Star Trek star William Shatner sees Elon Musk as an eccentric supervillain who is part ‘Thomas Edison, part Iron-Man, part annoying dude in the group chat.’
The comments were made during The Daily Show’s latest DailyShowography, which examines Musk’s life, from his childhood in South Africa to his failures with Tesla, outbursts on Twitter and everything in between – and Shatner is the show’s narrator.
Musk, who has a net worth of roughly $271.2 billion, was not always a ‘Technoking’ – a title he gave with the Securities and Exchange Commission – but started his ‘lifelong love of inventing things that already exist’ at the young age of 12, Shatner said.
From there he took off like a speeding bullet, developing and selling off a ‘start-up you’ve never heard of to a company that doesn’t exist anymore,’ Shatner says referring to Musk’s bumpy beginnings.
Elon Musk was the star of The Daily Show’s DailyShowography that poked fun at the billionaire. The segment was narrated by William Shatner
Shatner begins by criticizing Musk about refusing to stay in his lane – the CEO is known for sharing his opinions on a range of topics – and says this action is ‘much like a Tesla on auto-pilot.’
A clip plays Musk hyping up Tesla in its early beginnings – promising the dream of full self-driving technology.
The vision started in 2014 when the CEO said: ‘I’m confident that in less than a year, you’ll be able to go from highway on-ramp to highway exit without touching any control.’
But the next clip was of a YouTuber testing a Tesla, noting that the car just ran a red light.
Shatner says Musk is part Thomas Edison (left) and part Iron Man (right)
The Showography pulls up another Tesla mishap in 2015, when Musk said drivers could sleep in the car as it drove you to a destination – but the same YouTuber almost hit a telephone pole when he took his hands off the wheel.
There are several shots showing Tesla cars running over obstacles that it was meant to avoid, suggesting the technology was far from what Musk had promised.
‘But Musk can’t stop dreaming big, even when he should,’ Shatner said with the sound of a smirk in his voice as the video showed Musk ‘accidently’ breaking a cybertruck’s window when he unveiled it in November 2019.
The vision started in 2014 when the CEO said: ‘I’m confident that in less than a year, you’ll be able to go from highway on-ramp to highway exit without touching any control.’ Picture is a sign at the entrance of Tesla Motors headquarters in Palo Alto, CA in 2014
The 91-year-old also pokes fun at SpaceX for sending the first car into space after it made history by launching the first reusable rocket in 2006.
Musk has been very public about the struggles he has endured while trying to get both Tesla and SpaceX off the ground, revealing on several occasions that either company was on the verge of bankruptcy.
‘Through the years, Musk kept his many ventures going with little more than his can-do attitude and billions of dollars in government subsidies,’ Shatner explains in the video.
He also blasts Musk for ‘paying almost nothing in taxes for three years and then actually nothing in 2018.’
‘But Musk can’t stop dreaming big, even when he should,’ Shatner said with the sound of a smirk in his voice as the video showed Musk ‘accidently’ breaking a cybertruck’s window when he unveiled it in November 2019
But Musk, according to Shatner, enjoys the simple things in life – from boating shirtless to spending hours and hours on Twitter.
Tweeting is his favorite pastime, the actor says, noting it makes sense that Musk would offer to buy the social media platform ‘and even more sense when the deal spun out of control and crashed into an embankment.’
Twitter is not just a playground for the billionaire, but a place for him to promise to make the world a better place, Shatner says referring to a tweet from October 2021 that said he would solve world hunger with $6 billion if the World Food Program tells him how it will be spent.
Then there was a tweet in 2020 about how to end COVID, another in 2018 about how to fix the water crisis in Flint and then how Musk took to Twitter to share his opinion about the Thai soccer team that was stuck in the cave.
Twitter is not just a playground for the billionaire, but a place for him to promise to make the world a better place, Shatner says referring to a tweet from October 2021 that said he would solve world hunger with $6 billion if the World Food Program tells him how it will be spent.
There was also the time in 2020 that Musk offered to make ventilators to helped during the coronavirus pandemic
And another in 2018 about how to fix the water crisis in Flint
‘Elon even promised to rescue those kids from the guy who rescued them,’ Shatners says.
‘That’s why Musk is such a champion of free speech. If you can’t randomly accuse someone who’s saving people’s lives of being a ‘pedo guy,’ does civil discourse even exist?’
Shatner, however, did praise Musk for building a future that humanity only imagined in the movies and ‘that is why Elon Musk is a visionary future man.’
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