Elon Musk Tells The Economist He 'Got Carried Away' With Trump, Denies Backing the Far Right

Elon Musk sat down for a 90-minute interview with The Economist's editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, recorded at a Tesla factory in Texas and published by the outlet's video platform, The Insider. Asked about his 2024 alliance with Donald Trump, which included roughly $200 million in campaign spending and a subsequent stint running the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk didn't dodge. "I got carried away, frankly," he told Beddoes, according to Breitbart's account of the interview. He's said versions of this before. In December, on a podcast with Katie Miller, Musk suggested his DOGE experiment was only partially successful and that in hindsight he "would have basically worked on my companies" instead of restructuring federal agencies. Musk and the Trump administration split bitterly after his DOGE tenure, a rift Breitbart describes as only partially healed since. The 'far right' exchange The interview's most viral moment had nothing to do with DOGE. According to Ground News and Dave Rubin's account of the exchange, Beddoes pressed Musk on why the public feels uneasy about his political influence, telling him that overreach into Western politics is "why people loathe you" and asking about his support for "the far right, the fringe people." Musk pushed back hard. "I support the normal people, what you call the far right, falsely," he said, according to Dave Rubin's report. When Beddoes asked who he considered normal, Musk answered, "Yes!" and rattled off examples: secure borders, safe cities, sensible government spending. He then challenged her to say which of those was "far right." Musk went further, arguing that speeches from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on immigration a decade or so ago would be branded extremist today if attributed to Trump. "I'd like to admonish you and the media for the absurd characterization of the far right," he said, telling producers, "Keep this part in!" Positions on border enforcement and public safety that were mainstream in both parties as recently as the Obama era have, in some media coverage, been recategorized as extremist purely based on who's saying them now. Whether that shift reflects genuine radicalization of the policies themselves, or just a relabeling of the same policies once a different politician adopted them, is a real and unresolved question. The counter-argument, which Beddoes was gesturing at even if the sources don't quote her spelling it out fully, is that Musk's own X activity, including reposts and engagement with fringe accounts and European nationalist figures, has drawn scrutiny independent of his stated policy views. Cryptorank's coverage, citing The Economist interview, notes Musk framed his position as defending "the West collectively" and rejecting accusations rather than addressing specific instances critics point to. None of the four sources here document a specific X post or account Beddoes was referencing, so that half of the exchange remains vague on both sides. GB News host Matt Goodwin, reacting to the same interview per Ground News' roundup, argued the term "far-right" has been overused to the point of losing meaning, while his guest Cai Wilshaw countered that the political right does the same thing with "radical left." That disagreement, aired on a UK network sympathetic to Musk's framing, is itself evidence the definitional fight isn't settled even among commentators who'd otherwise agree with him. Predictions on AI and work Separate from the politics, Musk used the interview to lay out his timeline for artificial intelligence, according to Breitbart. He said he swung from "exhilaration to terror" in a single day contemplating AI's trajectory, and predicted that within five years, AI systems could exceed the combined intelligence of the entire human race. Within ten years, he said, robots in workplaces will make human labor optional rather than necessary. Musk described plans to merge his AI venture with SpaceX to build systems capable of handling cognitive work like software engineering, while Tesla builds humanoid robots for physical labor. These are Musk's own predictions, not verified outcomes or industry consensus figures, and his track record on timelines, including self-driving car promises made annually since 2015, warrants treating them as forecasts rather than facts. What's unresolved Neither Musk's carried-away admission nor his far-right rebuttal came with much elaboration beyond what's quoted above. He didn't specify which of his political moves he regrets beyond DOGE, and he didn't name the X posts or associations Beddoes was alluding to. The interview, as covered across these outlets, leaves both threads—the DOGE regret and the far-right dispute—as claims for the public to weigh rather than settled matters. Whether Musk's political involvement changes in practice, or whether this is simply another instance of him revisiting the same regret he voiced in December without altering his actual behavior on X, is something only his next several months of activity will answer.