Politics
This Silicon Valley founder broke up with Elon Musk. He has a warning for Donald Trump.
SAN FRANCISCO — A former longtime friend of Elon Musk has a word of caution for President Donald Trump about the tech mogul: He doesn’t really move on.
Philip Low, an award-winning neuroscientist who partnered with the late, legendary cosmologist Stephen Hawking as a test subject, learned that the hard way in 2021 when he fired Musk, one of his early investors, from the advisory board of the Silicon Valley startup he founded.
Over an hour-long interview, Low weaved something of a psychological portrait of his former adviser, casting him as obsessive, prone to seeking revenge, power hungry and in constant search of dominance. He suggested Musk aims to explore every available avenue to establish competition with and ultimately overshadow bitter rivals. Low has known him for 14 years but doesn’t believe Musk has matured over time, and he’s convinced he never will.
Though the two continued to speak for years after Low fired him, Low felt that Musk carried a grudge and their bond was permanently altered. It finally snapped in January when Low joined other critics in accusing the billionaire on social media of performing Nazi salutes at Trump’s inaugural rally. Musk brushed off the public backlash as “sooo” tired.
“I’ve had my share of blowouts with Elon over the years,” Low told Blue Light News in a rare interview since Musk’s ugly spat with Trump. “Knowing Elon the way I know him, I do think he’s going to do everything to damage the president.”
Musk did not respond to multiple requests for comment directed to him and his businesses X, Tesla and SpaceX. A spokesperson for his super PAC, America PAC, declined to comment.
Musk and Trump’s made-for-TV breakup erupted earlier this month over the president’s megabill that is still moving through Congress. Complete with threats, nonstop X posts and conspiracy-laced insults, their feud hit a peak after Trump mused about canceling the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s government contracts.
In response, Musk unloaded on the social media platform he owns by trashing the president’s megabill, floating support of a third party, chiding him for “ingratitude,” taking credit for his election win and even insinuating in a now-deleted post that records of the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “have not been made public” because Trump is in them.
(While it has long been public that Trump and other prominent figures are referenced in documents released in cases surrounding Epstein, Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.)
Both sides now say tensions have cooled. The White House is eager to move on, with Trump telling reporters he’ll keep Starlink internet and wishing Musk well. Musk, for his part, admitted some of his posts got out of hand and offered an apology a week later.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement, “Blue Light News’s fixation on another palace intrigue non-story is laughable and fundamentally unserious. The President is focused on Making America Great Again by securing our border, turning the economy around, and pursuing peace around the globe.”
But Low, who considers himself a political independent, said that Trump and the American public shouldn’t be fooled. Simply put: Any reconciliation with Musk will be “purely cosmetic” and transactional.
“He has been humiliated,” Low, 45, said of his old friend. “The whole idea that Elon is going to be on his side and help woo Congress and invest in election campaigns for right-wing judges — Elon might do all of that, but deep down, it’s over.”
Low has observed that Trump, on the other hand, “tends to make up with his former sparring partners like [Steve] Bannon a bit more easily than Elon does,” though the president is known for returning to his grievances as well.
As he tells it, Musk and Low became fast friends after first meeting in 2011 at a social occasion in Paris. Their relationship deepened over late nights in Los Angeles — where Musk lived at the time — spent hanging out, attending each other’s parties, texting frequently and trading stories about personal struggles.
Musk asked to invest in the company Low built around a non-invasive brain monitoring device used to detect conditions like sleep apnea and neurological disorders. He participated in NeuroVigil’s 2015 funding round and joined its advisory board. Low had already gained attention as a young innovator, launched a NASA satellite lab and demoed how his technology could translate Hawking’s brain waves into speech.
Musk gave Low some pointers as the neuroscientist was preparing to visit the White House for the first time, as a guest of former President Barack Obama. “He said ‘he’s a human being like anybody else,’” Low recounted. “He views Trump sort of the same way, just a human being.”
During Trump’s first term, as Musk was also grappling with how to balance Tesla’s business interests against policy disagreements with the administration, Low returned the advice and recommended he step away from White House advisory councils he served on to protect the automaker’s brand. Musk ultimately did in 2017 after Trump ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
A few years later, in 2021, Musk was looking to pull out of another business arrangement. He wanted off NeuroVigil’s advisory board. Instead of letting him resign, Low said he fired Musk, which prevented him from exercising his stock options to hurt NeuroVigil.
“Let’s cut ties here,” Low wrote in an email message to Musk at the time, viewed by Blue Light News. Musk by then had launched his brain implant company Neuralink and had long been dreaming of colonizing Mars. “Good luck with your implants, all of them, and with building Pottersville on Mars. Seriously, don’t fuck with me,” Low wrote.
