Musk, Tesla, Twitter, And SpaceX Had A Hell Of A Year

In March the world’s wealthiest man said he would be staying out of politics. Musk had, prior to 2020, been a shrewd bipartisan down-ticket donor, giving to politicians as it suited him and his businesses, giving tens of thousands of dollars to Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel, as well as Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy.

When it came to presidential campaigns, however, Musk was a staunch Democratic Party supporter, giving to the Obama, Clinton, and Biden campaigns. So, when he said he wasn’t donating to either presidential campaign, it was a clear split with Joe Biden over his alignment with the United Auto Workers and perceived slights against the ultra-billionaire union buster.

Within four months of the “not donating money” tweet, Elon started the America PAC and whipped his fellow billionaire class into a donating frenzy. Musk pushed over $250,000,000 of his own money to help Donald J. Trump regain the presidency. It’s difficult to know for sure, but this may be the largest political contribution by one person in American history.

Even before the votes were tallied, Musk began calling in favors from President Trump, pushing for his loyal SpaceX employees to be installed in the Department of Defense, a clear conflict of interest. Later, Musk would be appointed to co-head the Department of Government Efficiency.

Elon Musk, following the successful re-election of Donald Trump, has fallen perfectly into the role of effectively running the country and puppeting the geriatric President Elect. Despite Musk’s best efforts to shut down the federal government, pushing for a federal budget continuing resolution to fail, a bipartisan continuing resolution has been pushed through at the last minute.

Musk has threatened to fund primary challengers against any congressperson who doesn’t vote the way he wants them to. He also attempted to influence congress to just do nothing until after the Trump’s inauguration. Once his cajoling failed to push congress in the way he liked and he was seen as the one to blame for the CR’s initial failure, he cowardly tried to walk back his involvement.

While Elon has been neglecting his duties as CEO or owner of at least six companies and father of twelve children to play President, Tesla did the Silicon Valley thing of inventing the city bus again. The electric car company’s continued push to sell self-driving autonomous cars that neither drive themselves or are autonomous, was on full display this fall at Tesla’s We, Robot event.

As a perfect encapsulation of Elon and Tesla’s lies to pump the share price, a series of Optimus “autonomous” robots were on hand to pour beer for guests of the event. It was later revealed that the robots were all controlled by humans. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, his “autonomous” taxis will also be driven remotely, potentially for several years.

Elon has been promising self-driving cars for over a decade. It has always been a lie.

Tesla was on top of the world in November of 2019 when the Cybertruck was first unveiled. It promised otherworldly aesthetics, best-in-class everything, and a bargain-basement price tag that seemed impossible. As it turns out, five years later when the vehicle finally hit regular production, almost all of that was, in fact, impossible. The specs didn’t align with what people were promised, and the price was almost double what had been promoted.

In spite of the company getting allegedly over a million deposits for potential Cybertruck owners, Tesla admitted that it has basically delivered a Cybertruck to everyone who wanted one less than a year after the first truck left the factory. Only about 27,000 trucks were delivered in the first three quarters of 2024, and just like that demand is sated. Tesla is slowing production and freezing the assembly line for hours or days at a time. Yes, the Cybertruck has outsold all of the other electric pickups on the market, but that’s probably a sign that pickup buyers don’t want EVs and EV buyers don’t want pickups.

In part, Elon and his heel-turn jabroni followers have turned the Cybertruck into the token sculpture of the current culture war. It’s difficult to get excited about this poorly assembled monstrosity that looks like a dorky dumpster.

When he’s not parroting eugenics and great replacement conspiracy theories, Elon is attempting to spread his seed like Attila the Hun. He’s not happy having fathered 12 children with three different women, he wants to continue making as many babies in his image as he can. He offered to “give a child” to pop legend Taylor Swift. He secretly impregnated one of Neuralink’s executives, exposed himself to SpaceX employees, bribed women to sleep with him, had a sexual relationship with a college intern 20 years his junior, and sent several harassments ’ worth of text messages, among other things.

It really is no wonder that Elon and SpaceX are trying to have the Supreme Court render the National Labor Relations Board unconstitutional.

Tesla, once the global leader in Electric Vehicles, has rested upon its laurels far too long. With an aging lineup and uninspiring products marketed on untruths, stock market share price, and vibes, plus a company CEO actively working to alienate a huge percentage of the company’s target demographic, it’s no surprise that sales aren’t hitting targets. Competition from Europe and China are growing rapidly, pushing Tesla out of markets it once controlled. Tesla is going to struggle to even match its 2023 sales, and looks likely to fall short of the mark.

Elon’s brain-computer-interface pet project Neuralink was successful in implanting a chip in two human brains in 2024, and both operations seem to have been successful. The company’s chip, called “Telepathy,” is currently being trialed in quadriplegic patients, and allegedly allows them to control a cell phone or computer screen simply by thinking.

