Page 28 of 107 Days

There were many long-standing friends there, but two of the faces I was happiest to see were Amara’s and Leela’s. They dashed into my arms, and I hugged and loved them up. It had been only a couple of weeks since I’d waved goodbye to them from my helicopter, but so much had happened.

When Nancy Pelosi, vivid in a fuchsia pantsuit, walked onstage to introduce me, the audience stood in applause.

She had been the most skilled House Speaker since Tip O’Neill.

Branded a “San Francisco liberal,” her opponents soon learned that she was genetically a Baltimore girl: steely, pragmatic, and resilient.

Everyone in that room believed she’d been a factor in changing the fate of this campaign.

In her pointed public statements and in private, she’d brought some realism to Joe and his inner circle, forcing them to confront the dwindling money and tanking polls.

Before my speech, I had a meet and greet with some high-level donors.

I pulled aside one of the most long-standing and generous, a leader in Silicon Valley.

My head close to his ear, I said, “I’m concerned about Musk.

Are you guys on top of it?” I wanted reassurance that the tech people who supported democracy were putting resources into combating mis- and disinformation.

We needed a counterforce to whatever might be brewing, and I knew that the campaign I’d inherited didn’t have the skill set or the resources for it.

The people I knew in Silicon Valley had a much better grasp of how deep the roots went, how far they spread.

Elon Musk had set off my spidey senses long before his MAGAfication and his endorsement of Trump.

Both SpaceX and Tesla sprang to life in California, and millions of California taxpayers had helped the companies prosper.

But when Democrats tried to tie electric car subsidies to workplace standards—Tesla had been sued for labor violations, including racial discrimination and suppressing union organizing efforts—Musk began a rightward pivot.

It accelerated during Covid, when he refused to close the Tesla plant to protect the health of his workers.

When he moved his operations to Texas, he claimed it was because the state offered more “freedom,” which was the height of hypocrisy, since Texas, with its draconian abortion ban and the privacy-shredding policies around it, violated the most basic of human liberties.

Musk is a talented entrepreneur. But there are genius engineers behind the cars and rockets, such as Tesla’s former longtime chief technical officer, J. B. Straubel, who deserve just as much credit.

Despite what I think of Musk, I believe Joe Biden made a mistake in not inviting him to the White House in 2021 for an event promoting our electric vehicle policy.

I shared this view with his team. Behind the president on the lawn that day were electric Fords, Chevys, Jeeps.

American-made Teslas, then the world’s most innovative and successful electric cars, were nowhere to be seen.

Biden, loyal to the UAW, was sending a message about Musk’s anti-union stance.

But as president of the United States, if you are convening the nation’s manufacturers of electric vehicles and the biggest player in the field is not there, it simply doesn’t make sense. Musk never forgave it.

Since he had acquired Twitter and sacked its content moderators and fact-checkers, the platform had become a den of conspiracy theories and alt-right bile.

It was also, increasingly, Musk’s personal megaphone for boosting Trump and denigrating me.

Musk had announced that he would interview Trump live on X the next evening.

He would deliver Trump the opportunity to spew his lies, free of fact-checking.

And in the days that followed, he would deliver a whole lot more.