Musk, of course, went on to donate $288 million during the 2024 election, which cemented his place in MAGA politics and status as the largest and most prominent individual political donor in the country. His America PAC once vowed to “keep grinding” at an even more audacious political playbook ahead of the midterms. But Musk scaled back his 2026 ambitions, promising to do “a lot less” campaign spending in the future, shortly before his public clash with Trump.
With Musk’s allegiance to MAGA called into question, Low predicted he could seek revenge behind the scenes — “it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when” — a possibility Trump has openly pondered.
The president warned of “serious consequences” if Musk funds Democratic challengers against Republicans who back his “big, beautiful bill”— the legislation that would enact Trump’s domestic policy agenda, but that Musk has scorned as wasteful pork-barrel spending.
However, if there was any lingering notion that Musk would completely retreat from politics, he dispelled it on Saturday by renewing his attacks on the bill ahead of a critical vote.
The takedown
Unlike his old pal, Low prefers to keep a lower profile. The Canadian neuroscientist wore aviator sunglasses indoors throughout the interview. When Blue Light News first reached out, an automated reply from Low’s email robot came back, noting that he was “completely off the grid” and providing a math puzzle to solve to get on his calendar. Blue Light News didn’t solve the problem, perhaps because it’s not solvable, but he replied anyway.
Low spoke to the press infrequently between the early 2010s, when his company partnered with Hawking, and when he posted the takedown that ended any remaining friendship with Musk earlier this year. One of the rare exceptions was a 2013 fireside chat where Low, in an “Occupy Mars” shirt, spoke next to Musk at the Canadian Consul General’s Residence in Los Angeles.
Low sees little daylight between the Elon he knew before and the one who fractured his relationship with the president.
“A lot of people close to him will say that he changed. I don’t believe that to be true,” he said. “I’ve seen this side of Elon over the years, but I just think that over time, he got cozy with the idea of showing more of that, and now it seems to have affected him.”
When Musk came under fire for his salutes at Trump’s post-inauguration rally, Low, the son of a Holocaust survivor, said he first confronted his former friend with a private message. He said in the email viewed by Blue Light News: “I am so glad I fired your dumb ass” and warned him to learn from the fate of Rodion Raskolnikov, the central character in “Crime and Punishment,” who convinces himself that extraordinary men are justified in committing crimes if they serve a higher goal.
Four days passed without a reply, and Low proceeded to cut contact before letting it rip in a nearly 2,000-word open letter that went viral on Facebook and LinkedIn.
“I made my displeasure known to him as one of his closest former friends at that point, and I blocked him,” he said.
That’s a diplomatic description. Low in his letter delivered a blistering portrait of Musk as a narcissist whose “lust for power” keeps driving him to undermine the very organizations that challenge his hold on it. Musk didn’t respond publicly.
According to Low, those tendencies put Musk “in a league of his own” in Silicon Valley — where he locked into power struggles with many a co-founder, from PayPal’s Peter Thiel to Tesla’s Martin Eberhard to OpenAI’s Sam Altman. And the predictable playbook followed him to Trump’s side as first buddy, a role Low dubbed his former friend’s greatest investment.
“Elon has his own pattern of trying to destabilize companies. He wants to take over, and if he can’t take them over, then he tries to create a rival entity to compete,” Low said. “They were absolutely on a collision course, and I think that Trump tried to gloss over it by making it look as if he wanted Elon to be as aggressive as he was.”
‘Playing defense’
Musk is back in industry mode, for now. Earlier this month, he addressed an artificial intelligence boot camp hosted by the startup accelerator Y Combinator in San Francisco, downplaying the importance of the Department of Government Efficiency by comparing his work on the commission to cleaning up beaches.
“Imagine you’re cleaning a beach, which has a few needles, trash and is dirty. And there’s a 1,000-foot tsunami, which is AI, that’s about to hit. You’re not going to focus on cleaning the beach,” Musk told the crowd of students and recent graduates of why he ultimately left.
His attention has since shifted to Austin, Texas, where Tesla heavily promoted and launched its long-hyped robotaxi service last weekend. Of companies within Musk’s business empire, the automaker took the hardest hit from his political entanglements, battered by consumer protests, tariffs, declining sales and dips in its stock price that allowed SpaceX to overtake it as his most valuable asset.
Low looks back at the Tesla Takedown protests that sprung up in the months following his letter with satisfaction. It was proof, in his mind, that the message struck a chord: “The audience was the world, and it worked.”
