In 1998, Elon Musk was at Zip2, his startup, which helped put newspapers across the country—including the New York Times—on the Internet. Then, the nascent Internet was a sliver of what it is today, but unsurprisingly, Musk was on the bleeding edge of it—and I conducted an interview with him then. On Monday, as I listened to Musk’s conversation with Trump, an insight into how two brilliant, innovative, and patriotic men view America, I was struck by how the man I interviewed in 1998 was already set to become the person contributing to American liberty now.

After I did the interview, my memory filed it away so securely that I didn’t even remember it in 2013 when I attended a program led by Adeo Ressi, Musk’s roommate at Wharton. However, I’ve since dug up that old interview. Reviewing it, two things stand out: Musk’s prescience and his spirit.

AI image created by Vince Coyner

Musk’s prescience showed in his understanding that the internet would change the world and that most big companies were clueless about how to harness it. I remember at the time being amazed that the Times (which, back then, was a somewhat respected newspaper) was using the relatively unknown Zip2 to get online. Its employees, apparently, were clueless about how to do it themselves, which was an opportunity Musk was exploiting.

I was hyper-focused on the internet then, so I’ve been kicking myself for not recognizing that Musk was at a whole different level in terms of understanding where things were going. In a word, prescient.

The second thing that stands out from that interview is his entrepreneurial spirit. I wrote:

When it comes to a recommendation for would-be entrepreneurs, Elon suggests that when you get an idea for a business, take a page from Nike and “Just Do It”! “Learn as you go” because there is no better way to learn about business than to get out there get your hands dirty by doing. “Attack the creation of a business enterprise with creativity and intensity.” Don’t be scared to take risks, because there is always a fall-back position, (such as getting a regular job or going back to school and getting another degree) especially when you are young.

That same entrepreneurial spirit has driven the American enterprise for much of its history and been a core driver of a prosperity greater than any in history.

Fast forward a quarter century, and on Monday, Musk had a “conversation“ with entrepreneur, past president, and future president Donald Trump. As I listened to the conversation, I couldn’t help but think about how older Musk echoes younger Musk. He told Trump

…there has to be an active process for reducing rules and regulations because otherwise they just keep building up every year, and you get hardening of the arteries and eventually everything’s illegal or takes forever, and then we just ossify as a society, we can’t make any progress, and it’s a really big deal.

Musk correctly articulated that regulations are strangling America’s productivity. Indeed they are.

This followed an exchange between the two moments earlier: Musk said,

Well, I think part of what people in America want to… People in America want to feel excited and inspired about the future. They want to feel like the future’s going to be better than the past, and that America’s going to do things that are greater than we’ve done in the past, reach new heights that make you proud to be an American and excited about the future.

Trump responded,

They want the American Dream back. They want the American dream back, more important than anything else.

That short exchange may not sound like anything extraordinary but step back for a moment. On one end of the conversation, you have Musk, easily the greatest and most accomplished entrepreneur in a generation, if not longer. On the other, you have a man who spent half a century in the trenches building a multibillion-dollar empire around the world and the last decade enduring literally constant abuse from the media, political opponents, and self-styled intellectual elites as he seeks to rescue the country from the communist Democrat leviathan known as the Swamp. These people set fire to his last year in office, leveraged COVID to steal the election, bastardized the judiciary to jail him, and literally shot him… and the guy’s still standing!

What we heard on Monday was two extraordinarily accomplished men just talking about the country’s future, both the potential and the roadblocks. And unlike the Democrats who rule America, these two have actually accomplished things, built things, made things work and provided incomes for tens of thousands of Americans. Virtually no Democrats in America, from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris to the sainted Barack Obama to Bernie Sanders or Pocahontas, have ever held a real job in the private sector, have no clue how to run anything, do anything other than incite mobs. This chart powerfully makes that point:

Graphic showing how Trump, Vance, Harris, and Tim Walz have spend their adult lives. Striking that the Democratic ticket has literally no private sector experience. pic.twitter.com/IntZb6eLKT

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) August 12, 2024

Yet these non-productive people are in charge of our country. In one sentence, Trump hit the nail squarely on the head: “These people are lunatics... In many cases, the people from within are more dangerous for our country than the Russias and the Chinas...”

That sentence was by far the most powerful in the entire conversation because it demonstrates that, unlike almost every other politician in America, Donald Trump understands who the Republic’s enemies are and where they’re located.

The ideas the men covered in their conversation—government regulation, crime, the American dream, and the traitors within—are rarely so well communicated directly to the American people. Usually, Democrat operatives, including in the MSM, process ideas so that they come out sounding like Nazi propaganda. This is exactly why leftists are having convulsions over their inability to twist and manipulate and, frankly, lie about the message.

Their loss of control, my friends, may be the turning point in this election and in America’s direction. By buying Twitter and freeing it from government censors, Musk may finally create a connection between candidates and the American people that the propaganda ministry cannot manipulate. In doing so, he’s certainly taking the advice of his younger self: “Don’t be scared to take risks.”

Musk, like Trump, is risking much, and for both, perhaps more than just money. But sometimes, there’s a calling that goes beyond ourselves. America is most certainly one such calling, and I’m grateful these two men have decided it’s worth the risk.

Follow Vince on Twitter at ImperfectUSA.