Why were Musk other tech CEOs in China with Trump

Nearly a year ago, President Trump and Elon Musk's relationship was basically in tatters, as Musk was posting about the president appearing in the Epstein files, which we didn't know about at the time, also calling for a third Trump impeachment. That was when the president responded by saying that Elon Musk had, quote, lost his mind. Well, now the two of them are back together in Beijing tonight, as Elon Musk was seen taking in the sights, twirling around with his phone as he waited for the president alongside of America's other top CEOs. He was also seen in that photo op with Apple CEO Tim Cook, as he also walked around with his six-year-old son at those high-level meetings that have been playing out in Beijing. Joining me now to talk about all of this is the tech journalist and CNN contributor Kara Swisher. And Kara, just first off, what's your view been of this visit and the trillions of dollars of net worth that are accompanying President Trump? Well, he took 17 CEOs and just three diplomats on the plane. I mean, it's interesting. It feels like a chamber of commerce meeting to try to drum up business for the United States when there's some very serious issues, as you just noted earlier about Taiwan and some other things that Xi was there in a very strategic way. This felt more like you want to buy some planes, but that's okay. That's one way to do diplomacy, I suppose. And Elon being there, you know, breaking up is hard to do, I guess. And so they're back together because the money and the convenience and the things Elon wants, especially as he moves into this next period where he's going to take SpaceX public and stuff like that. So he wants to cooperate with the current administration. Yeah, I mean, and China's the most important market outside the United States for Tesla. He's got a big factory there, makes half of their cars. Do you think that is what has played a role in the mending of this relationship between the two of them? Because he wants to be able to go with the president on trips such as this? Well, everything is transactional with these people. Every one of them on that plane was transactional, whether it was the NVIDIA CEO or Tim Cook or anyone else. These are people with different things they want from the president and from China. In case of Apple, they have extensive consumers. They have extensive amounts of consumers and creating stuff there. Obviously, NVIDIA wants to sell these chips into China, and they used to have a pretty big market share. Now it's very low and they want to get back in there. Elon has all manner of different things he wants. And so and Boeing, of course, selling jets to China and things like that. And so they want to be there. And that makes sense for them to be there from a financial point of view. I'm not sure if that, you know, someone called it summitry. I'm not sure anything got done, but maybe we'll have another summit. And that's always a good thing to keep talking with China because we need to. And one of the things that disappointed me is they didn't have a talk on the kind of things we want to do around A.I. the way we did maybe around nuclear weapons. But that was a that was a group of A.I. cheerleaders. So you're not going to have anything resembling discussions about safety or anything else. It also I mean, it's a reminder of the stark contrast in the first Trump term and how the business community treated the president then and what we're seeing now. I mean, so many people were critical of that inauguration seating chart. But this is kind of evidence of probably a big driving factor for that. So they could go on trips like this. Well, as I said, it's a coin operated presidency. And they figured out very quickly that you put money in and you get stuff out like Andreessen Horowitz spending the most money towards the midterms. They understand it's a very small amount of money to spend one hundred and fifteen million dollars because they get so much more. They get billions and billions out of it. And so they sort of figured out it's a cheap way to get what you want. And that's what they're doing. And they will they will continue to do that because shareholders, as I've said over and over again, are their biggest goal. And that's fine, I suppose. That's what they're doing. But it's pretty explicit. Well, you mentioned Nvidia and tonight Reuters is reporting that the United States has cleared 10 Chinese firms to buy their second most powerful chip, which obviously could be a huge opportunity to make money. But I mean, even Republicans in Washington have raised concerns about which Chinese companies are getting access to what given the competition that's playing out here. Yeah, I recall it was Donald Trump who said that and was absolutely correct is the one thing I agreed with him on in the first term was, you know, the dangers of China getting our our most important technology. And their argument is they're going to build it themselves. And they sure are. But we're still ahead here. And you shouldn't you know, there's I heard the arguments on the other side. And it's just he wants to get in these markets. And so Jensen Wang is going to do whatever he can to be very close to Trump, including racing up to Alaska to get on the get on the plane with him. Yeah, Trump. There have been reports that he wasn't going and Trump made clear that he did have a seat. Who cares? Who cares? Can I ask you? Because one thing that I'm interested in has been playing out in all of this is this trial that's underway with Elon Musk and OpenAI and Microsoft and Sam Altman. Both Sam Altman and Elon Musk testified during the trial. A judge actually told Elon Musk he was not excused to leave, but he did not attend. He's not attending the closing arguments because he's in China. What do you make of whether that will have any impact on this? I don't know, because the judge will be the one deciding on remedies. So he doesn't listen. It's just like Trump. Remember when Trump did things he wasn't supposed to do in the trial in the courtroom? Elon just doesn't play by his own rules and he's about to become the world's first trillionaire. And so he's going to really play