Tonight, the NFL is sticking with Elon Musk. The League defending hate speech in a statement today, but says it won't stop advertising on X after Musk agreed with a message that accused Jewish communities of hatred against YTS. This is major companies like IBM, Apple, Disney, and Warner Brothers Discovery, which owned CNN, all pulled ads from X. One client, though, that has not stopped working hand in hand with Elon Musk is one of his most important, the US government. Kristen Fisher is out front.

The Pentagon is getting in deeper with Elon Musk.

Giving.

Musk's private space company, SpaceX, a contract for up to 1.2 billion dollars to send secretive spy satellites into space. But that's not all. The Pentagon is also investing up to $70 million in StarShield, a more secure version of SpaceX's massive constellation of Starlink satellites, which are vital to the Ukraine military's success against Russia on the battlefield.

I can confirm that we do contract for Starlink for services in support of Ukraine with the ultimate objective to be ensuring that Ukraine has the satellite communication infrastructure that.

It needs. And NASA couldn't send another astronaut to the moon without Elon Musk's company. Musk Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built, and it launched on its second test flight on Saturday. Nasa will spend about four billion dollars on it because it will be the lunar lander of the space agency's flagship, Artemis program. It's likely America's only chance to beat China to the moon in this second space race.

Go, Dragon. Go, Fau.

Nasa is also reliant on SpaceX to launch astronauts to the International Space Station. For now, no other launch provider other than the Russian government can do it.

Spacex is on top because they have done the best.

Doug Lavero is one of the few people who's been a top official at the two government agencies most dependent on Elon Musk's companies, and he describes NASA as being much more reliant on SpaceX than the Pentagon.

Spacex is predominant right now, but they're by no means the monopoly that we all will depend upon.

While the US does have other partners, SpaceX has been dependable in a dangerous business, which could explain why they continue to work with Musk, who the White House has condemned for spreading anti-Semitic messages. Last year, the United States conducted 78 successful launches, and SpaceX was responsible for 61 of them. That's the same number of launches as the Chinese government, and nearly eight times the amount of SpaceX's closest U. S. Competitor, the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. This year, SpaceX has already surpassed that record with 85 orbital launches and counting. For now and for the near future, the US government's access to space is overwhelmingly tied to SpaceX. And a White House spokesman said Monday that he's, quote, not aware of any efforts to change that.

There's innovation out there in the private sector that we'd be foolish to walk away from. I'm not aware of any specific efforts to address our concerns over his rhetoric. But that doesn't mean that we accept, or agree with, or in any way that anti-Semitic rhetoric that he pushed.

Now, CNN has reached out to SpaceX so far, no comment. As for NASA, it has had plans in place for years to try to reduce its dependency on one company. You have a Boeing Starliner spacecraft designed to ferry astronauts to the space station next year. Blue Origin has a Lunar Lander alternative for the Artemis program. But Aaron, the problem is that neither of those options are ready yet.

Aaron? All right, Kristen, thank you very much. And Harry Antin joins me now to go beyond the numbers. It's amazing what Kristen is reporting, right? The amount of money that the US government spends. But when you look at IBM, Apple, Disney, Warner Brothers, Discovery, all these people pulling ads. Does this hurt, Exes, bottom line?

Absolutely does, Aaron. I mean, if you look at the ad revenue they pulled in in 2022, you compare it to what's projected in 2023, it's dropped in half. Now, they're still making nearly $2 billion in ad revenue, but significantly less than the $4.1 billion that they made last year.

Yeah, I mean, a 50 % drop is horrible.

It's a.

Horrible performance.

Let's just call it out. Yeah, you know, Stockbro than I do, that is not a good performance.

No, it's horrible. It's unacceptable. If you were a publicly traded company, obviously this isn't. But who is using X right now? You talk about advertisers coming off. Has there been a shift since Elon Musk took over? And there's been a lot more talk about the whole platform shifting more right?

Absolutely. If you look at the people who are regularly getting their news on Twitter, you look back in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center, it was two to one Democratic. You look now, Democrats have been leaving the platform. Republicans have been joining the platform. Now it's basically even in terms of the percentage of Democrats and Republicans who are regular users for Twitter getting their news. But here's the thing I will point out, which is that fewer people are regularly getting their news on Twitter. Right now, if you compare where we are now to compared to where we are...

You want to say something? Yeah, no, I just am jumping because we only have a few seconds left. I want to make one point. By the way, I'm sure Elon Musk would say, Look, half-Democrat, half-Republican. That's a win. That's why I did this. Has it hurt his bottom line?

No, it hasn't hurt his bottom line because that's not where he makes most of his money, as an ex or Twitter. He makes most of his money, for instance, in Tesla, right? So what we see is that his bottom line, the amount of money that he has, his net worth is more than $200 billion. That is up from $170 billion.

Last year. So he'll look at this and say, I'm richer, half-Democrat, half-Republican, and he sees it possibly as a win. All right. Thank you very much, Harry. Thank you. Thank you.