The thing is... SpaceX and Tesla actually delivered something, in the case of Tesla at least until that damn rust bucket. They were (and, with the exception of the rust bucket, still are) miles ahead of the competition.
Back when Musk proposed buying Twitter, the site already was in the gutters, there's a reason that place was up for sale. Bugs littered everywhere, reliability issues, the disaster that was the universally hated 2019 redesign, sex spam bots, trolls and propaganda farms running the show, the "legitimate" bluecheck verification program being all but dead for new applicants. People actually hoped that Musk would turn the sinking ship around.
What even those critical of Musk didn't expect was that he'd open all the floodgates.
https://futurism.com/elon-musk-most-hated-person-america-gal...
> And the latest poll conducted by Gallup seems to confirm that Musk has become genuinely hated: a whopping 61 percent of 1,000 randomly selected adult American respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of Musk, topping the list of most despised global figures.
> Even Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has widely been accused of genocide against Palestinians, couldn’t quite match Musk’s “strongly negative skew,” with just 52 percent of respondents saying they had an unfavorable opinion of the politician.
I'm very glad I'm not responsible for raising children these days.
Ironically, I'd say that Musk is still Stark, in a lot of bad ways: both show narcissism, overconfidence, impulsivity, ego-driven decision making, control issues, disregard for consequences, and volatility.
As means to buy an election an Presidency: highly efficient use of capital with an undeniable short and long-term ROI.
That he won't have to pay for. Shareholders will, as part of the SpaceX IPO.
