From an idealist known for his attempts at laying the foundation for human migration to a different planet, Elon Musk has recently had a difficult fall from grace.
Musk obtained ownership of Twitter in an all-cash acquisition buyout on April 14th, 2022, purchased for a whooping 44 billion dollars. However, since then, he has been tied up in controversy after controversy.
Take the incident where Musk tweeted a link to an article by a newspaper company known for spreading false information, which detailed obscenities regarding American businessman Paul Pelosi, the spouse of the former California state representative, Nancy Pelosi. The day before, Pelosi had been hit in the head with a hammer in a targeted assault, sparking outrage. As of the time of writing, Musk deleted the tweet, but has not given any statements in regards to his insensitive actions.
Musk’s popularity has skyrocketed in the past few years, especially after he was titled the richest man in the world, yet it seems as though Musk is running out of luck as he lost the title of world’s richest man to a French billionaire, Bernard Arnault.
To top all of this off, Elon Musk was due to appear at the United States Federal Court in San Francisco on January 19th, after he was sued by Tesla shareholders for a series of tweets in 2018. The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of Tesla investors who owned Tesla stock for a 10-day period in August of 2018. On the 7th of August, 2018, Musk had tweeted he had acquired the funding needed to buyout Tesla at 72 million dollars, but this claim never materialized. Additionally, the basis of this lawsuit derives from the claim that the Tesla shares would not have been traded at such a wide range had Musk not tweeted his intent to purchase the company for 420 dollars per share, thus costing investors millions. All this prompted an investigation, which resulted in a 20 million dollar fine for Musk and for Tesla; Musk was also forced to resign as Tesla’s chairman.
All of these issues come at a difficult time for Twitter, as users are concerned about what will become of the company following such a dramatic change in ownership. Musk purchased the company with the intention of imposing looser restrictions on users, which includes unbanning Former President Donald Trump, who was previously barred from the platform following the storming of the United States capital on January 6th, 2022.
All of this is bad news for Elon Musk, yet Musk is refusing to let this go; his most ardent supporters, including myself, are dissatisfied with his lack of responsibility. Having read his biography, I found it interesting and am inspired by his willingness to take risks and challenge the status quo all the while being an entrepreneur.
As I now reflect on Musk’s recent actions, I can not help but still appreciate all the trials and tribulations he went through and the fact that he still managed to accomplish many feats that others would not take on. This entails Paypal, formerly known as X.com, Tesla, and SpaceX, as well as his donation of over 300 million dollars through the Musk Foundation, which is known for donating to causes such as renewable energy, human space exploration and pediatric research. But nothing sums up this situation better than a quote from the man himself, “I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.”