He probably thought, "I could do their job!" and fired them to save money.

I wonder what this timeline would be like if he had accepted that his submarine idea was naive despite the good intentions and just paid to have a nice setup with comfortable tents and catered food for the divers and kids as they got out of the cave (plus their families). Instead of attacking the guy and showing the world who he was, kicking off a cycle of him lashing out at his falling popularity, resulting in it falling even more, then more lashing out, etc.

Even if he was like that the whole time, he might have kept his mask on instead of leaning into it, probably would have never made that offer for Twitter, might have tried to appear neutral instead of joining Trump's campaign.

Though hard to say because the self-driving bs and cybertruck would have still happened and might have kicked off that cycle anyways.

it's incredible how many people just need to hold onto the ball and run out the clock and they still can't fucking do it. I guess on the bright side it shines a light on that no one should be a billionaire. But from their perspective the thing to do once hitting a billion is to sit on your fucking hands, avoid interacting with normal people so they can't realize how fuckin' weird you are, and await death

I think he destroyed his mind with drugs, TBH. I think he was different to some degree back then. Still was an asshole, but not this asshole.