John Mulaney Says Elon Musk Would Have Sounded Awesome in the 1990s
On paper, Tesla CEO and Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk sounds like he should be cool and likable, but Elon Musk isn’t on paper. He’s on Twitter, and he’s the biggest loser ever.
As John Mulaney lamented during tonight’s episode of his Netflix talk show Everybody's Live with John Mulaney, it wasn’t that long ago when resenting the federal government and thinking that it sucks was a cool thing that cool, normal, non-fascist people did while listening to indie music. Mulaney, who spent roughly 30 seconds of his opening monologue tonight insisting that he is a liberal person with liberal thoughts and liberal opinions about the role of the government in our lives, misses the time when everyone thought the president was a scumbag, but planes still took off and landed without crashing, vaccines saved lives and cancer researchers had funding.
We miss the 1990s, too.
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Hysterically, Mulaney suggested that, if a time-traveler from 2025 went back and described the architect of America’s social and economic downfall to an average person in the 1990s in superficial terms, they would think Musk is da bomb.
Well, many people the 2010s did, too, and look where that got them.
“I miss the days when it was the cool, fun people who were the ones that thought that government sucked,” Mulaney admitted after hastily clarifying his personal politics. “Now, we all have to act like we think government’s good because, like, worse people think the government sucks. It’s a mess.”
As for the man responsible for so much of the mess, Mulaney says that, if you strip him down to some basic facts and omit a whole bunch of treason, Musk would have been a rock star during the Clinton administration. “Honestly, if you told us in the ‘90s that there would be a man who invented an electric car and cut government spending, we’d be like, ‘Oh this sounds like a great guy!’” Mulaney said of Musk. “And then you’re like, ‘He’s also an African immigrant and on the spectrum,' and we’d be like, ‘Who is this international Forrest Gump of a fella?’”
“But it’s not the case,” Mulaney explained, stating the obvious.
Now, to clarify, Musk didn’t “invent” an electric car so much as he bought the company Tesla and the title of founder from actual inventors. And, to be extra clear, he’s only cutting government spending in the programs that actually help taxpayers, and his lucrative and dubiously acquired government contracts more than offset those savings.
But Mulaney’s point still stands that, were Musk the man whom he pretends to be, he’d be the Forrest Gump of the 1990s. It’s just a shame that Jenny has to die because Forrest defunded all the AIDS programs.
