Remember when everyone thought Elon Musk was a genius?
With each passing day, I’m not sure he can tie his shoelaces. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man and U.S. shadow president, is having a rough week. Tesla shares are falling faster than one of his doomed rockets. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk lost $29 billion — just on Monday.
On that same day, Musk’s X went lights out. He blamed it on a “massive cyberattack” from the “Ukraine area.” Evidence? Musk has no time for evidence. Dark insinuations and conspiracy theories go viral in our attention economy.
But since paying $44 billion to buy Twitter — that’s like dropping $10,000 on a ham sandwich — the site has struggled with outages. Foreign hackers? Or did the spotty service start after this impetuous genius fired 80 per cent of the staff.
If all of this wasn’t enough for his Very Bad Day, Elon also beclowned himself with a cheap shot. Democrat senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and navy fighter pilot, just returned from Ukraine. He vowed to not give up on the besieged country and criticized America’s doofus-in-chief for “trying to weaken Ukraine’s hand.”
Musk’s response? He called Mr. Kelly a “traitor.”
The former astronaut hit the thrusters with a clapback for the ages: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”
This raises another question: Is Musk a genius or Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot?
In the fall, the Wall Street Journal reported the broligarch and murderous dictator are phone buddies. What do they discuss? Nobody knows, not even the American government. This seems strange since Musk is a defence contractor. Is it any coincidence Musk has switched from supporting Ukraine to now calling President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “evil”? Is it any coincidence he recently mused that if deprived of his Starlink satellites, the Ukrainian military would collapse?
That’s not just a hideous veiled threat — it’s a Kremlin talking point.
But Musk’s fanboys keep calling him a genius. Why? Because he’s a good engineer? There was a kid in my Grade 6 class who could solve a Rubik’s Cube in two minutes. He also believed volcanoes were Earth’s boobies. Someone can be masterful at one thing and stupid about another.
Elon Musk is shockingly stupid about many things.
During a Fox Business interview on his Very Bad Day, Musk said his DOGE goons plan to take a chainsaw to entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare. He also claimed Democrats are secretly luring illegal immigrants into the country to collect Social Security in exchange for votes. Pick these strawberries for 45 years and maybe we’ll give you a pension.
If that was the bonkers essay thesis of a poli-sci undergrad, they’d get an F and be rushed to a neurologist for an emergency scan. But Musk previously deemed Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” meaning he neither understands how Social Security works nor what a Ponzi scheme might be.
Something is painfully obvious the more Musk does performative pirouettes in the spotlight: this malevolent disrupter has a screw loose. It may be many screws. There may be enough loose screws to build a deck, which Musk would then call a pyramid scheme.
Genius? This dipstick is firing thousands of federal workers without knowing what anyone does. Wait. That guy made sure nuclear weapons are safely stored? Rehire him. Wait. Whacking that department could lead to another pandemic involving a hemorrhagic fever? Rehire them.
Musk is claiming to save big money by killing contracts that were already dead. He doesn’t know an actuarial table from an actual beneficiary. He thinks 160-year-olds are committing fraud. He thinks extreme weather can be monitored with cheap binoculars.
Musk lies about foreign aid and then, when called out, he lies about public health. He is a free speech absolutist who demands journalists be jailed and judges be impeached. Why is he not smart enough to reduce spending in a responsible way? Because he is just not smart enough.
If Musk was truly a genius, wouldn’t he be more sophisticated in profiting by destroying the federal government? Wouldn’t he realize this DOGE moonlighting might choke Tesla, his golden goose?
Europeans would now rather drive a used Lada.
Musk’s ride into politics has been bumpy because he keeps veering toward potholes clearly marked “DUMBASS.” No real genius would give questionable salutes or suddenly jump into the air as if an invisible assailant rammed them in the lower spine with a cattle prod.
On Thursday, another SpaceX rocket exploded.
Some of the falling debris may have landed on Elon Musk’s head.