by his own rules going forward. You know, whatever. He's going to break another rule and no one's going to do anything about it. And so, you know, I think he'll put in the mind of the judge who seemed irritated by him many times during the trial. I mean, this is the strangest trial. It's the stupidest trial and makes AI talk about making brand AI look idiotic. And I think I just said something on one of the social media thing. It's the stupidest trial of people that didn't get hugged enough as children, like the kind of pettiness and the anger between them and the name calling. It feels very playground and it certainly doesn't make me feel good about the people running these AI companies. Most people think the jury will decide and then the judge will decide remedies. Probably most people think Elon's the underdog here. You know, we'll see. They were pointing fingers at each other. Musk was calling Sam a liar and and and vice versa. And so who does the jury not like more? Probably Musk would be my guess, given all the other antics he's pulled over the last year. Is there anything in the trial that has surprised you or as you've watched it? I just how how petty and small these people are, whether it was, you know, the woman who had children with Musk not telling the board about the children, it might be some possible disclosure you might want to give to a board or the diary of Greg Brockman where he's just like mulling things. I think what struck me so much was the tininess of these people, the tiny, petty silliness that these are the richest and most powerful people on earth and they're like wildly unhappy. And that was just an insight I had. I was like, wow, they really are just a group like people I wouldn't want to have at a dinner party, I would say. And, you know, and it's kind of silly because there's really serious issues around A.I. and and to spend time doing this trial because you you walked away from a company and now you're mad about it seems like a waste of time and money for certainly the judge, the jury. But these people just can't get through all their ridiculous drama, whether it's at the White House or the Defense Department or whatever. And this is Silicon Valley acting like the toddlers. I have always thought many of them, too many of them to be. How significant is Elon Musk's presence in China, both in terms of his relationship with President Trump and also what it signals for the world economy? Well, I mean, I mean, Anderson, if you are the world's richest man spending the days it takes to get to China, I mean, that's literally the most expensive commodity anyone on earth has to sacrifice. And so it means something that he is there. It also means something he's not back in Oakland, where I am, where he's awaiting the verdict in the Sam Altman lawsuit. The fact that he's there really has to do with, you know, for all of these CEOs in attendance, Xi Jinping does not need them as much as they need him at the moment. I mean, Musk himself is in a position of trying to get so many different things out of China at a time when his companies are in a way working against one another. China is panicked about Starlink. It doesn't like the satellite communications company that he makes, even as he's trying to buy solar panel manufacturing equipment to the tune of about three billion dollars from the from the country. And China, you know, has a nationalized policy. It can make a choice about all of this stuff. And I would argue that Musk isn't even the most exposed there. I mean, poor Tim Cook entirely owes his business to China. And so all those people on that dais there are not there for the photo op. They're not there for the chicken. They are there because their companies need them to be there. I wonder what you make of Elon Musk's behavior that we're seeing, you know, taking pictures with Tim Cook, walking around with his his young son. There's no way to really decipher, obviously, what's going on on his mind. But during a trip like this, what would he be doing? Who is he? Would he be meeting with? This is my favorite one, right? He's mugging for the camera as he's taking a photo with Tim Cook there. Right. I mean, yeah, I don't know about you. Like when I take international trips and I wind up at that dinner at the end of it, my head is on the table. This guy's pretty animated for someone who's just been traveling the world. And that's a very different guy, I would say, than the person that I watched on the stand in Oakland, who's biting his lip, clearly displeased to be there. And so, you know, again, I think he is a man moved by many things. He also brought his son with him. That poor kid had to make the trip as well. And, you know, perhaps that's a move to ingratiate himself with the Chinese. It's a famously family culture, you know, a family friendly culture. But boy, it's a it's a that's a long trip for a little kid. And and Musk is a is a he's not the typical tourist dad, I would say. Trump spoke of the CEOs traveling with him as paying respects to China. How much do you think the interests of those tech companies and those CEOs align or not align with President Trump's goals for the trip? Well, I mean, Tim Cook is in an impossible position, right, because he saw, you know, three billion dollars worth of tariff payments come out of Apple because of Trump's tariffs. And then even when the Supreme Court struck down those tariffs, he's been hit with new ones that in a way put his company in an entirely worse situation. At the same time, he needs China to make everything for Apple. That's why that company has the incredible profit margins it does. So that's an incredible problem. Jensen Huang is there. He's the CEO of NVIDIA, which makes all of these cutting edge AI chips. You know, he said in an interview recently that the market share that he had in terms of selling AI chips to China went from 95 percent to zero because of President Trump's policies. And so in as much as these guys are all there in part to, you know, pay fealty to Xi Jinping and absolutely need to please that guy, they also have to please Trump. And I'm sure in the time that they have him on Air Force One, they're going to be working him as hard as they can.