‘Politics is a blood sport’: Elon Musk tells Nikhil Kamath on WTF podcast, says tried to stop Trump tariff, defends DOGE
Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath conducted a surprise interview with the world’s richest man Elon Musk on the popular WTF Podcast about “business, consciousness, family, money, artificial intelligence and how the future might evolve.”
The video, published on Nikhil Kamath’s official YouTube channel titled ‘Elon Musk: A Different Conversation with Nikhil Kamath’ on November 30, has crossed 2,950,773 views, more than 1,32,000 likes and close to 11,200 comments.
Elon Musk discussed philosophy, investing, artificial intelligence (AI), technology, and how he feels about restrictions on business, among other topics. Kamath also questioned him about Donald Trump’s administration, specifically his work as chief of the Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
‘I tried to advise Donald Trump against tariffs’
Speaking to Nikhil Kamath about his attitude towards tariffs, Elon Musk said that he tried to dissuade US President Donald Trump from the measure but failed. He explained his reasons: “In general, free trade is better, more efficient. Tariffs tend to distort markets.”
“The President (Donald Trump) has made it clear that he loves tariffs. You know, I tried to dissuade him from that aspect, but I was unsuccessful,” he added.
Elon Musk: ‘Best to stay away from politics’
Nikhil Kamath also asked Elon Musk about the “relationship between business and politics” and referenced a story about the genius painter-sculptor Michaelangelo, who, while sculpting David, was told by a politician that his nose was too big. So the artist pretended to do as he was told, but didn’t change anything, and the politician walked away satisfied.
The billionaire did not seem very happy with politics after serving directly in the government, saying: “Not everything needs politics. -Yes. I think, when you reach a certain scale, politics finds you. I realized that when I get involved in politics in general, it ends badly. Then I say: “I probably shouldn’t do this. “I must do less than this,” that is my conclusion.”
When asked if this was true of all businessmen, Musk replied: “Yes, probably. I mean, politics is a bloody sport, you know? If you get into politics, they’re going for the jugular. So it’s best to avoid politics as much as possible.”
What did Elon Musk learn from DOGE?
When asked what DOGE taught him, Elon Musk described it as a “very interesting side quest” where he “had the opportunity to see a lot of the inner workings of government.”
He also defended the work done by DOGE, adding: “There’s been a lot of efficiencies. Some of them are very simple, like adding requirements for federal payments that any payment must have an assigned congressional payment code and a comment field with things in it. My estimate is that it probably saves $100 billion a year, even $200 billion.”
“A lot of the things DOGE did were common sense things that would be normal for any organization that cares about fiscal responsibility. That’s a lot of what was done. But it turns out that when you stop payments for fraud and waste, the scammers don’t admit it. In fact, they start yelling all kinds of nonsense, saying, ‘You’re stopping basic payments to people in need.’ But you’re not,” he added.
