| Is there a precedent for Elon Musk? That question is at the heart of Max Chafkin’s interview with a historian who’s spent decades examining the lives of powerful American men. Plus: Andrew Rea has built a YouTube empire on pop-culture cooking, and why the US is in the middle of a class revolution. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. Every day, a new headline about Musk and Donald Trump’s alliance brings fresh questions about money and power, and how much influence a private citizen can (and should) wield on public institutions. To help make sense of it, Chafkin, a Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer, talked to David Nasaw, an emeritus professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center and the author of best-selling books chronicling the lives of robber baron Andrew Carnegie, media mogul William Randolph Hearst and the progenitor of America’s premier political dynasty, Joseph Kennedy. Some of this interview can be heard in the third episode of our Citizen Elon podcast miniseries, available now for Bloomberg subscribers and everywhere on Friday. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Businessweek: Can you tell me about your previous work and how you came to write about Musk? David Nasaw: I was astounded, interested and captivated by Carnegie, who invented the modern corporation, who was the premier industrialist inventor, genius of the 19th century. And I tried to figure out how this little guy—he was about 4 foot 10 inches tall—rose to be the richest man in the world. I wrote an overly long biography, because he was fascinating from birth to death. He didn’t want to be known as a rich man. He wanted to be known as a philanthropist and a peacemaker. He declared very early in his life that he was going to give away all his money. His wife signed the prenup agreement which said, I know I’m not going to get anything—he’s going to give away all his money, and I hope I can help him along those lines. My next biography was of William Randolph Hearst. And again, an extraordinary man. And just as Carnegie invented industry and manufacturing in the 19th century, Hearst created the media industry in the 20th century. Hearst broke all the rules. I mean, the man lived openly with his mistress, Marion Davies, while remaining married. And by the time World War II came about, 1 out of 4 Americans read his newspapers. But that wasn’t enough for him. Everybody said, stay with newspapers, you’re a newspaper publisher, and he said no. He went into magazines. And radio, and newsreels, and moving pictures. He became not only a media mogul but also a huge influence on American politics. Businessweek: When did Musk first cross your radar? And what caused you to kind of linger on him as a subject? Nasaw: When Musk bought Twitter, I was asked to write about him [in the New York Times]. He had always been there in the background. Then I was asked to compare him to my other moguls.  Musk moving into Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco on Oct. 26, 2022. Source: Getty Images Businessweek: But had you thought about that comparison before? Nasaw: I’d thought a little bit about it, because Musk was getting bigger and bigger and richer and richer and was like Carnegie. And like Hearst, branching out in a dozen directions. I mean, he wasn’t content to run one company. When he bought Twitter, in my mind, little explosions went off. And then bigger explosions. What was he doing? What was he attempting to do? Everyone said that this was a losing proposition. So I tried to figure this all out. I was captivated. I was also captivated by him because—just as my guys, Carnegie was the 19th century inventor of, you know, industrialization; and Hearst, the 20th century creator of the media landscape—Musk was moving us into an entirely new world of cybercurrencies, of artificial intelligence, of online social media platforms. And that appeared to be and was just the beginning. Businessweek: I haven’t looked in a day or two, but his wealth—it’s over $300 billion. It’s hard to think about, those numbers are so big. The only way I could conceptualize this is maybe in the scope of history. He’s one of the richest men in the history of the world. Nasaw: There are so many contradictions with this guy. He is a self-made man. He didn’t come from poverty. He came from a middle-class society background, but a dysfunctional family, if ever there were a dysfunctional family. He created himself, and he created his fortune. He was a visionary. And then he went through this metamorphosis, which was the exact opposite of Carnegie and sort of like Hearst. Carnegie begins as a Republican stalwart and becomes this peace activist. Hearst begins as a left-wing progressive and becomes a right-winger. Musk begins as a hero to people who care about the climate, people who care about creating new forms of sustainable energy. Businessweek: You wrote in the New York Times about Musk as a marketer and as somebody who’d created this image of himself—as an innovator, as a genius, maybe also kind of as a clown. Nasaw: There’s no one like him, because he is an entertainer. He’s a performer. He’s, you know, P.T. Barnum. He has this self-deprecating sense of humor that you get a sense that he’s not taking himself entirely seriously, but he is. Businessweek: So people keep saying that the things he’s done are unprecedented. The amount of money is unprecedented. The combination of media and celebrity and money and politics. The weird collisions of industry and politics. The other day when he got on the call with the president of Ukraine—maybe that’s unprecedented. How unprecedented is any of this? What actually is new here, and what are the things that he’s doing that other very powerful industrialists and media moguls have done?  Musk, campaigning for Trump in Pittsburgh, awarded a town hall attendee $1 million as part of his PAC’s giveaway. Photographer: Michael Swensen/Getty Images Nasaw: He’s a unicorn. He’s sui generis. Let me take but one example. He isn’t the first rich man to fund a candidate in the hopes of getting a quid, or a quo for his quids, or however you say it—getting some sort of payback. The money he spent is probably less than George Soros money. The money he spent is probably less than the Koch brothers in their support of other candidates. What’s different is that this isn’t dark money. He’s out front saying this is what I’m doing, and this is why I’m doing it. And that’s unprecedented. In the past, huge donors to campaigns who sought influence thereafter kept it quiet. There was a reason—especially after Citizens United, which gave the rich and corporations carte blanche to spend money on PACs—they kept it quiet. His is anything but dark. I mean, it glows. It sparkles. And he’s proud of it. That’s new. The other thing that’s new is that this guy is more presumptuous than any business leader I’ve seen. Businessweek: When you think about these historical parallels, what do they offer as far how does this movie end? If Elon somehow stumbles, how does he stumble? Nasaw: It doesn’t end well if we want to look at history. As a historian, I can’t predict the future very well, but that doesn’t stop me from chattering on about it. I think that Carnegie’s goal for the last 20 years of his life was to prevent World War I from happening. And he devoted money, time, effort to doing just that. Didn’t work. Hearst wanted to sustain his media empire and defeat Franklin Roosevelt. He ended up being virtually bankrupt, having to sell off his antiques and watch Roosevelt win election after election after election. Joseph P. Kennedy wouldn’t shut up about World War II and about the need for Americans not to get into the war.  Musk and Trump on Tuesday at the launch of a SpaceX Starship rocket in Texas. Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images I can’t see into the future, but I don’t think the Musk-Trump bromance is going to last forever. I think it’s going to break up over any number of issues. China tariffs, electric cars, we can go on and on. There are underlying differences between these two guys. And when Musk tries to get a Republican Congress to cut, he’s talked about $2 trillion cuts. That’s one-third of all federal spending. That’s going to cut into defense, Social Security, Medicare. And the Republican congressmen aren’t going to go along. Businessweek: You seem like you like your biographical subjects—your three powerful men. Do you like Musk, too? Nasaw: I have affection for my three guys. I don’t have the same affection for Elon Musk. I think, in the long term, Elon Musk is more dangerous, is smarter, and has amassed a kind of political and cultural power that no individual, especially an individual who doesn’t play by any of social rules, should have.  Nasaw is the author of, most recently, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons From World War to Cold War. Photographer: Michael Ostuni/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images Listen to Citizen Elon: What Elon Musk Might Want From America. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, iHeart and the Bloomberg Terminal | 
