President Donald Trump said he would issue preemptive pardons for Elon Musk, his aides and other allies “if I needed to,” saying “we’ll have to protect them” after Democrats including Sen. Elissa Slotkin vowed to go after people around him and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich urged nationalizing SpaceX.
“I think he’s not wrong,” Trump said when New York Post columnist Miranda Devine asked about Musk’s warning that a Democratic sweep of Congress and then the presidency in 2028 could leave the country “maybe forever destroyed,” in a New York Post exclusive drawn from Devine’s “Pod Force One” interview. The “maybe forever destroyed” phrase was Trump’s own reply after Devine paraphrased Musk’s sweep warning as meaning “the country is over.” Devine then framed Democratic aims as wanting to “arrest Elon Musk,” “seize his factories,” and “nationalise SpaceX.” “It’s talk,” Trump replied. “If it is talk, we’ll have to protect them.” Asked about targeting Department of Government Efficiency figure Edward Coristine, known as “Big Balls,” and “anyone around you who enabled you,” he said, “Well, I don’t know about me,” then, “If they do, we’ll just have to protect those people.”
Devine asked whether he could “preemptively pardon them.” “Well, that’s what Biden did. He gave everybody a pardon,” Trump said, calling the House Jan. 6 panel the “unselect committee” and “a corrupt committee” whose members “were all corrupt.” “Will you do that?” Devine asked. “I would if I needed to, sure,” he said. Asked about “everybody who worked for you,” he answered, “I’d do it. I did it for J6.” The Post reported that Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants on his first day back in office in 2025, and that Biden used final hours in office to pardon Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, Jan. 6 committee members and staff, and some relatives including Hunter Biden. The same interview is previewed on the Post’s Pod Force One page, which listed “pardons” among topics Devine teed up with Trump before the midterms.
The nationalization language Devine used tracks a late-October argument by Reich. On the Coffee Klatch podcast with Heather Lofthouse, Reich said Democrats ought to “defund Musk” and lay “the groundwork for nationalizing” Starlink and SpaceX so it would be “a public corporation,” he later summarized in his own Substack post. “We should not ever have that kind of power in one person’s hands, one private person’s hands,” he said in remarks transcribed by RealClearPolitics transcript, adding that “Musk is trying to buy the senator from Texas” and calling Musk “Exhibit A” of “the billionaire takeover of America.” Musk replied on X, “Stealing companies is a serious crime. Prison for Reich,” in an Oct. 25 post. Reich wrote that he would keep criticizing Musk for decisions “such as squelching his Starlink satellite service to Ukraine,” keep highlighting “connections between great wealth and grotesque power,” and keep urging voters to “throw the Republican bums out.”
Devine’s framing of Musk’s sweep warning compressed a longer post Musk had shared. In an Oct. 30 post, Musk wrote that his “biggest concern” was a Democratic “clean sweep” of the House, Senate, and presidency in 2028 that would make D.C. and Puerto Rico states, “open the borders and legalize everyone living in America illegally,” and “increase the size of the Supreme Court,” resulting in “a permanent one-party state and the end of democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.”
The Post tied Trump’s pardon talk to Democratic oversight threats and quoted Slotkin, of Michigan, from a University of Chicago recording of Vox’s “America, Actually.” In the Vox excerpt of that Oct. 13 conversation with Astead Herndon, Slotkin said Democrats who win power must pursue “accountability for the unbelievable corruption that we are living under right now,” pick “signature cases,” and “go after people and projects that are super egregious,” including “not just Trump” but “the people around Donald Trump who are doing his bidding and enabling this.” “They have no immunity the way the president does,” she said. “I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration?’ … I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want.’ … I want that deterrence message sent.” The University of Chicago Institute of Politics event page lists the live recording with Slotkin and Herndon. The Post separately attributed to Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, described as a likely Judiciary chairman if Democrats flip the House, a promise to probe what he calls the administration’s “systemic corruption.”
Federal pardons cover federal criminal liability only. They do not block state prosecutions, civil suits, or impeachment, a limit the Post noted in the same exclusive. Trump said polls showing Democrats favored to flip the House are “rigged” and pointed to rally crowds, adding, “We’ll know on Tuesday night.” In related Pod Force One excerpts published the same weekend, he also sketched a “Mr. Veto” strategy if Democrats take Congress, a separate line of the same interview already covered in other reporting.
Article II of the Constitution gives the president power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Trump’s own Jan. 6 proclamations and Biden’s end-of-term clemency for Fauci, Milley, and Jan. 6 committee figures are the recent precedents he and Devine put on the table. SpaceX remains a privately held contractor; Reich’s podcast and Substack urged Democrats to use Defense Department Starlink and launch contracts to “defund Musk” and to lay “groundwork” for nationalizing the companies as a public corporation.
Trump said Democratic talk of arresting Musk, seizing factories, and nationalizing SpaceX is “talk” and that “if it is talk, we’ll have to protect them,” and that he “would if I needed to” issue preemptive pardons the way he described Biden doing and the way he “did it for J6.” Reich urged Democrats to “defund Musk” and nationalize Starlink and SpaceX; Musk answered that “stealing companies is a serious crime.” Slotkin’s Vox interview set out a plan of “signature cases” against enablers and a “deterrence message” for young conservatives considering administration jobs.