Brian

Just an Aussie battler fighting the right

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Imagine doing an interview in which the interviewer asks a few semi-tough questions and you, the richest man in the world, has this whiny authoritarian meltdown after the interview airs.

People worship this guy? Seriously?

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

Thank you, Dave. I appreciate you reaching out to ask what you got wrong.

The clip we’re discussing is less than 90 seconds long. What I’m about to do demonstrates Brandolini's Law: where the amount of energy required to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than that required to produce it. Or, in this case, it takes around 600 words to correct 90 seconds of your economic fan fiction.

1⃣ Between 0 and 30 seconds

You begin by confusing government debt with the Future Fund and appear to suggest that the Future Fund can't exist along side Govt debt.

They’re different things. One can exist without the other, and in Australia they do.

Australia's Future Fund was established in 2006 with an initial govt investment of about $60B. Its first annual report, in 2008, showed assets of around $64 billion - not the $100B you suggested.

Then, at around 27 seconds, you talk about the Future Fund as though it ceased to exist (you used the word 'had' as in past tense).

It still very much exists Dave. In fact, it's grown every single year since it was created. Today it's worth around $270 billion, or over $330 billion once the other funds under management are included (eg Medical Research / Housing Australia / Drought).

So before we're even 30 seconds into the clip you've managed to confuse government debt, the Future Fund, its size, and whether it still exists.

That’s a lot of economic history to get wrong in under 30 seconds.

2⃣ Around 32 seconds

You then claim Kevin Rudd used the Future Fund to "flush money through the economy".

Again, that’s simply false. The Future Fund wasn't used to fund the stimulus. It wasn't used to build school halls. It wasn’t used for any of the things you’re describing. In your defence, you do briefly flirt with the possibility that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. Sadly, it was a very short-lived relationship.

The GFC stimulus was funded through government borrowing.

For context, construction approvals were collapsing, more than a million Australians worked in construction, and the objective was to stop unemployment exploding during the worst global financial crisis in generations.

You're welcome to argue that was the wrong policy (but you didn't). You’re not entitled to rewrite where the money came from.

3⃣ At about 44 seconds

You say, "I might be wrong".

I concede you were correct during this part of the video.

4⃣ From 44 seconds onwards

You make a series of broad claims about the GFC response.

Yes, government debt increased. That's true.

What you omit is that Australia's stimulus largely went directly to households rather than primarily rescuing financial institutions, as happened in many other countries.

The aim was simple: keep people spending, businesses operating and Australians employed while global demand collapsed. It's known as counter-cyclical fiscal policy.

Whether you agree with it politically is your business.

The specific outcome for Australia isn't contested though - Australia was one of only two economies in the OECD to avoid recession during the Global Financial Crisis. There's no reality where that wasn’t a comparatively impressive outcome.

The money didn’t need to "trickle down". The entire point was that it started at the bottom.

5⃣ Government debt

Throughout the clip (and in life generally) you repeatedly return to the theme Labor is responsible for Australia’s debt (which btw is comparatively low).

Here are the actual numbers of net debt added by each Govt since 2007.

> Rudd/Gillard: about $190 billion over six years.
> Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison: about $366 billion over nine years, around two-thirds of which pre-dated COVID.
> Albanese: about $75 billion over four years.

Those figures don’t support the story you've been telling people. And that’s really the issue.

This isn't about getting one date wrong or misremembering one statistic. Nearly every claim in your 90-second clip turns out to be either wrong or misleading.

If you're going to publicly lecture Australians about economic history, the bare minimum expectation is that you’ve first acquainted yourself with it.

Because once the errors have been pointed out, as they have been to you multiple times, every repetition stops looking like an accident and starts looking like a strategy.

Given your very public coffee with Angus Taylor last week, perhaps people are entitled to ask what that strategy might be.

[PresidentLinkin @Linkin1319]

This is good though. Many people wish for his death. I don’t. I want to watch the dementia strip away his façade. His dupe. His grift. His inhumanity. And I want MAGA to see the perverted scourge they have inflicted upon this country. Our country.

[Vivian @MxVivianWulf]

Interview went badly... Can't be my fault. Must be the interviewer.

[evan loves worf @esjesjesj]

He really sounds like a 12 year old here

[Alex Cole @acnewsitics]

She has been a citizen longer than you have, if immigration doesn’t make her a citizen then what does that say about you?

[Philip Morrissey @PhilMorrissey79]

One of the weirdest and least charismatic individuals alive. How he developed such a cult of sycophants is beyond me.

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

The time that Elon Musk got told it exactly as it is.

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

I'll tell you why people despise Elon:

It's because he punches DOWN.

He's the wealthiest man on the planet, he has a quarter billion Twitter followers (mostly botted, for sure), and he uses his immense power and influence to punch down.

