RFK is a former Democrat, now Republican grifter.
Tulsi Gabbard is a former Democrat, now Republican grifter.
Scott Pressler… Dave Rubin… Lindy Li… Elon Musk.
As MechaHitler would say, I’m noticing a pattern, and it’s every damn time.
There are genuine reasons to support Trump. Maybe you hate immigrants, or want to ban the gays, or bring back the glory days of medieval peasantry and homesteading. Perhaps you believe that Trump is fighting Deep State pedophiles, or he will prosecute Anthony Fauci for Operation Warp Speed.
These reasons include various degrees of delusion, stupidity, and immorality, but they are all genuine.
According to Elon Musk, he voted for Biden in 2020. Since we all have an extremely short memory, here’s him, after the election, claiming to “absolutely support trans.”
How did Elon Musk go from a man who supported the left for 12 years, basically his entire adult life, to becoming far-right in the span of three years?
Elon claims that he was “tricked” into giving his transgender daughter estrogen at age 16.
Here’s a pic of Elon in 2024 hugging a trans person:
Is it possible that Elon’s obsession with his trans-daughter motivated his shift from the left to the right? Last year, that was a plausible story.
However, since the election, Elon has boldly come out in defense of Indian immigrants and attacked Trump for being fiscally irresponsible.
The story that Elon wants us to believe is that these three events represent a natural, organic, naive series of political transitions:
In 2020, “I absolutely support trans”
In 2023, “You have spoken the absolute truth”
In 2025, “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”
We are supposed to buy the idea that Elon was “tricked” into supporting transgenderism, “tricked” into supporting the Pedophile-in-Chief, “tricked” into a coalition with anti-Indian racists.
If you are willing to believe all of that, I have a “self-driving car” to sell you.
Musk, the Financier
Elon Musk is a very intelligent financier and scam artist. He’s not the only one.
If you want to read about the world of finance and insider trading, I strongly recommend you start with Den of Thieves, by James Stewart.
When I was a libertarian, I was always confused about insider trading. What’s the problem? If I know a stock is going to go up or down, and I tell my best friend about this, and he uses that information to make money, who is being harmed?
According to the non-aggression principle, there’s nothing wrong with insider trading.
The traditional argument for free markets is that it allocates resources to those best able to meet market demand. If I invest in a good company, and it makes money, I am rewarded. Now I’m richer, and I’m able to invest more. Free markets, in theory, are an algorithm which rewards smart investors for investing intelligently, and punishes dumb investors for investing poorly.
The problem with insider trading is that it subverts this process. Instead of investors being rewarded for intelligence, they become rewarded for nepotism.
I’m not accusing Elon of insider trading specifically, but setting the stage to describe the broader world of finance.
In the late 1990s, the traditional world of finance pivoted away from stocks, bonds, and equities, and moved toward the internet.
Take the example of Mark Cuban. Cuban graduated in 1981 with a degree in business and immediately began working for Mellon Financial. His next job was as a salesman for a software company. When he was fired, he stole his former company’s clients and used them to create his own software reseller company.
After selling this company in 1990, Cuban went on to acquire Broadcast.com in 1995. He did so with his friend Todd Wagner. Cuban was able to ride the internet hype-wave and sell the company to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. The Broadcast was worthless, and went bankrupt soon after. Cuban cashed out just before the bubble popped.
Cuban and Wagner weren’t software geniuses — Cuban was a salesman with a degree in business, while Wagner was a lawyer. Those skills aren’t very good for building software, but they are excellent for scamming, speculating, and swindling.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Musk’s History
Elon can claim, accurately, that he is a software engineer. His first company, at age 24, was Zip2, which could be described as an ancient form of Google Maps or Yelp, but compatible with fax technology. The company was started in 1995, and like Cuban’s Broadcast.com, it was sold in 1999, just before the bubble burst, with Elon cashing out with $22 million. Lucky!