This is, unequivocally, a pretty great thing for delivering capabilities and quality of life to people who need them. I have reservations, however, about Elon’s desire to eventually implant these chips in the brains in able-bodied human adults to archive memories, better interface with AI, or human-to-human telepathy. There are many reasons not to trust the world’s richest man to put a chip in your brain, but perhaps the biggest one is that he’s probably lying.

It has been seven years since Elon first stood on stage and promised customers with a straight face that they would receive their Tesla Roadsters in 2020. Back then 1,000 people gave Tesla the full boat $250,000 for a Founders Edition Roadster, while presumably thousands more put down deposits. Nobody has seen hide nor hair of that car in the time since.

This summer Musk promised that the Roadster was back on schedule and would be delivered in 2025. Then in October during the company earnings call, Musk walked back even that promise.

Back in April Tesla was undergoing massive layoffs to the tune of ten percent of its global staff. Some 15-20 percent of the charging network team had been laid off, something that really put a damper on plans set forth by then-department head Rebecca Tinucci. About two weeks after the layoffs, Musk requested that Tinucci meet with him to discuss the future of the department.

Allegedly Musk was much displeased with her ideas for the network and told her to fire an additional chunk of her team. According to Reuters reporting, pushing back against Musk was Tinucci’s undoing. “When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.”

One must not displease His Highness.

Ahead of the 2024 election Elon Musk’s America PAC transported out-of-state canvassers to Michigan to knock on doors in support of the Donald Trump campaign for president. These workers were transported around the state in rented U-Haul vans without seats or safety belts, weren’t told what the job was before they signed up for it, and were given unrealistically high targets and told that if they didn’t meet quota the PAC and its contracted canvassing company wouldn’t pay for their lodging or travel. After one of the canvassers spoke to the press large groups were fired without warning and left in Michigan with no way back home.

This fits the literal definition of human trafficking, “involving the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor,” hauling someone to another state under false pretenses, endangering their safety, and leaving them to fend for themselves. Yikes.

Maybe Musk learned some of his tricks from his pals Jeff Epstein and Sean Combs.

The Elon compensation plan saga has raged all year. In 2018 Elon asked the crony-packed and allegedly coerced Tesla board to approve an astronomical compensation package linked directly to the company’s share price exceeding anyone’s expectations. Using tactics that could be described as lying or manipulating the share price, Elon made that number a reality.

That pay package, valued at $56 billion, was shot down by a Delaware judge back in January, saying it was unfair to shareholders. Tesla went to bat for its embattled CEO already worth nearly half a trillion dollars. The company even went so far as to run advertisements, something it doesn’t typically do, aimed at convincing TSLA investors to vote to reinstate the pay package, which for some unfathomable reason, they did.

Earlier this month the same judge shot it down a second time.

In 2023 Elon Musk said on social media that he would fight Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg. Zuck, a trained MMA fighter, took the fight, but Elon quickly backed down when it came time to schedule the fight.

In July Musk once again said he would fight Zuck “any place, any time, any rules” but it seems Mr. Facebook is done humoring Mr. Twitter’s egotistical quips.

Following Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022 a bunch of the site’s advertisers jumped ship, largely because they didn’t want their products and services showing up alongside the antisemitic content Musk continues to push. Musk, the adult in the room, responded by telling the advertisers to “go fuck” themselves. After walking that back and hiring a new CEO to woo advertisers back, Musk once again fired up his antagonistic side by threatening to sue companies which did not choose to advertise on Twitter.

In backing Donald Trump for president, the EV company head and one-time promoter of solar and battery tech has made an about-face in his environmental promises. It seems the half-trillionaire is no longer worried about fixing the problems on Earth and instead is focused almost exclusively on getting to Mars. Back in August he hard-launched his environmental heel turn by hosting a discussion with candidate Trump on Twitter. In that discussion Musk claimed that CO2 isn’t a problem, burning fossil fuels had minimal effect on the climate, and went so far as to claim the oil and gas industry isn’t to blame. He has also tweeted that climate change is “tracking to be solved” and “definitely will not end the world as we know it.”

Elon Musk, now acting as the Grima Wormtongue to Donald Trump’s cobweb-brained Théoden King, has reportedly been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin since 2022.

In spite of an overall economics-driven plunge in total car sales in the Chinese market over the summer, BYD is rallying in the second half of the year. In the third quarter of 2024 BYD was singularly responsible for 40 percent of global PHEV sales, and is essentially tied with Tesla for total sales in the first 9 months with Tesla on a downswing and BYD on a huge upswing.

Illegal immigrant isn’t usually the correct term for someone who is living in the United States without legal permission. These people are typically referred to as “undocumented” because they aren’t necessarily illegal if they can prove they’re here seeking asylum from the dangers and oppression of their country of origin. Elon’s thing isn’t that. He’s fully documented his U.S. citizenship, but it might be based on false pretense.

Musk allegedly worked at a startup while he was in the U.S. on a student visa in the 1990s. You can’t do that. It’s a whole thing.