While few peers in Silicon Valley have called out Musk to the same degree, Low added that several reacted positively to him in private for taking those criticisms public.
“Many of these people happen to have investors on their boards, who made money with Elon, so they felt that they were putting themselves at risk if they spoke out,” he said. “A number of people did reach out and thank me, and they were in violent agreement.”
Low said he had “an armada” of lawyers at the ready in case Musk went after him. That possibility hasn’t yet panned out.
Although they no longer speak, Low still follows Musk’s activities. He said he was busy during the Trump feud and had to catch up later. But during the interview with Blue Light News, he would reference the occasional X post from Musk, including a recent one where he shared negative drug test results to dispute reports of his alleged ketamine use.
To Low, the post was a sign the rift hasn’t been fully smoothed over and that Musk is “playing defense.” Bannon has called for a federal investigation into New York Times reporting that claimed Musk took large amounts of ketamine and other drugs while campaigning for Trump. Blue Light News has not independently verified the allegations.
“The way I read that is that he is concerned that some government contracts could be canceled and that the drug use could be used against him, so he’s trying to already build a moat,” Low said.
As for Trump, Low has some advice for handling a potentially resentful Musk: “Abide by the constitution,” and perhaps, listen to some of the tech titan’s policy preferences.
Low was especially outspoken against the administration’s ICE raids and efforts to limit immigration, arguing they will cost America its advantage in technologies like AI by sapping Silicon Valley of the global talent that allows it to compete. Many in tech circles had hoped Musk’s seat at the table would help the industry loosen barriers for high-skilled workers, a cause he once vowed to “go to war” with MAGA Republicans over.
That’s something that Low, given his experience with Musk, thinks Trump should take seriously.
“Elon has wooed enough of Trump’s supporters to be an actual threat politically,” Low said, arguing that Trump would better insulate himself by moderating his agenda. “He doesn’t realize the battle that he has on his hands, and one way to cut the support away from Elon is to actually adopt some of the things he is for.”
Ken Paxton is less than a month out from the conclusion of a D.C.-outsider campaign for a Texas U.S. Senate seat that he privately admitted is being run by Washington.
“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming — you know — from D.C.,” Paxton said during a small fundraising event last month, according to an audio recording obtained by Blue Light News from a person in the room who does not support Paxton, and verified by another attendee.
“I don’t control message or what we’re doing.”
The lunch, hosted Sept. 24 in Washington by Chris Brinson and Susan Hirschmann of the D.C.-based lobbying firm Williams & Jensen, was attended by about a dozen people including Scott Kopple, VP of government relations at defense contractor BWXT.
“Texas is a big state, and some of these issues obviously resonate with real — I’ll call real people — you know, like back home,” Kopple, who did not respond to a request for comment, said to some chuckles in the room. “I know you need money to get the message out and stuff, but how does this stuff translate?”
Paxton replied saying: “I miss the days when I could go to, get around with all the people. But we have 32 million people, so let’s just say for the next 40 days I’m in front of 1,000 people a day — which I’m not — and that’s 40,000 people. Ten to 10.4 million people are gonna vote.”
“But then it comes down to your messaging,” he continued, “which in a federal race comes from other people a lot of times, which you don’t control.”
One attendee granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting said that Paxton never explicitly said he was referring to Trump’s team controlling his campaign, but “everybody knew what he was talking about.” The person said Paxton’s comments came amid a broader discussion about the national political environment.
“I don’t have ability to change anything,” Paxton went on. “So I have to live with whatever I’ve got. So it is a challenge.”
Paxton campaign adviser Nick Maddux said, “Campaigns don’t coordinate with super PACS and that’s obviously what AG Paxton was referring to,” in a statement to Blue Light News. “AG Paxton is thankful for the support and knows how important Texas is to keeping the majority which is why he’s on the ground every day talking to Texas, raising money, and taking his message directly to the people including with his statewide television buy that started over this past weekend.”
Neither Hirschmann nor Brinson responded to a request for comment.
In an audio recording of the same meeting obtained by The New York Times, Paxton told attendees the midterm convention hosted by Trump in Texas last month “dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.” Maddux described the article as “manipulated nonsense.” Playbook hasn’t heard the contents of the rest of the hourlong meeting.
The most recent New York Times/Siena poll has Paxton running 6 points behind Democratic challenger James Talarico.
The private comments follow a bitter primary campaign waged against Republican incumbent John Cornyn, whom Paxton framed as a “Washington insider” and “RINO” while publicly aligning himself with Trump.