Next, Elon founded x.com, which was an online bank, using $12 million of his own money. A year later, the board of directors of x.com voted to oust Elon, and rename the website PayPal. When PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002, Elon received $176 million in compensation.
To recap: Elon Musk is a software engineer and a banker. His first two companies were focused on news, media, advertising, e-commerce, and banking.
In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX. Ostensibly, according to Musk, the reason behind this venture was purely idealistic: he wanted to save humanity from destruction from an asteroid by building an interplanetary civilization.
Humor me, and imagine for a moment what sort of pragmatic or cynical reasons Musk might have for this investment:
Musk was deeply embedded in the software world. Zip2 looks like an early Google maps — he knew that advancing this tech would require satellites.
Besides GPS systems, satellites would be needed to provide internet to rural areas.
Besides the commercial applications, satellites and rocket technology would also be valuable to the government.
In his 1998 interview on Zip2, Elon is asked, “What is the internet?” His response:
“The internet is the super-set of all media.”
Before Elon was associated with Mars or cars, his mind was dedicated to the control of media.
Elon presents himself as someone hyper-focused on cars, on Mars, then on DOGE… His interests seem diverse and fleeting, until one refocuses on his first and only true love, media.
But what about Mars?!
Why rockets? Rockets launch satellites, and satellites are the infrastructure of “the super-set of all media.”
Mars was just good PR, to sell the company to nerds. Telling people you’re trying to save humanity is a much better sales pitch than telling them you’re trying to control the media.
SpaceX wasn’t a labor of love -- it was a government grift, scoring a $1.6 billion NASA contract in 2008. The story here is clear: Elon’s wealth and power come from media, banking, and government spending.
Why Tesla?
Musk’s investment in the company in 2004 follows the same pattern as SpaceX:
Identify an area where the government is handing out billions in subsidies
Collect rent from the government
Overpromise and never deliver (colony on Mars, self-driving cars)1
And this brings us to the present day.
If this were the 19th century, we should think of Elon as a newspaper owner and a banker, first and foremost. His purchase of Tesla would mirror the purchase of railroads, while his purchase of SpaceX would be akin to investing in telegraph lines. These are ways he extracts subsidies from the government, but they are not his ultimate interest.
Tesla has run its course. The brand is damaged by Elon’s name, and other companies are making better and cheaper electric vehicles. When Elon took out a loan to purchase Twitter, he did so using his Tesla stock as collateral. Tesla is merely a vehicle for the next step.
With Twitter as the software, and SpaceX as the hardware, Elon is doubling down on controlling media as his long-term goal.
Why did Elon shift so far to the right between 2020 and 2023? Outside of being “tricked” or changing his mind, what motivations would he have to align with Trump?
In an interview with Tucker Carlson before the election, Elon claimed that the Democrats would put him in jail. Putting aside theories of Elon’s potential illegal activity,2 Elon may have seen the Democrats as the party of order and stability. As the richest man in America, Elon prefers that democracy is weakened so that he can gain more power for himself.
By democracy, I am not referring to “the rule of the majority,” but rule by the university system, the academy, or the Cathedral. In ancient Athens, democracy didn’t refer to rule of the majority, but rule by citizens, who were an elite class of landowning men. In the information age, we’ve shifted the category of “nobility” from land ownership to education, but a government ruled by college professors and one ruled by Athenian gentlemen can both be described as “democracy,” even if one has blue hair and the other owns slaves.
For Elon, this system is his opponent, since it represents one of the three independent poles of power in America: media, school, and money.3 Elon represents financial and media power, so his natural opponent is the University class. To be specific: I mean those who are indoctrinated into the caste system of the university cult, not “intelligent people.”
I’m attempting to describe these dynamics as objectively as possible, without moral judgment. Athens also had a caste system and its own cults -- every democracy has these structures.
Elon’s #1 priority is to discredit the university system, smash it, and expand his financial and media empire. For that purpose, Trump is a useful battering ram.
If what I am saying is true, why didn’t Elon support Trump back in 2016?
