“They carried me in a black van through a dark tunnel”
Canadian Professor and author Gad Saad has shared details of a late-night meeting with billionaire Elon Musk, describing a highly secured journey that made him feel like “James Bond.”
Speaking on the “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” podcast, Saad said Musk sent him a text message containing an address in Austin, Texas, which led to a secret meeting.
“I receive a one-line text from Elon at around 9:30 at night, the address of his house in Austin,” Saad said. “Driver comes, picks me up. I go through these canyons and he goes, ‘We’re here, sir.’ I’m like, ‘We’re here where?’ It’s like in the middle of a canyon. I can’t see anything.”
Saad said he was dropped off in the canyon at about 10 p.m. and noticed a black van nearby. He decided to walk toward it.
“I said, ‘Well maybe that’s my only shot here.’ I walk up to the van. It’s completely different. The door, the window goes down. ‘Name, sir?’ Gad Saad. ‘OK, keep walking up and then there’ll be a gate that opens.’ I keep walking, the gate opens, a guy kind of materializes,” he said, adding that the man appeared to come “out of the trees.”
The account provided a rare look into Musk’s private security arrangements before the pair met in person for the first time. Saad said the final person he encountered instructed him to “follow” him.
“10 seconds later, I’m hugging it out with Elon,” Saad said, recalling how he later shared the experience with his wife. “So, I tell her the story, and I said to her, ‘I think I’m James Bond.’ She goes, ‘I think you’re James Bond also.’”
Musk has often reposted Saad’s content on X, including his views on what he calls suicidal empathy. Saad describes the term as the belief that excessive compassion is weakening the survival instincts of Western nations, including the United States.
Earlier this month, Musk reposted a message from Saad that stated, “Every action that I partake is animated by two ideals: Truth and freedom. Seeing the endless attacks on both ideals throughout the West is soul-crushing.”
“We did not lose a war of aggression. We decided that giving up our women, our children, our heritage, our society, our religions, our culture, our safety, our liberties, and our freedoms was LESS important than protecting the honour of those who wish to enslave us, kill us, vanquish us,” he wrote.
“It was all self-inflicted via parasitic suicidal empathy. Remember my words. We have signed up for endless strife and conflict.”
During his discussion with Hannity, Saad expanded on his theory of suicidal empathy. He said research conducted over several decades shows conservatives generally report higher levels of happiness than people on the political left, arguing that the difference is linked to how both groups view society.
“I offer a speculative explanation, but I think it makes sense,” he said in Tuesday’s episode.
“The conservative wakes up in the morning with a sense of existential comfort. It may not be a perfect society, but we have freedom, we have liberties, we have all sorts of foundational values that are worth conserving, and it’s conservative.”
“On the other hand,” he continued, “the progressive wakes up with existential angst. We live in a transphobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, racist, bigoted [society].”
Saad argued that this difference in outlook makes conservatives more likely to feel satisfied and hopeful about their lives, while progressives’ focus on social problems may contribute to greater dissatisfaction and anxiety.
