David Faber’s Interview With Elon Musk Is Interesting, But Uncomfortable and Sad

David Faber’s interview with Elon Musk was interesting. Musk is obviously a genius, in spite of what all of his detractors say. In the course of the interview, he provided tremendous insight into the operations of Tesla and Twitter, and offered a unique perspective on autonomous driving, China, the Fed and artificial intelligence / Chat GPT.

Musk also showed that he has the mannerisms of someone who is socially unstable and reckless as it relates to protecting his shareholders’ interest (“I’ll say what I want to say and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it”). It is both real and sad that Musk certainly is willing to verbally express direct support for white supremacy, the meaningless Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy theories, and anti-Semitic views, albeit that he had already expressed sympathy in tweets for all of these in the past. I unfortunately find myself agreeing with the Daily Beast’s conclusions here.

Everybody who is considering purchasing a Tesla, as I was, should be required to watch this part of the interview in full.

Also apparent from the interview is the fact that David Faber, a Tufts alumnus, is clearly an outstanding financial journalist capable of hanging with the smartest and interviewing the most difficult personalities in one encounter. Over a decade ago, he produced fantastic documentaries on WalMart and EBay and MCI Worldcom (in which he became the only journalist to confront Bernie Ebbers about Worldcom's accounting). He is the best of his generation. It is unfortunate that he has been relegated by CNBC over the last decade and a half to minding Jim Cramer and interacting with script-readers who are not at his level.