At that time, Elon was still building up capital. From 2020 to 2021, Tesla stock went from $28 to $280 in a matter of 10 months. It was after that point that Elon began to shift his opinion from the left toward the right, because he had secured enough financial capital to begin building his media empire.
Now that Trump is in office, Elon’s incentive is not to support Trump and help him succeed. Quite the contrary: Elon’s goal isn’t to reinforce the two-party system and restore stability, but to destroy democracy and rule as an oligarch.
Elon’s next move.
Elon’s two political shifts have been cynically motivated. His alignment with the left on green energy and government subsidies was for his own profit. His alignment with Trump was born out of a desire to degrade democracy. Now, turning from Trump, he is only further discrediting both sides of the system, creating a situation in which voters trust no one.
Think about the consequences of pushing the Epstein conspiracy, and calling Trump a pedophile. If we are to believe Musk, then the entire Democratic Party is controlled by pedophiles, and Trump himself is a pedophile, and all the people covering for Trump are pedophiles… How can democracy be justified under such a belief system?
Elon will spend the next 3.5 years sowing distrust in Trump.
Currently, the Democratic Party is polling at its lowest favorability ever. 57% of voters have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, up from 35% back in 2008.
This is true even if we only ask Democratic voters.
Elon’s goal is to tank support for Democrats, and he’s done that by creating a media platform for white genocide memes, Epstein conspiracies, and anti-feminist content. He will continue destroying the sacred cows of democracy, but at the same time, he is also going to undermine the viability of the Republican Party by supporting the conspiracy theory that Trump is a pedophile. The end result is that voters will lack trust in either party, and this creates openings for Elon to enlarge his power.
Specifically, the idea of creating an America Party will be used to stop any legislation from being passed. With slim legislative margins, if Elon controls just a few senators, he can halt the country.
For most of American history, the ruling party had a 60% majority. For four periods, a constitutional two-thirds majority was reached, allowing for amendments to be made. However, since the 1980s, neither party has breached 60% support in the Senate. Since 1995, neither party has breached 60% in the Congress. Gridlock is becoming more and more common. Elon seeks to exacerbate this by controlling a few “swing voters” who can block legislation from both parties.
So far, Elon’s top guy is Thomas Massie, who instinctively votes against every bill. Massie isn’t a consistent libertarian either: he supports zoning laws when they are used to prohibit building data centers.
Libertarian NIMBYism is just what Elon wants: someone who will frustrate, aggravate, and stall legislation, in order to further humiliate and embarrass the concept of democracy.
Conclusion.
Elon Musk has been thinking about controlling the media, the internet, and global banking since he was in his early 20s. His plan to become the richest man in America through government subsidies has succeeded, and now he controls one of the most important social media platforms on the planet.
Politically, Elon was a “go along to get along guy” for most of his life, because that’s what helped him score government contracts under Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Once Tesla peaked and its days of 10x growth were numbered, Musk decided it was time to pull the plug on the nice-guy act, and start destabilizing American politics.
Elon’s purchase of X probably swung the election for Trump, and it has destroyed the credibility of the Democratic Party. Millions of voters are constantly inundated with rumors of immigrant rape gangs, pedophile cabals, and the plot of the globalists to make us eat seed oils and bugs.
Whether or not these things are true or false, they are certainly destabilizing for the current order. The Democratic Party, as the party of the optimates (the University class) has suffered the most from Elon’s influence.
But now that Trump is in power, it’s the Republican Party’s turn to feel the heat. Elon will continue to push radical right-wing conspiracies, but both parties will now be targeted. With millions of low-information voters asking “@grok, is this true?”, Elon has them in the palm of his hand.
My prediction that Republicans will lose the midterms in 2026 is looking more and more probable with Elon’s defection from the Republican Party. With a Republican president and Democratic legislature, nothing will happen for the “lame duck” session. These lame duck sessions give credence to fascist, communist, and authoritarian fantasies about a strongman, who could cut through the parliamentary gridlock, and take a sword to the Gordian knot of government…
Elon isn’t alone in his scheme. There are other oligarchs, like Peter Thiel, who follow a similar line of thinking. They have a common enemy in the University class. Once the prestige of college is discredited, there will be a struggle for power to determine which one of them will emerge on top.
