Elon Musk railed against the Democratic Party’s immigration policy during a three-hour interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience” posted Friday.
President Donald Trump won the 2024 election on a platform of conducting mass deportations and reducing government waste. Musk defended the Trump administration’s efforts on the podcast while attacking the Democrats for their opposition, which he said was undemocratic in nature.
“If Trump had lost, there would never have been another real election again. Because Trump is actually enforcing the border … There’ll be cases where they’ve been overzealous in expelling illegals,” Musk said. “But if you say that the standard must be perfection for expelling illegals, then you will not get any expulsion, because perfection is impossible.”
Musk asserted that, in contrast to Trump, the Democratic Party wants more illegal immigrants to enter the United States. He said their desire was what motivated their decision to shut down the government on Oct. 1 and refuse to reopen it.
“The entire basis for the government shutdown is that the Trump administration correctly does not want to send … hundreds of billions of dollars to fund illegal immigrants in the blue states — or in all the states, really,” Musk said. “And the Democrats want to keep the money spigot going to incent illegal immigrants to come into the U.S. who will vote for them. That’s the crux of the battle.”
Republicans have repeatedly accused Democrats of shutting down the government in order to fund healthcare for illegal migrants, but they have denied the allegations. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in June that around 1.4 million individuals who would be removed from Medicaid under the reconciliation bill that Trump signed in July “would be people who do not meet citizenship and immigration status requirements for Medicaid enrollment but who would be covered under current law in programs funded by the states.”
Musk elaborated on his theory about the shutdown minutes later, appearing to shock Rogan.
“The reason you have the standoff is because if the hundreds of billions of dollars to create a financial incentive — to have this giant magnet to attract illegals from every part of Earth to these states — if that is turned off, the illegals will leave,” he said. “Because they’re no longer being paid to come to the United States and stay here.”
“Wow,” Rogan replied.
Musk added that he believed the Democrats would shed numerous voters if illegal immigrants lost benefits and decided to leave the country as a result.
“[I]n a nutshell, the Democratic Party wants to destroy democracy by importing voters,” he said. “And the Republican Party disagrees with that.” (Read more: Daily Caller, 10/31/2025) (Archive)