Musk's "space lasers" joke follows Democratic victories in Texas

Forbes brings together sharply different responses from Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Jason Calacanis after the midterm results.

Channel: Forbes Story of November 5, 2026Trari Newsroom

No. 98 on the daily chartNo. 10 on the News chart

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 1,939,158 views a day, 1235 times a normal first day on this channel (1,570).

Billionaires React To Democratic Midterm Sweep

Forbes' roundup of billionaires' election reactions passed a million views before its first day was over. The Short, "Billionaires React To Democratic Midterm Sweep," reached about 1.4 million views in 13 hours, an unusually large audience for the channel's short-form reporting.

At its center is Texas, where Forbes reports Democrats won both the Senate and governor's races despite Musk's financial backing of Republicans. Musk responded on X with a joke: "Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time."

Reid Hoffman took a different approach. The investor and Democratic donor criticized Musk's Texas spending, described the results as a rejection of Donald Trump and defended his own political donations. Investor Jason Calacanis also criticized Trump's policies after the Texas result.

The report goes beyond election-night reactions to a practical concern for the technology industry: where to build AI data centers. It connects Musk's remarks about off-planet data centers with potential restrictions proposed by Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa. That gives the exchange a business-policy dimension beyond the competing political posts.

Forbes also posted another upload under the same election-reaction title and a separate report on the post-election decline in Trump's estimated fortune. Both drew unusually fast starts, but the roundup featuring Musk, Hoffman and Calacanis attracted by far the larger audience.

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More from ForbesThis week on the channel +1.4M views this weekForbes follows AI's spending bill into the tech selloffIsabel Togoh's Intel report tops a fifteen-upload week that also examines Anthropic's infrastructure commitments and DoorDash's Instacart deal.Channel: Forbes · Story of November 2, 2026 Also in Money, investing and businessVideo taking off 18x its usual first dayTrump on Republican candidates: "I thought they'd do better."Fox Business pairs his admission of surprise with a state-by-state account of Democratic gains and Republican victories in Florida.Channel: Fox Business · Story of November 5, 2026 A different discovery todayVideo taking off 66x its usual first dayJimmy Kimmel turns Idaho's state-gun vote into an attack adHis midterm monologue also gives Mike Johnson a Sarah McLachlan farewell before his assistant Natalie zips herself into a duffel bag.Channel: Jimmy Kimmel Live · Story of November 5, 2026

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Musk's "space lasers" joke follows Democratic victories in Texas The full story on Trari: https://trari.com/en/story/forbes-26763/?from=kit

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The numbers

The reaction roundup drew far more views than a usual Forbes Short. Its comment section was also much busier than the channel's usual first day.

the video's first day

usual first day here

1,570

this video

1,939,158

subscribers

2,200,000

no significant change in the last 7 days

total views

394,454,148

views per day

248,298

typical day: 247,349

the video

views

1,371,573

likes

9,360

comments

2,434

days online

1

subscribers: this channel and similar channels

Riceman

2,480,000

School of Hard Knocks

2,430,000

Nischa

2,270,000

Forbes

2,200,000

Humphrey Yang

2,090,000

CNBC Make It

2,010,000

As of November 5, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.