Elon Musk used to be a rather typical soft libertarian tech weirdo, eccentric but basically socially liberal. He didn’t seem to be someone strongly attracted to the fascist right although he did whine from time to time about the supposed “illiberal left.” Obviously he’s changed. He’s a full-blown wingnut conspiracy theorist now.
I was doing some research and came across this article from last spring which I’d totally forgotten about that looks to be the turning point for him. It is from last May:
Earlier this week, Elon Musk took to Twitter to make a series of announcements. “Political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months,” he wrote early Wednesday afternoon. Later, he informed his followers: “In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold …” A few hours after that, he tweeted emoji of a face with a tongue hanging out and a box of popcorn, i.e., the international symbol for “sitting back and waiting for drama.”
Viewed in isolation, these tweets didn’t seem that odd—Musk has been bashing liberals for some time now, and it’s not at all surprising that a known troll would try to preemptively claim that any attacks against him were coming from his political enemies. But now, with the benefit of context, they make even more sense, and make the richest man in the world look like a massive creep.
That context came on Thursday night when Insider published a story reporting that SpaceX, the company founded by Musk in 2002, paid a flight attendant $250,000 in 2018 to settle a sexual-misconduct claim against him. According to reporter Rich McHugh, the attendant, who worked as part of the flight crew for SpaceX’s corporate jet fleet, had accused Musk of “exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent, and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.”
Apparently, it has been proven that he ended up paying the woman $250,000 ensuring her silence with an NDA but the story was revealed by a friend she shared the story with at the time.
He’s just another spoiled, snotty overgrown child with too much money playing with people for his own amusement. And when he doesn’t get his way, well …
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