I say he because it is.
He responded, I will pay a million Dogecoin for
proof of this mine's existence.
Okay, now this is not the first time that he has indicated that he is frustrated
with the presence of this rumor online.
He's previously said, the fake emerald mine thing is so annoying.
Where exactly is this thing anyway?
Now, we have a person who popped up and
I think provided some pretty compelling evidence of its existence.
But before we get to that, I do wanna mention that in the same way that he's
frustrated with the existence of the rumor.
I'm frustrated with his frustration because he doesn't get to be frustrated
that it's out there.
It's out there because of him.
Back in 2014, he did an interview with Forbes and he bragged about the existence
of the mine, saying, this is gonna sound slightly crazy, but
my father also had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia.
You said it, buddy.
Now that's not the only thing.
He also talked about the private jet, these to fly around, regular guy stuff.
But he was the one that launched the rumor.
Now, if you go to search for this article,
it's no longer available on their regular website.
It was taken down.
There's never been any explanation as to why it was, but
I think we can kind of guess.
It is still, however, available on the Internet Archive so you can see it there.
Also, by the way, he used to routinely tell an anecdote about how he sold some of
his father's emeralds to Tiffany and Company while his dad was sleeping.
See, that article proves two things.
One, that there were emeralds and that he profited off it.
And two, that when he was younger, he was John Mulaney.
But anyway, this story is not fundamentally about Elon Musk.
It's about Errol Musk,
his dad, who's been in the news a few times over the past few years.
So, he did an interview with the US son and
he claimed that not only did the mine exist, but that was what got him and
his son sort of launched on their way in terms of riches.
So, describing the moment that he heard that his son had challenged the Internet
to prove this, he said, when I read that, I wondered, can I enter?
Because I can prove it existed.
Elon knows it's true.
All the kids know about it.
My daughter has three or four emerald pendants.
Elon saw them at our house.
He knew I was selling them, by the way,
he provided pics of the precious gemstones which he says came from the mine.
He says, what Elon is saying is that there was no formal mine.
It was a rock formation protruding from the ground in the middle of nowhere.
There was no mining company.
There are no signed agreements or financial statements.
No one owned anything.
The deal was done on a handshake with the Italian man at a time
when Zambia was free for all.
Not even he knew exactly where the border was at that time.
It was like the Wild West.
So, that really, I think, paints a picture there.
You might have thought that it was bad in some way,
that their family made it rich off of gems, but
everything reads there as the most disgusting sort of colonial exploitation.
They didn't even basically have a legal system.
I just went in there, I didn't even deal with their people.
I talked to some Italian dude, and then we just took their minds and
gave them literally a couple of dollars a day for their labor.
So the whole thing incredibly gross.
But he goes on to say that the reason he thinks that Elon keeps pushing
back against the rumor which he started.
Is Elon's main concern is not to appear to be a trust fund kid
who got everything given to him on a plate.
That's what his nay-sayers are pushing.
It's not true.
Elon took risks and worked like blazes to be where he is today.
So, he's not even being too hard on his son, although he has been quoted in recent
years as saying that he's not proud of him.
He said, sure, we got a bunch of money off of the gems, but he still worked hard.
The emeralds helped us through a very trying time in South Africa when people
were fleeing the country in droves, including his mother's whole family, and
earning opportunities were an all-time low.
That's all.
I'm sure that if you were to dig into the context that led to the people fleeing
what he's talking about, there nothing about that would be bad either.
But anyway, what do you think?
He seems to have won.
He should get the million Dogecoin, I think.
>> Yeah, so I think this is a really interesting story, and
I don't think that it's a clear cut loss for Elon Musk.
And so let me explain.
First of all, is Elon Musk a liar?
Yes, and so look,
you could argue that everyone lies around the edges at a minimum, right?
But this is not around the edges.
He's trying to create a mythology that he came to the country with only
$2,500 in his pocket and he just built everything by himself.
And he says he had $100,000 in debt when he left college and so
just from the ground up, boots.
The only thing he had was two bootstraps.
That's all he had, right?
So he's lying on purpose for that.
And in this case, you can see cuz his dad, man, he just totally destroyed this lie.
The dad says, yeah, there's no documents on it.
It was on a handshake, and we barely remember where it was near the border.
So Elon Musk knows for a fact that it's super hard to prove, and
that's why he was like, yeah, I'll give money to anyone who could prove it.
So, wait, you know it's true, but you think it can't be proven,
so you wanna lie about it to try to make yourself look smarter, better, etc, right?
So, buyer beware, that's the kind of lies that Elon Musk tells,
and it appears on a regular basis.
So, where's the catch?
Where's the silver lining for Elon Musk?
Well, his dad explained, no, we did have the emerald mine, and I gave Elon money,
and when he wanted to go to America, it was my idea, I suggested it.
He went, I gave him the money to go, etc.
And then at some point, his dad sells a yacht to give him more money and
his brother more money, and at another point, he sends him $115,000, okay?.
So this idea that Elon Musk should I work at McDonald's or
Wendy's for a little extra cash?
