Interview · moment 12 of 28
Elon Musk's Three Contributions: Ground Game Money, Deconstructing the Administrative State
from Steve Bannon Emergency Podcast | The Tim Dillon Show #433 · #433
4 min
Guest
Bannon credits Elon Musk with backing the 2024 ground game with $250 million, understanding the need to dismantle the four-million-person administrative state apparatus, and details how the permanent government actually functions.
- Tim credits Elon as the first oligarch with an engineering brain to recognize Trump's movement as MAGA plus low-information voters plus pandemic-redpilled wellness moms.
- Elon sat down in spring and summer 2024 to work through the math of a ground game, then wrote $250 million in checks—$50 million a month for five months.
- Trump likely would have won without Elon's ground game funding, but the outcome wouldn't have been clear on election night and probably wouldn't have delivered 53 Senate seats.
- Elon immediately grasped the deconstruction of the administrative state in a way nobody else has—understanding the permanent fourth branch of government that runs regardless of who's president.
- When a president takes office, they control about 4,000 appointees, but govern a 10-million-person apparatus that costs 6.5 to 7 trillion dollars yearly and oversees 60 to 70 trillion in assets.
- The apparatus is so out of control that it must be deconstructed and made smaller to approach a balanced budget, requiring tough programmatic decisions.