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Written by Eric Zuesse
The conversation was followed briefly by inputs from Tulsi Gabbard.
The conversation covered their differences, as well as their areas of agreement, and was stunningly frank, as I have found all interviews of RFK Jr. to be. Musk is cagier, but parts of his conversation, which concerned why he is fully rooted in the U.S. and will never reside anywhere else, seemed to me to have authentic passion behind them. I think that he really is devoted to this country, and not at all to his prior areas of residence: Canada and South Africa.
Though Musk has characterized himself politically as a “moderate” but never in any coherent way and perhaps believes whatever he thinks will enhance his personal fortune, RFK Jr. emphatically self-identifies as “a Kennedy Democrat” and views this tradition as going back to the committedly anti-imperialist ideology that FDR represented, and to the Kennedy family’s own origins in Ireland, which had fought against British imperialism and who came to the United States because of America’s Revolution of 1776 against imperialism. Yet these two men shared, in this discussion, an uncompromising endorsement especially of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment: 100% prohibition of participation by the U.S. Government in any form of censorship, and strong opposition to current U.S. Government policies on that matter.
In a prior incident, Musk tweeted soon after the U.S.-backed coup in late 2019 that had overthrown the progressive Evo Morales (who was the democratically elected progressive anti-racist and pro-land-reform President of Bolivia, which is the largest supplier of lithium so essential to Musk’s Tesla Corporation), Musk was challenged about that U.S. coup, which had been carried out by wealthy Bolivian evangelical racists, and he responded “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” So: on the issue of imperialism, RFK Jr. is unalterably against, but Elon Musk is ideologically committed in favor — so long as the imperialism is backed by, or for the benefit of, American billionaires such as himself. In fact, Musk says that he had voted for at least four prominent imperialists — George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — neoconservative (i.e., pro U.S. imperialism) politicians in both of America’s political Parties. That deep ideological difference between Musk and Kennedy, on this core progressive-versus-conservative political issue, of imperialism, wasn’t included in this conversation, perhaps because Musk didn’t want to bring it up, and because RFK Jr.’s distinctive style is to relate in conversation only to what he shares in common with his conversants, and not to bring up the areas of disagreement between them unless the other person brings it up — in which cases RFK Jr. is 100% forthcoming about why he disagrees with the other person (which Musk is not).
The conversation appeared on an obscure Website, the youtube channel Political Lens, where it achieved 55 thousand views (very few for an interview of RFK as a Presidential candidate) and was headlined “Robert F Kennedy (RFK) JR. Twitter Live Stream – W/ Elon Musk”.
Since I consider this conversation to be historically important (because both RFK Jr. and Elon Musk are historically important individuals), I was shocked that, at the Wayback Machine web-archive, there were only two attempts to save it there, neither of which succeeded; so, I made a third attempt. Unfortunately, it too failed. (I’ve contacted that archive’s Director asking him to save it.)
So, here it is; and I present below it, what I consider to be the most revealing passages, which I transcribed from the video:
5 June 2023, Tulsi comes in at 1:04:50
Elon Musk & RFK Jr. interview each other. The 40-minute opening is on censorship, which they say reflects the Government’s agenda and originates both from the owners of advertizers, and from the owners of news-media, so that those owners also control the Government (Kennedy calls this “regulatory capture,” but Musk seems to be more concerned about protecting his own rights than about such abstract ethical and political-policy matters). At 14:00 RFK explains General Dynamics advertizing on Good Morning America in order to have veto-power over ABC TV hires and programming decisions. Kennedy says that censorship is when the Government tells you not to publish something, and that censors are turning their backs on the spirit behind America’s constitution. He praises as “selfless” Musk’s opposing censorship. Then, Musk responds:
19:47
MUSK:
Um yeah, it’s, uh, it definitely, um, has been extremely difficult
19:52
um, if if we, if Twitter, simply towed the line and did everything that that the
19:59
you know advertisers, and and especially the advertisers, the sort of various non-profits, that pressure the