No, right, my dad sent me $115,000.
>> Decades and decades ago.
>> Yeah, that was like, 1980s, early 1990s, okay.
So, understand that, again, you're wondering,
where the hell is the silver lining?
Well, to me, I didn't know how much the emerald mines were, right?
Because it was so vague.
Elon Musk mentioned it once that's where it comes from.
But now we have this sense of scale, so I didn't know if he had, like,
$100 million or $100,000.
And it turns out because his dad's clearly not pulling punches.
I don't think his dad's lying about this.
No, it wasn't $100 million.
He got a major leg up that 90% of people, 95% maybe,
98% of people don't have, right?
And his dad had yachts and mines and all that stuff, but
he wasn't like Trump's, Trump's dad gave him $413 million.
Okay, Trump, during the original 2016 campaign, was like,
no, just got a small loan in 1970 of a million dollars.
Just a small loan.
No, a million dollars is not a small loan.
And back in 1970, that was an unbelievable amount of money.
But even that's not anywhere near true.
No, your dad gave you over $400 million, and what did Trump do with it?
He bungled it away because he's a fool, right?
And Elon Musk okay, so it turns out his dad helped him a lot, but
he wasn't mega rich.
So that's my honest take on it, and I'm kind of interested by that.
I didn't know that, it gives me context, David.
>> I find it amazing that a guy who is the wealthiest man on the planet can have such
huge insecurities.
And maybe we shouldn't be surprised, but this idea that Freud would have had
a field day with Elon Musk even before the story came out, what is it about?
It's not a binary choice that you can't be, your dad gives you money or
you work really hard.
Both can be true.
Sure, he got some money from his dad, and they helped get out of South Africa, fine.
And he worked really hard out of college to do what he's doing now.
Yeah, that's fine.
Elon Musk has a habit of making stories and making things worse,
taking Twitter, making it worse.
He has this great idea for Tesla, but he treats his employees horribly.
So there's a stink factor with Tesla.
And now a story that could have been, hey, I was a kid, my parents helped me out.
Hey, my parents helped me get out of Southern Indiana, big deal.
Maybe a little different from Elon Musk, but okay,
most people would accept that your parents are gonna help you do something.
And then you say, look, I didn't have any control of what my parents were doing.
They helped me get out of South Africa, and I worked really hard after college,
and that's that.
And it's not a big story, but Elon Musk makes it a bigger story,
almost reaffirming his own insecurities.
Because now everybody's questioning, Elon Musk is so insecure, and
what is it about the gems that bothers him so much?
And he really so fearful and why is it?
It's strange?
>> Yeah, Elon Musk, I think, is the greatest example ever of something,
we've seen other examples of I think Trump is a little bit of this.
If Elon Musk had just not opened his mouth,
think about the reputation he would have right now.
If the last five years or so, he hadn't spent every day desperately blank,
just everything, desperately, desperately wanting to be thought of as funny.
Desperately wanting to be thought of as cool, as hip or whatever, connected.
He is desperate about everything.
He is try hard in vaguely human form.
If he had just not done that,
if he had stopped trying to have right-wing grifters be interested in him.
If he had just done the work or I should say, let the engineers and scientists who
produce the cars and the rockets because he has no training in that area.
Do the work, then he would be the Tony Stark of the modern era or whatever.
But instead, he keeps talking, and it is impossible for
a rational person to watch the decisions he makes.
Listen to the things that he says, and
come away thinking that he's as smart as he wants us to believe he is.
>> Yeah, and I'm just gonna double down on what David said.
My dad helped me.
So why don't you give your dad credit?
That's the decent thing to do.
That's the honest thing to do.
But the difference is, for progressives, we think that, yeah, working together
is the right idea and that no one truly ever does it, quote unquote, on their own.
You always need some help, and you should appreciate the help that people give you.
But for the right-wing mind, no, it's all me.
I want all the credit.
I don't want my dad to get any of the credit.
I don't want anybody else to get the credit.
I don't want the actual story out there.
I want extra credit that I didn't even deserve.
I started out as a pauper.
It was a tale of two cities, and I came up anyway and conquered the world.
All right, if you're gonna be a weirdo liar,
you would have gotten tons of credit anyway.
You went from a guy who was rich dad, but
wound up becoming the richest man in the world.
Still a big jump, but no, never satisfied.
It has to be all about him.
That's how the right-wing mind is.
>> And if we could just really fast go to the last graphic.
One reason why he might not want to give too much credit to his dad is I'll remind
you of something we covered a year or two ago.
His dad had two children with his stepdaughter.
It's not attached to the mind thing.
I just think it's noteworthy.
>> [CROSSTALK] >> Talk about daddy issues.
Well, maybe they're understandable now that he doesn't want this association with
his father because he's repulsed by his dad's sexual peccadillo.
And so it's a little more understandable, but, man,
this guy needs to get in front of a Freudian psychiatrist.
>> Yeah, clearly there are some issues there, okay?
And clearly his dad's not the world's greatest guy either.
He just happens to be brutally honest in this case.