You’re acting like he wants Xitter to succeed. I suspect he wants it dead because he thinks it contributed to his child being trans. And also because some of his financiers don’t want an Arab Spring.

Edit: Either way he’s a piece of shit.

Dude you missed quoting the best bit!

"If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself," Musk said.

Sorkin replied, "but," and trailed off. Musk wasn't done. "Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey, Bob!" Musk said. Musk was apparently addressing Disney CEO Bob Iger, who previously said at the conference that advertising on X "was not necessarily a positive" association and so Disney "decided we would pull our advertising."

The Muskrat told Disney CEO to go fuck himself.

On video.

With a hard F. No dissembling.

The Tesla board should remove him as CEO as he is clearly unstable.

It’s mean to laugh at people self destructing.

But anyway … fucking lol.

He truly must believe he’s one of the good guys. Lmao Earth isn’t going to rise up for a divorced apartheid emerald mine inheritor, you dork.

Kanye's straight up bipolar, maybe even schizoaffective. Musk still just looks like a narcissistic asshole, and the grandiosity about "Earth" caring about Twitter is par for the course

I was just thinking the exact same thing the other day. Dude needs to take his meds.

"It's not me being an antisemitic transphobic bigot that's killing Twitter; it's all the companies who don't want their brands next to my antisemitic transphobic comments!"

Dave got rich and kinda lost his grip with reality

Or when he died on his ass on SNL. Or when he appeared in a Rick & Morty episode and managed to kill it by his mere presence. He thinks he is edgy, funny and cool but he isn't. Instead he is awkward, unfunny, weird and deeply unpopular for being a dick.

Because Trump, as weirdly as he may go about it, has made his way through life on his (inherited fortune from his from his crook of a father and) force of personality.

He gets people to do what he wants them to do by projecting an image, a brand, through the way he acts and speaks. Look at The Apprentice. He's playing this role that says (without saying out loud), "Look at me. I'm a straight shooting, no nonsense business leader and my personality and business sense have brought me success, money, fame, luxury, and power. You want that too? You want to be like me? Then do what I say."

Not saying it's authentic or that it should work, but Trump's entire existence is based on this tactic. He's constantly projecting an image, and it's that projection of that image that gets him his way. His force of personality is just as, if not more central to his power as his money (make no mistake, the money is necessary too).

This, in contrast with Musk, who's typically cultivated his following based on ideas and drive. He gets people to go along with him because he's seen as a modern day Edison (and to be fair, the comparison, in some ways, is apt... especially the less flattering ones), a groundbreaker, rules breaker...a visionary.

Simply put, among the people who follow these guys, people follow Musk for what he says (in terms of his big ideas), people follow Trump for the way he acts (in terms of the image he projects). It takes a strong set of blinders to ignore Musk's sharing of his worse ideas and Trump's less than impressive antics, but their respective cults have had plenty of practice in those mental gymnastics.

Thus you're left with the mind boggling (to the rest of us) situation where Musk's followers don't care how he acts, because they are laser focused on his ideas, while Trump supporters couldn't care less about the crazy or incoherent stuff he says, so long as he keeps projecting that macho, confident persona.

So that's how Musk gets away with being "Trump, but more childish": he's not depending on the personality like Trump, so he can act that way without turning his supporters off, because they don't care about that in the first place.

Musk's entire angle is "it's okay to be a humongous asshole if you achieve your goals.

Trump's is, "It's okay to be a humongous asshole, as long as you can sell it as arrogance bred from success."

They were the real geniuses.

"Elon Musk is big smart the book - $30!"

"Wowowowowow hands over $30 dollars" x 1,000,000+ sales

30 million dollars.

And all it cost was some paper, ink and your integrity as an author.