Bill Maher and Guests Mock Elon Musk’s Texas ‘Utopia’ Idea: ‘Definitely Will Not Be Living There’

Bill Maher joked on Friday that if he were going to build a utopia, he wouldn’t do it in Austin, Texas, as the Wall Street Journal reported this week that Twitter and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk plans to do.

Former VP of news at Vice Josh Tyrangiel and New York Times columnist John McWhorter joined Maher on Real Time Friday night, and the three had a few laughs over reports of Musk’s plans for a town, dubbed Snailbrook, to be located outside Austin near the Boring Company and SpaceX facilities.

“If I was going to build utopia, all respect to Austin, I wouldn’t put it there,” Maher joked. “I mean, that’s just me. And I like Austin. I like Austin a lot. I keep it weird every time I go.”

Musk has toyed with the idea of establishing a town in Texas before. A People Magazine article two years ago almost to the day before this week’s Wall Street Journal story talked about Musk’s desire to build a town named Starbase.

Replying to Maher, McWhorter said that Musk “lacks stick-to-it-iveness” and doesn’t trust Musk for such a dramatic ideal.

“I’m not sure that he’s thought hard enough about how a utopia would actually work beyond the kind of Disney World, beautiful picture that it would be in the beginning,” he said. “I don’t trust him to do this, I think I’d rather see a bunch of people put their heads together.”

Tyrangiel pointed out that utopia “is a personal concept.”

“And my personal concept isn’t the same as Elon’s, I’m pretty sure,” he said. “And so like my first thought, my first thought is like, Well, I definitely will not be living there.”

Maher said “there’s no such thing as utopia.”

“Don’t ever use the word utopia or think you can create a utopia,” he said. “What a fool’s errand that is. Talk about an overpromising con man.”

That line got big applause, but it should be noted that the article does not quote Musk calling his planned city a utopia. It did, however, have these unusual details:

Some Boring employees, including Steve Davis, the company’s president and a top lieutenant to Mr. Musk, have at times described even bigger plans, including creating an entire city, according to some of those people and text messages viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

During an all-hands meeting of Boring employees last year, Mr. Davis said they would have to hold an election for mayor, according to text messages and people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Musk, his former girlfriend, who is the singer Grimes, Kanye West and Mr. West’s architectural designer discussed several times last year what a Musk town might look like, according to people familiar with the discussions. Those talks included broad ideas and some visual mock-ups, according to one of the people, but haven’t resulted in concrete plans.

Representatives for Mr. West, who goes by Ye, and Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Maher, replying to Tyrangiel saying he would definitely not be living there, added, “Well I can think of worse places to live and worse people to live under” before moving to the next topic.

Watch the clip above, via CNN and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.