“His money is coming from the D.C. establishment,” Paxton said of Cornyn while campaigning in Texas before the primary, the AP reported. “That’s how they always try to convince us from Washington with their money that we should select their person. Well, I’m not their person and I’m never going to be their person.”
Paxton maintains a cash advantage heading into November and announced a $20 million ad buy last month. The Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super political action committee closely aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, pledged millions to back Paxton earlier in September.
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President Donald Trump made major gains among Latino voters in 2024. Now, those same voters might cost Republicans control of Congress.
Fifty-nine percent of Latino registered voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, compared with 35% who favor Republican control, according to a new NBC News/Telemundo poll released Sunday. That 24-point gap for Democrats is twice the party’s lead compared to the September 2024 version of the poll.
A separate CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday also found Democrats ahead among Hispanic likely voters, with 60% backing a Democratic House candidate and 39% supporting a Republican.
The findings threaten gains the GOP made in 2024, when Trump narrowed Democrats’ long-standing advantage among Latino voters. A POLITICO analysis of that year’s election results found that Trump improved his vote share by an average of more than 6 percentage points in majority-Hispanic counties, compared with 2020.
With the midterms approaching, Republicans have made those gains central to their push to maintain control of the House. When Texas Republicans revealed their redistricting proposal last year, four of the five potential GOP pickup opportunities were in majority-Hispanic districts.
Meanwhile, Trump’s overall approval rating among Latino registered voters stands at just 27% in the NBC/Telemundo poll, while 69% disapprove. On the economy specifically, 74% of Latino voters disapprove of Trump’s handling, while 78% disapprove of how he’s dealt with cost-of-living concerns.
Nearly two-thirds, 65%, say Trump’s policies have hurt economic conditions. Inflation and cost of living rank as the most important issues facing the country for 33% of respondents, followed by government corruption at 22%. Another 10% named jobs and the economy.
Economic frustration helped drive Latino voters toward Trump in 2024, with Democrats across the country suggesting in the aftermath of his victory that he was better able to connect with the voting bloc on financial issues.
But now, Latino voters seem to favor Democrats over Republicans on the economy, 48% to 27%, and the cost of living, 45% compared to 26%.
The war with Iran, now in its seventh month, is also weighing on voters’ perceptions of energy costs. In September, the average price of diesel hit a record $6.53, according to AAA.
In the CBS survey, 91% of Hispanic registered voters attributed rising U.S. oil and gas prices to the conflict.
Trump’s immigration crackdown is also putting vulnerable Republicans on the defensive. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) released an ad in English and Spanish criticizing the administration for going “too far” on immigration and saying Hispanics who backed Trump in 2024 feel “betrayed.”
In the days immediately following her ad, Trump told reporters that he still supported Salazar. “I’m very strong on the borders — and she isn’t,” Trump said. But the president later reposted a flurry of social media messages criticizing Salazar on Truth Social, including one calling for the Florida Republican’s replacement ahead of the midterms.
In the NBC/Telemundo poll, 67% of Latino voters say Trump’s immigration enforcement has gone too far, compared with 22% who say he has taken the right approach.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dissatisfaction with Trump and Republicans has not translated into broadly positive views of Democrats. According to the NBC poll, Latino voters remain nearly evenly divided on the Democratic Party, with 41% viewing it positively and 42% negatively. Negative views of the GOP, meanwhile, have climbed to 62%, up from 46% in September 2024.
The NBC/Telemundo survey of 800 Latino registered voters was conducted Sept. 21-28 and has a margin of error of ±3.46%. The CBS/YouGov survey of 2,166 adults was conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 2, with a margin of error of ±2.5 points.
CONCORD, New Hampshire— Pete Buttigieg is barnstorming the nation in the final weeks before the midterms, boosting candidates in battlegrounds and even areas traditionally hostile to Democrats. And it’s helping him look beyond November.
Down the homestretch, Buttigieg is set to campaign in at least six states: North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia and Nevada, along with his adopted home state of Michigan, according to an itinerary shared first with Playbook by a spokesperson for Win the Era, his political group.
Buttigieg has been refining his campaign trail message as he crisscrosses the country, connecting concrete cost-of-living concerns to the more abstract need for political reform.
It’s a kind of real-world testing that helps him further define his political brand at the same time that he leverages it to “be useful,” as he so often puts it, to his party.
“I have a lot of conviction that, actually, your economic message only has credibility if you have a reform message, too,” Buttigieg said in an interview after a Rochester Opera House rally where he received a standing ovation. “Because otherwise, what you’re doing is you’re saying things that people agree with, which is great, but they might not believe that you can actually deliver it.”