20:04
advertisers, um and uh you know the whole sort of ESG DEI movement, which is, uh
20:14
um, sort of having a much bigger effect on the actions of corporations, and
20:20
people realize I mean if if we simply uh towed the line like everyone else
20:26
um, we would have, um, it’s it’s billions of dollars a year
20:33
in difference, basically our our revenue is cut in half, uh because we didn’t
20:38
tow the line, so it just, it at the magnitude of this, uh, is, uh, extreme and and,
20:43
um, and it’s frankly a struggle, uh, for, uh, Twitter to, uh, break even, and we’re
20:51
hoping to break even, but we’re not there yet, and um uh, but, but, I don’t care how much it
20:58
costs, or what it takes, uh, if if we lose Free Speech, we lose we lose democracy, we
21:03
lose democracy, America Falls, America polls, I don’t know
21:08
what happens to the world, but it’s not a good thing. …
23:58 Musk continues:
The United States has been the greatest force for benevolence in world history. And,
24:05
um, and this is, again, not to excuse mistakes or or bad things and,
24:11
um, but that that is, I, I think the evidence for the United States being being a benevolent force in the world is,
24:17
uh, overwhelming, um, you look at things like uh you know
24:23
the Marshall Plan after World War II [an extremely successful U.S. Government plan to weaken and isolate the Soviet Union] uh you know at the end of World War II the
24:29
United States, um, had overwhelming military might, the nuclear
24:34
bomb, the United States could have taken over the world, it could have acquired whatever countries it wanted [and it did, but that required decades to do, wasn’t possible to achieve nearly so fast as Musk implies],
24:41
um, and yet it it didn’t do any of that in fact it gave uh money to to the, uh,
24:49
to the countries that have been fighting [against the Soviet Union], um,
24:54
well I’m not sure if that has ever happened in history. It it helped rebuild
25:00
the United States, helped rebuild Germany and Japan, um, helped rebuild Japan even after
25:07
things like Pearl Harbor. I mean this is, I, I, when it has to really I maybe this
25:13
this has happened before actually, but I’m not aware of it, and, and, so, you know, so I I’m
25:20
very, I’m very in favor of America, but again, it’s not to say that we can’t do better.
25:27
We do want to do better, we want to maintain that, um, uh, but, um,
25:35
anyway, so I’m I’m a huge fan of it, and I, I just want to point out, I, you know, I, I,
25:41
don’t have any sort of
25:48
homes outside of the United States. I do not carry any of any other passport
25:54
and I, I, will live and die here.
55:00 RFK, Jr., speaks here and blames Biden, not Obama, for Ukraine, though Obama, not Biden, perpetrated the coup — was its CEO. Kennedy blames Biden, who skimmed from that operation but didn’t initiate or plan it. Kennedy is running against Biden, not against Obama; so, Kennedy doesn’t talk about Obama, who is the most-respected person of all among Democratic Party voters. Obama got away with it; Biden is merely going down with it, and will get the blame for it.
Kennedy continues:
1:13:20
You know, the Chinese have been doing a lot better than us, because they’ve been, they’ve been
1:13:26
projecting economic power abroad, and the world likes that [win-win exchanges]. We think the
1:13:32
world is on our side, but it isn’t. All we’ve got [on our side, the win-lose side], the only people who are supporting this,
1:13:37
you know, this pugnacious, bellicose, uh, [win-lose] relationship with China, are
1:13:44
Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan,
1:13:50
Britain, Canada, and the United States [the Rhodesists’ “Anglosphere,” plus Japan and South Korea], and we’re, we’re pretty much alone in the
1:13:55
world. The rest of the world is looking at us and saying, what the heck are you doing, why are you trying to create a war with
1:14:02
China, why are you fighting them over, over, why are you making Taiwan a military issue?
1:14:09
Let’s let Taiwan and China work out that issue on their own and
1:14:14
back off militarily, and, and, and, try to have a, they want, listen, they don’t want
1:14:20
war, they want peace, and they want prosperity, and that cannot happen where there’s a war,
1:14:26
so let’s have, you know, let’s de-escalate the war talk, let’s compete economically, and let’s talk to them and figure out a
1:14:34
way that, you know, we can have a smart negotiation [win-win], where we do better because
1:14:40
of China, rather than you know [win-lose — against China]. …
1:16:45
Let’s have peace with with
1:16:53
with Russia, let’s have peace with China, and let’s all enjoy the prosperity of
1:16:58
healthy economic competition. …
1:29:15 Putin and, uh, and, we, and, the Ukraine is a victim in this war, it’s a proxy war.