Thiel, for his part, is less interested in controlling the media, and more interested in military surveillance, intelligence, and spying through Palantir. To give a Nazi analogy, Elon wants to control Streicher and Goebbels, the organs of propaganda, while Thiel wants to control the SS, the organs of the intelligence agencies.
There is a possibility that Elon and Thiel fail, that the University class strikes back through left-wing populists like Mamdani. In that case, we will have socialism instead of oligarchy.
In the case of self-driving, it does seem that feat has been achieved, but not by Tesla. Waymo has a self-driving taxi service.
Hypothetically: Lying to the feds to score contracts, credits, and subsidies he did not deserve.
We could also mention the church which is declining in influence and is largely downstream of media (political affiliation is more important than religion to most Americans). We could also mention the military, but it has not played a role in domestic policy historically.
An interesting theory, but Occam's razor says Musk simply means what he says about Mars. You're free to dislike Musk, but whatever he is, he's far more than a SW engineer and scam artist.
Tesla sells almost 5x more cars than Chrysler (now Stellantis). No other US car mfr has gotten to anywhere near that scale since Chrysler itself, founded in 1935. So they've done what nobody else was able to do for 90 years. This is more than a scam - this is serious heavy industry.
SpaceX has reduced the cost of putting payload in orbit *by a factor of 10* vs. where it was previously. Because so far nobody else can match their prices, SpaceX launches *more than 90%* of ALL mass to orbit from the entire planet - including Russia and China. They pioneered practical rocket re-use when nobody in the industry was even trying. Again, this is a lot more than salesmanship and hype.
Yes, Musk is eager to pick up money left on the table by the US government. SpaceX *saves* the USG billions in launch costs tho, and neither Tesla nor Musk lobbied for the EV rebates or the emission credit scheme that makes a lot of Tesla's profits. If you were running a car making company and billions were on the table that you qualified for, wouldn't you or anyone pick up that money? Even more so, if you really wanted to colonize Mars out of your own pocket as an act of charity, and seriously thought the *fate of the universe* depended on it, wouldn't you also be ruthless in pursuit of that goal?
Yes, Musk has a long history of overpromising and delivering late. Sometimes very late. But he also has a long history of eventually delivering on even outrageous promises. Musk's investors are keenly aware of this (both sides). SpaceX likes to say they specialize in turning the impossible into the merely very late. And the self-driving cars DO work (I have a couple of them). They still aren't 100% perfect and probably never will be, but then human drivers aren't 100% perfect either - if the self-driving car is safer than human drivers, that's good enough. And they're about at that point now.
Musk is a real industrialist who builds real companies that make things efficiently in quantity and are vastly more innovative than all of their competitors.
Is he serious about Mars? Only Musk knows for sure, but many people have made the argument that as our society reduces travel time and cost, and communications becomes cheap (it's at ~ zero now), we become a monoculture. And monocultures have all kinds of well-known vulnerabilities. The only fix short of abandoning technology (not going to happen politically) is to spread the human race apart - re-create independent isolated societies, so if something bad happens to one, others are not affected, and (both biological and social) evolution can test different survival schemes. It's not just meteor strikes - it's nuclear/bio/chemical war, ideological dead ends, the fertility crisis, etc. Mars is just the first step toward spreading intelligent life throughout the universe.
I think you've said you'd be OK with the human race dying out. Most of us don't feel that way; Musk has repeatedly said he doesn't either. Occam's razor says he means it.
-- Added: I just got around to reading your recent "in defense of human extinction". You didn't say anything there implying you'd be OK with the human race dying out (I was misled by the title); sorry.
I hate Elon but come on. You skipped over SpaceX being responsible for the majority of all satellites currently in space, beating out all governments and other companies combined. The man is beyond detestable but that’s real.