Watch Ted Cruz fanboy over Elon Musk in super cringey interview
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was elected by Texans to represent them in the Senate, not to play podcaster with billionaires. Nevertheless, Cruz hosted DOGE bro Elon Musk on an episode of his podcast “Verdict” to lavish praise on the wealthiest man in the world, promote bigoted conspiracy theories, make outlandish predictions, and … discuss sci-fi movies.
Cruz has been in the Senate since 2013, and before that he served as solicitor general of Texas. But, during his interview with Musk, Cruz hailed the multibillionaire for having a better understanding of government than he does.
After Musk went on about the federal government being run by computers, Cruz said that it was “fascinating” that Musk is bullying his way into accessing secure federal data, which he says “let you uncover a bunch of crap that just nobody knew.”
While the full extent of DOGE’s possible privacy and security violations is not fully known, the group has repeatedly overstated the purported fraud and abuse that has been uncovered by several tens of billions of dollars.
Addressing liberals’ criticism of DOGE during the interview with Cruz, Musk once again claimed that they’re just worried that he’ll uncover a plot to lure undocumented immigrants with federal benefits to convert them into Democratic voters.
This is the debunked Great Replacement conspiracy theory held by white supremacists—and is something that Musk has reiterated over and over again.
Musk also alleged—without a shred of evidence—that a “cabal” of wealthy individuals is behind the growing protests at Tesla dealerships, using language that has historically been favored by antisemitic conspiracy theorists.
When asked about artificial intelligence technology, Musk predicted that it will soon be smarter than “the smartest human.” And when Cruz asked him to address the possible downside of AI displacing people from their jobs, Musk said it was not a major concern.
“Goods and services will become close to free, it’s not as if people will be wanting in terms of goods and services,” Musk responded, adding that people will have “tens of billions of robots” that “will make you anything or provide any service you want for basically next to nothing.”
While Musk’s statement ignores basic laws of physics and supply and demand, it isn’t entirely surprising considering his history of making outlandish predictions, including the 2014 claim that humans would land on Mars. It has been 11 years, and that has still not happened.
While they weren’t spreading conspiracies or speculating about a robot-run future, Musk and Cruz had a cringeworthy discussion of their favorite sci-fi/fantasy movies. Even more bizarrely, Cruz did an impression of Ricardo Montalban as Khan from “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
President Donald Trump has empowered Musk to attack multiple government agencies on his behalf, while Cruz and fellow GOP senators have looked the other way.
Cruz’s interview with Musk is a reminder that neither of them care about doing their jobs—or the American people, for that matter.