He deprived poor kids around the world of food, resulting in thousands of deaths. He hired a bunch of snot-nosed kids who cut and slashed and didn't have a clue what they were doing, f*cked shit up, and have not an ounce of remorse for what they did.

He stirs up alarmist racial animus -- he loves to post videos of Black and White people fighting, trying to frame it as a race war that's happening now. It's not.

He claims he's not racist because he f*cks a woman of color. Racists LOVE to lean on that bullshit.

You know who else f*cked women of color?
SLAVE OWNERS. You think THEY weren't racist?

And you know what? He and his family lived a privileged life as white South Africans under apartheid. Look it up.

If I had Elon's wealth, I would have already solved world hunger, and had more money left over than my great grandkids could spend in 20 lifetimes.

I would be a damn HERO. I'd solve homelessness too.

But that thin-skinned jackass used his wealth to basically curate the world's largest echo chamber to feed his goddamn ego with his groveling, soulless Muskite fans. He's trump with way more money and a slightly larger vocabulary.

This woman did a GREAT job interviewing Elon. She skewered him, triggered the hell out of Mr. Moneybags. The guy who "doesn't care," he did the old "No, YOU are" arguing method. Real mature.

He couldn't stand that this woman, who he looked at as beneath him, had the audacity not to quiver and bow to his pseudo "greatness."

He's a fucking TRILLIONAIRE whose cuts directly caused the deaths of THOUSANDS of third world children.

When I was a kid, and was about to throw away uneaten food, my Mom would say "Do you know how many kids are starving in Africa?"

As a kid, I was expected to have more empathy for starving kids in Africa THAN THE RICHEST MAN ON THE PLANET has.

He shouldn't do these interviews any more, not if he doesn't want to be completely reviled. He looks like a jackass.

And it makes NO sense: his cars, the Tesla, were meant to appeal to people like me, the Libs, the progressives, people who actually believe that climate change is a thing!

What does he do? Antagonizes the majority of us, having us look at other EVs like the Rivian or whatever.

And I don't give a shit if Space Karen sees this. He's been crushing my signal strength ever since he bought this app, despite his declaring the return of so-called "free speech."

The world's worst secret is that he's been propping up right wing accounts and throttling the rest of us.

Honestly, I saw this video earlier today, and I barely skimmed over it. I haven't normally paid much attention to what he does. I don't follow him on Twitter, and didn't even care about his interview.

But what struck me was how smug and entitled he was in the interview, like he couldn't believe she was talking to him like that. And then I remembered how all those kids died because of him.

Anyway, THIS is how you interview power: be fearless, unafraid, come prepared with facts, push them all the way back. Elon looked like he wanted to jump out of his chair and hit that woman.

BRAVO to her.
We need more journalists like her.

And f*ck the Epstein class.

[Georgia Coley @artwithinpod]

I truly believe this guy is in, like, the bottom tier of intelligence among human beings. like that's an astronomical idiot talking. I don't even think I *know* anyone who is this stupid. he is living proof that making money does not make you smart or interesting.

[Abier @abierkhatib]

No hyperbole here, this is literally our reality.

[ADAM @adamemedia1]

So in the MAGA brain:

Kidnapping a foreign leader 🇻🇪 who is NOT a war criminal from his own country = GOOD

Arresting a foreign leader 🇮🇱 who IS a war criminal while he’s inside your country = BAD

Have I got that right?

[@ratlimit @ratlimit]

Conservatives are like: This image, which I had to make with AI, says a lot about reality

[Brett Meiselas @BMeiselas]

lots of reporters suddenly worried about slipping into communism but strangely f*cking quiet about slipping into fascism

[Carljob 🇵🇸 🇮🇪 @bornposting]

genuinely perhaps the most failed rebranding in history, everyone still calls it twitter unless you're a mega chud

[Ilhan Omar @IlhanMN]

The idiot who runs our country says this but doesn’t have the courage or evidence to come after me. This should tell you how low IQ he is. Trump is who needs to get the hell out of our country because he is destroying it and making us the laughing stock of the world.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

Trump ends his over hour long speech by putting a Trump 2028 hat on his head.

This speech demonstrated what we all know. Trump is a small, mean, demented man. A sad excuse for a president and a piss poor reflection of the morons who support him.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

He literally said he knows about Venezuela because he knew a Miss Venezuela.
I mean, how 77 million people voted for this man will never make sense to me. Beyond embarrassing.

[Negan @Roger_Negan]

This

[Donald Trump Portfolio Tracker @TrumpsPortfolio]

February: Trump buys $1–5 million in Dell stock.

May: “Go out and buy a Dell!”

Then: Pentagon signs a $9.7 BILLION deal with Dell.

July: “Go out and buy a Dell!” (again)

The President bought millions in Dell stock, then stood at a White House podium, twice, telling Americans to go buy Dell computers.

Dell stock is up 235% this year.

In a functioning democracy that’s called securities fraud. Here it’s called Monday.