Elon Musk may be the world’s most eccentric billionaire, but there’s one obsession he shares with others of the same wealth: He’s obsessed with going to space. No doubt he was peeved when Jeff Bezos, who’s not quite as unimaginably rich as he is, took one Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, to space. And no doubt he’s nonplussed that Shatner teamed up with The Daily Show to rip him a new one.
The Tesla honcho is the subject of the show’s latest Dailyshowography, which has previously treated the likes of Rudy Giuliani to unflattering life retrospectives. The one on Musk is no different. Shatner narrates, introducing his subject as “part Thomas Edison, part Iron Man, part annoying dude in the group chat.”
The video traces Musk’s upbringing in South Africa (with a little affectionate reference to the show’s own South African host) to a young, precocious inventor of, well, things that already existed, like a knock-off of Space Invaders. His first taste of extreme wealth came by more mundane means. “Like so many tech entrepreneurs, he earned his unimaginable wealth by doing something invaluable for society,” Shatner explains. “Selling a start-up you’ve never heard of to a company that doesn’t exist anymore.”
There are pit-stops at the mid-life crisis Musk had in his 20s, like when he bought a million-dollar car he couldn’t drive and later crashed, as well as starting a record label that produced powerfully lame electronic music. The most damning stretch covers his repeated promises that he and his team have licked self-driving cars — with repeated crashes followed by repeated goal post-moving. And of course, those unflattering vacation photos make a glorified cameo.
You can watch The Daily Show and Shatner drag Musk in the video above.
