Tesla said it didn't have key data in a fatal crash, then a hacker found it

If that was his goal he would have minded his own business after the election, instead of spouting invective posts against Trump on X.

That was after Musk realized he had alienated his entire consumer base.

And he wants to bring them back by alienating Trump while doubling down on his rhetoric?

He was under some imaginary assumption that Trump cared about the national deficit because of his campaign speeches. Once he realized that Trump really didn't care two hoots about it and only planned to increase it even more he had a late buyer's realization.

He has an ego and narcissism but he isn't dumb. He sees the problems but also cant admit hes wrong or anything.

That happened much earlier. The split with Trump happened after it finally sunk in that that Republicans weren't actually interested in smaller government or cost savings, that that was just a rhetorical weapon that they deploy selectively to get elected.

I mean, if we was rational, sure, that's probably what he should have done. But, y'know, he clearly _isn't_.

> but he isn't dumb.

    Musk’s assistant peeked back the muttered and said he had another meeting. “Do you have any final thoughts?” she asked.

    “Yes, I want to say one thing.” the data scientist said. He took a deep breath and turned to Musk.

    “I’m resigning today. I was feeling excited about the takeover, but I was really disappointed by your Paul Pelosi tweet. It’s really such obvious partisan misinformation and it makes me worry about you and what kind of friends you’re getting information from. It’s only really like the tenth percentile of the adult population who’d be gullible enough to fall for this.”

    The color drained from Musk’s already pale face. He leaned forward in his chair. No one spoke to him like this. And no one, least of all someone who worked for him, would dare to question his intellect or his tweets. His darting eyes focused for a second directly on the data scientist.

    “Fuck you!” Musk growled.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/25/lies-damned-lies-and-elo...

he's not a very smart man

If he thought trump would actually adhere to anything he said... or, for that matter, was the least bit consistent in what he did on a day-to-day basis, then Elon is not fit to pull his own pants up in the morning.

I thought Musk was an amazing, brilliantly intelligent man?

But it took him four months deeply embedded with the Republican party to come to this conclusion?

It's been blindingly obvious to anyone remotely paying attention to US politics for the last decade (or two, or more, but blindingly so, more recently).

He didn't really know what he was getting into until after all the appointments. I think he honestly believed that his engineering and business prowess would carry influence in the anti education party. fellforitagain.jpg

If we accept his self-diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, it could make a certain amount of sense. Coupled with the common propensity for motivated reasoning - someone initially told him what he wanted to hear, and he believed it.

It's always difficult to get a true read on what people believe, and that goes double for very powerful or wealthy people, who have professionals devoted to their image management.

Which, not coincidentally, is also where the idea of Musk as an "amazing, brilliantly intelligent man" comes from. After all, he doesn't have any sort of history of published work or intellectual breakthroughs to support that.

He seems to be good at investment, and at a certain kind of hype-based marketing, including of himself (up to a point.)