He’s also building the kinds of relationships with voters and party leaders that can be useful if he runs for president in 2028, a question he was repeatedly asked. (“We’ll see,” he told one woman at the Deerfield Fair.)
“For Pete, it’s less about getting credit nationally for what he’s done for Democrats and more about building relationships in places that will be beneficial down the line,” said David Axelrod, a Buttigieg confidant.
Buttigieg’s status as an in-demand surrogate was on full display during his 48-hour swing through the Granite State, where he finished “a very, very, very close second place” to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2020 primary, as Buttigieg put it in Saturday evening remarks at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner in Concord.
“I couldn’t ask for a better wingman,” Rep. Chris Pappas said, introducing Buttigieg at the packed rally Friday in Rochester. “People know that he’s a trusted voice,” Stefany Shaheen, who is running for Pappas’ seat, told Blue Light News after campaigning at a book store, cafe and candy shop with Buttigieg along Elm Street in Manchester.
How Buttigieg is learning from the midterms
Buttigieg has neither a battleground governorship nor a personal fortune to wire into midterm races. What he has put on offer is himself: He’s made more than 100 endorsements this cycle, campaigning in person for roughly half of them, and stops in 37 states since he left the Transportation Department.
Buttigieg was welcomed in places where candidates shunned some of his potential rivals. He campaigned with Rob Sand and Josh Turek in Iowa as they run for governor and senator, respectively. He backed Brandon Dukes in his special election effort to flip a Pennsylvania state House seat that Trump won by 18 points. He was alone among his peers in endorsing Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin in his victory over longtime Rep. John Larson in Connecticut.
“If I can help give voice to what people are after in diverse geographies, including very conservative areas,” he said, “turns out that’s my best use of time.”
Buttigieg admitted he wasn’t certain what role he would play in the party’s midterms at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. Now he’s processing all of the data and inputs he’s receiving along his travels.
“I’m learning a lot about our country and our party as I go, and what I’m seeing is that people have a real hunger for change,” he told Blue Light News. “First of all, in policy. Secondly, in the kind of politics that we have, and third, in the system itself.”
That’s developed into a core argument in his speeches connecting the cost of living to political reform: “If we want the kitchen table to be better off, we got to deal with the political system that is kicking the legs out from under the kitchen table,” Buttigieg said at the Rochester Opera House Friday evening.
It’s a message that can last long beyond the midterms, and Buttigieg is trying to point his party there.
“Part of what I’m really trying to push my party on is the need to have answers for ‘then what,’” he said. “There’s a big ‘then what’ for when Donald Trump leaves the political scene, but there’s an immediate ‘then what’ starting on Nov. 4.”
A Democratic Congress, he argued, needs “a compelling governing vision coming out of the gate” and should move quickly on tariffs, the minimum wage, tax fairness, health care, the Child Tax Credit and political reforms including gerrymandering.
The 2028 question
Even as he sidestepped several questions from reporters about his next moves, saying he was focused on 2026, remnants of his 2020 campaign and hints of a future one piled up. People wore “Pete for New Hampshire” buttons and T-shirts. His old playlist, including Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Up Around the Bend,” played at the Friday night rally.
At the Roosevelt dinner the next night, in front of a sold-out crowd of over 400, Buttigieg earned a standing ovation that ended in “Pete, Pete, Pete” chants.
“Pete had a great New Hampshire organization in 2020, nearly winning,” Ray Buckley, the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, told Blue Light News. “If anything, his popularity here has grown.”
Much has changed since then.
On Saturday evening, instead of walking out to Panic! At the Disco’s “High Hopes,” his ubiquitous anthem back then, or even Imagine Dragons’ “It’s Time,” which he road-tested last year, Buttigieg employed “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals.
There have been deeper changes, too: Buttigieg is now the father of 5-year-old twins, Gus and Penelope. He is weighing whether he can run for president and remain a good and present father.
His husband, Chasten, is a “great dad” and “knows why I’m on the road.”
Back on the road, Buttigieg is winning over those who didn’t back him in 2020.
At the back of the room in Rochester on Friday night, the town’s Mayor Chuck Grassie wore a “Pete for New Hampshire” button as he took in the scene. Grassie, who backed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020 and considers himself a “pragmatic progressive,” said Buttigieg could knit together the party’s moderate and progressive factions.
“He’s a guy I think would attract a lot of people,” Grassie said. “And a lot of people I talk to are saying, ‘You know, he’s looking better and better every day.’”
Added Grassie: “In New Hampshire, I think Pete may be the guy to beat.”
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