X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.
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The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember that while many agree that $44B was a bit much, most did still put Twitter at 10s of billions, not the $500M I think you could justify.
The firings, which was going to tank Twitter also turned out reasonably well. Turns out they didn't need all those people.
Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President. It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016, they successfully suppressed him in 2020, and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.
As long as X is seen a kingmaker, someone will find it profitable to own/maintain, even if it doesn't convert Ads like Meta/Google.
> It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016
I think the whole Cambridge Analytica fiasco played a bigger role, and I don't think they utilize Twitter. On top of that, frankly, TV and his behavior at rallies/debated helped him a lot more than Twitter did in 2016. I don't know a single MAGA supporter who was even on Twitter in 2016.
> they successfully suppressed him in 2020
How? He was banned after the election.
> and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.
DJT was not on Twitter in 2024. Did it really make a difference when he had his own social network? We all have our opinions, but is there actual data supporting this for the 2024 election?
By suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.
In the case of Bush in the 2004 election, at that time they were pushing the story that Iraq had been developing WMDs; that was the initial justification for the invasion. Obviously false in hindsight, but at the time people were still pretty raw about 9/11, so critical thinking was in short supply, but--most importantly--it provided an enemy to focus on.
In the case of covid there was no comparable enemy. "Declaring war" on a virus would not have anywhere near the same impact as using the military to actually wage war on another country.
I disagree. Look at the way we talk about it, "the covid", "covid did this", etc. It absolutely would have worked as an enemy to declare war on and I don't think the vast majority of people would consider it trump's fault if he just got out ahead of it.
Imagine a world where he didn't do trumpy things and instead did things like talking about how this is a national, world wide foe we all need to work together to defeat, I know it's hard, we'll all make sacrifices, but we're the nation that beat the nazis and went to the moon, we can win this war on covid. For further details here are my science advisors talking about the latest info on counter measures.
Obviously this is imagining a world where trump isn't trump, but I very much believe obama/clinton/bush/etc would have been re-elected.
Keep in mind that we also have a strong tendency to re-elect the incumbent anyways and covid is an amazing opportunity to blame all your previous fuck ups on this new "totally unforseeable/preventable disease cataclysm!"
If he had a chance of being re-elected, it was certainly dead after his attempts at dealing with covid.