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Better Offline

Musk's Uncharitable Charity ft. David Fahrenthold

Better Offline

Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Technology

4.6688 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A New York Times investigation revealed this week that Musk's $7 billion "Musk Foundation" regularly fails to donate enough money to get its multi-billion dollar tax break. Ed brings on Pullitzer-prize winning reporter David Fahrenthold of the New York Times to walk through the extremely questionable world of Elon Musk's non-profit.

Link to the New York Times story: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.5

Guaranteed Human.

0:06.6

CallZone Media.

0:09.1

Hello, welcome to Better Offline.

0:11.1

I'm Ed Zetron.

0:16.2

Since 2020, Elon Musk has ceded his charitable foundation, an innovatively called the Musk Foundation,

0:29.3

with billions of dollars of Tesla stock, which has netted him a multi-billion dollar tax break.

0:34.1

Yet a massive New York Times investigation by reporters Ryan Mack and David Farenthold

0:39.0

has found that the Musk Foundation has failed to donate the minimum amount of money required

0:43.8

by law to get that tax break. The investigation found that Musk had not hired any staff

0:49.2

for the foundation and that its board was made up of Musk and two volunteers, one of whom the Times reports

0:54.9

works an average of six minutes a week on a charitable operation with billions of dollars of dry

0:59.7

powder. And Musk's donations regularly benefited causes related to his own interests, like a school

1:05.9

inside a SpaceX compound, and a UN program to help countries find internet for rural schools where two of them

1:12.6

became Starlink customers.

1:14.4

And Starlink is, of course, Musk's wireless internet company.

1:18.9

And while Elon Musk initially promised to help, and I quote, fund fixing the water in any

1:24.0

house in Flint, Michigan that has water contamination above FDA levels, he would

1:28.6

only end up donating about a million dollars to local schools, installing water filters and buying

1:33.2

laptops for students. While this is unquestionably a good thing, he failed to do much more than that.

1:39.6

All he did was send a Tesla goon down there to offer, and I'm not kidding, rides around the parking lot in his car.

1:46.8

Since the middle of 2019, the Times reports that Musk has done little more for Flint than that.

...

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