Robert De Niro and John Oliver Both Mock Elon Musk's Midterm Losses

At a New York screening of Alex Gibney's 'Musk,' De Niro asked the billionaire, 'How did that turn out for you?'

Robert De Niro introduced a nearly four-hour documentary about Elon Musk on Sunday by asking the billionaire about his election bills.

De Niro told the room that Musk had put about $300 million into electing Donald Trump in 2024 and close to half a billion behind Republicans in last week's midterms. Then he asked, "How did that turn out for you?" and got cheers and laughter, Deadline reported. Musk's preferred Republican candidates lost. The screening was at the Crosby Hotel in Manhattan, and Deadline said the room was full of Academy members.

He wasn't the only entertainer who got there that Sunday. On HBO's "Last Week Tonight," John Oliver took a victory lap through the Democrats' wins and then turned to Musk, saying the half-billion dollars "went up in flames faster than a parked Cybertruck," Variety reported. Variety put Musk's midterm spending at nearly $500 million. That included $200 million in a failed attempt to beat James Talarico, who's now Texas's senator-elect.

Both men had the same new material to work with. Musk had just announced on X that Tesla would stop making the Cybertruck next summer, and Oliver joked that the news felt like one more election result.

The movie De Niro was promoting is Alex Gibney's "Musk," which runs 3 hours and 52 minutes and which Deadline described as highly critical of the world's richest man. Bleecker Street released it in theaters, where it has grossed more than $700,000 domestically, and it's now on video on demand. That entire box office take comes to less than a fifth of 1 percent of the midterm money Variety counted.

Jane Rosenthal, De Niro's co-founder at the Tribeca Festival, admitted she'd dreaded the running time before her first viewing. She teased Gibney about asking audiences to spend four hours with Musk, then called the movie engrossing and its subject gross.

That room of Academy members was the point. Also on Sunday, "Musk" won best biographical documentary at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards in New York. It's on DOC NYC's shortlist of the year's best documentaries and screens at that festival later this week, and it's set to play IDFA in Amsterdam this month, Deadline reported.

De Niro saved the truck for later in his remarks. Democracy had beaten Musk's money, he told the crowd, according to Deadline, before he added two words: "This time." Then he came back to the pickup Tesla is about to retire. Like his "grotesque Cybertruck," De Niro said, Musk "isn't going anywhere."

Source: Deadline, retrieved November 9, 2026. Other sources: Variety.