Saturday’s edition of MS NOW’s The Weekend offered up a full-throated class-warfare kvetch over Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
Co-host Eugene Daniels grew visibly agitated as economist Justin Wolfers claimed Musk “bought” the 2024 election for Donald Trump with $250 million in campaign spending. Daniels declared the discussion made him “very angry” — not at Wolfers, but at the country for allowing it.
Wolfers argued Musk’s spending was enough to flip the election’s narrow margins in key states and left him with enough wealth to “buy” thousands more. Yet neither Daniels nor Wolfers mentioned that Kamala Harris’s campaign and aligned groups outspent Trump’s by roughly half a billion dollars, with Harris’s side topping nearly $2 billion compared to Trump’s roughly $1.45–1.5 billion.
Daniels piled on, accusing Musk of getting rich by taking business “that used to be done by the federal government.” In reality, NASA itself has estimated that partnering with SpaceX on the Commercial Crew program saved taxpayers $20–30 billion compared to the old cost-plus approach.
Co-host Jonathan Capehart joined the kvetch fest, whining about the “yawning gap between the wealthy and the rest of us”—as if he’s holding down two fast-food jobs to make ends meet. In fact, Capehart has enjoyed a string of cushy gigs, with an estimated MS NOW salary in the million-dollar range and a personal net worth of $2–5 million.
The segment’s overarching theme was classic class-warfare hand-wringing over wealth gaps. Wolfers reserved special contempt for Musk, praising other billionaires for their philanthropy but branding Musk a “clown.” If Elon’s a clown, I’m running off to join the circus.
Conspicuously absent from the outrage: Musk’s wealth creation for thousands of ordinary Americans. SpaceX’s recent IPO has turned more than 4,400 current and former employees into millionaires — including welders, cafeteria workers, and support staff. Estimates suggest that virtually all of the roughly 22,000 employees who worked there for a few years pocketed at least $100,000 in gains.
MS NOW loves to stoke resentment against successful innovators while ignoring the broad prosperity they generate. The real story isn’t oligarchs “buying” elections or stealing from NASA — it’s American enterprise delivering results that government bureaucracies never could.
Here’s the transcript.
Read Full Article: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2026/06/14/ms-nows-elon-trillionaire-meltdown-clown-who-bought-2024
