Watch Elon Musk’s softball interview with Marques Brownlee

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has the whole world on his shoulders, but you sure wouldn’t know it watching a new interview with popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee.

The 17-minute conversation, supposedly conducted on August 15 and published on Friday, is filled with hot air about traction control, making “products that people love,” and the upcoming Tesla Roadster that Brownlee pre-ordered sight unseen.

“I’m a day-one deposit, because I’m that excited,” Brownlee, a 24-year-old whose show MKBHD could make up to $99,900 a month according to one estimate, said.

Of course, outside of the chitchat about how to make the nice cars go faster, Musk has spent the last week navigating a series of stranger-than-fiction controversies. 

Last Sunday, rapper Azealia Banks posted Instagram Stories alleging she had been abandoned by Grimes, a hipster musician and Musk’s girlfriend, while the couple dealt with the fallout of Musk tweeting about taking Tesla private. According to Banks, Musk sent the tweets while tripping on acid.

Drugs or no, the Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly subpoenaed Tesla over the tweets, which, depending on the findings, may have violated rules about fraud and market manipulation.

Then, on Thursday, the New York Times published an interview with Musk in which he describes the past year as “the most difficult and painful” of his career:

Mr. Musk stopped talking, seemingly overcome by emotion.

He turned 47 on June 28, and he said he spent the full 24 hours of his birthday at work. “All night — no friends, nothing,” he said, struggling to get the words out.

Two days later, he was scheduled to be the best man at the wedding of his brother, Kimbal, in Catalonia. Mr. Musk said he flew directly there from the factory, arriving just two hours before the ceremony. Immediately afterward, he got back on the plane and returned straight to Tesla headquarters, where work on the mass-market Model 3 has been all consuming. 

But Brownlee’s interview was all about putting on a happy face — and maybe a little bit of damage control for a CEO who’s under a lot of scrutiny for his social media habit.

“How do you spend time at Tesla? What do you do?” the YouTuber asked.

“I’m basically in the factory, in design or engineering meetings, in production. So, that’s like, 80 or 90 percent of the time,” Musk replied. 

“I think sometimes people think I spend a lot of time on Twitter. I don’t know why they would think that. That’s crazy. Actually, that’s like, almost nothing,” he added with a laugh. 

Elon Musk is considered by Forbes to be one of the 25 most “powerful people.” He has a net worth of over $19 billion. You can watch his full interview on MKBHD below.