1:30:04
It’s [Ukraine is] a victim of Russia yes [no: it’s a victim of the Obama coup, which started Ukraine’s war], it was an illegal Invasion [it was, in fact, legal, but America’s coup against Ukraine was not, and even the post-coup Presidents of Ukraine have acknowledged that the coup wasn’t legal] and a brutal Invasion [which is at least dubious, if not outright false],
1:30:10
that could have been avoided by Vladimir Putin [NO! [But JFK likewise campaigned without challenging the media’s propaganda against the Soviet Union’s leader]] but they’re equally almost equally at least,
1:30:16
a victim of U.S policies, and, uh, you know the ambitions of the, the aspirations the
1:30:22
neocons wanted to get into this war no matter what.
[NO MENTION WAS MADE OF OBAMA’S HAVING STARTED THE WAR.]
1:35:28
The Russian, the Russian leadership, back in the 90s, said, you know, in 1992, they we made it in
1:35:37
an agreement, they said we will pull our troops, our 400,000 troops, out of
1:35:42
East Germany, and we will turn East Germany over to a hostile [NATO] Army the NATO
1:35:47
Army, and the concession that we want from you for that is that you will not move NATO
1:35:53
to the east and President Bush [no: his SecState James Baker] famously told them we will not move [NATO] one inch to
1:35:58
the east. The leader of the neocons is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the grandfather of all the
1:36:05
neocons [NOT AT ALL, that was Rhodes back in 1877; even before the Soviet Union existed] in 1997, laid out a plan for moving NATO [originally the Anglosphere] into every one
1:36:12
of the former Russian satellite states [but there weren’t any ‘Russian satellite states’, in 1997; all of the former Soviet satellite states were then instead independent nations; and, two years later, in 1999, three of them, Chechia, Hungary, and Poland, joined the U.S. anti-Russian alliance, NATO; and 7 more joined in 2004, under the Republican Bush, in accord with the Democrat Brzezinski’s plan].
——
As regards Kennedy’s praise of Musk’s opposition to censorship, he was ignoring the two-facedness of Musk’s actual policies on censorship: for example: if you will look today at what is now at Twitter (“X”) of Musk’s coup-tweet, what you will see is: “Something went wrong. Try reloading.”, or sometimes, “Hmm…this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else.” Now that Musk owns the company, different things get censored-out than before — including that statement by himself, which revealed about himself what he immediately learned harmed his public image but which couldn’t be removed until he took control over the company and became able to censor what he wanted to censor.
Also: this feeling that Musk has, that he wants the U.S. empire to increase, at least to the extent that he’ll profit from that, explains why he stood aside and had nothing to say about Kennedy’s extensive and impassioned and historically documented in detail condemnations against U.S. imperialism, throughout this two-hour discussion. Half of his time was spent on this. Yet Musk was simply silent on that topic. Musk pretends to support ‘peace’. Like I reported on September 9th, “Joe Biden Wanted to Escalate to WW III but Elon Musk Said No” in order to force Biden to increase the Pentagon’s contracts with Musk’s SpaceX satellite corporation. RFK Jr. effusively praised Musk at 26:00 in the conversation; Musk said nothing against him, and both conversants spoke only within the limits of not contradicting anything that the other said.
After reading this, you still might find interesting to hear the actual full two-hour discussion, including a brief participation (starting at 1:05) by Tulsi Gabbard.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
stalking horses talking. its all palatable and what america should be but the shadow of the rogue state and tens of trillions in debt make it a fantasy.us empire has to fight to survive. the kennedys as matyrs to common sense thinking against the deep state.
national anthem – lana del rey. moderat – bad kingdom
well, that was less than encouraging.
all 3, kennedy, musk and tulsi are pro apartheid israel, all 3 are defender of zionist apartheid, and to my knowledge none of these 3 think that us +israel were behind 9/11! ps, if you want to know where anyone stands politically ask them 2 questions, 1. us+israel were behind 9/11 yes or no? 2. israel is a zionist apartheid yes or no? any attempt to try to sneak with a explanation of a 3rd narrative is a lie!
that clarified my suspicion that rfk was running for president only as a false candidate, to make it seem as though these elections are actually real; i wonder how much trump is being paid to act like an upset upstart political figure?