Has he lost it?
Musk’s bizarre tweets are raising red flags
Tesla’s Elon Musk has been tweeting as if he’s as high as one of his SpaceX rockets.
Wall Street analysts, regulators and the media have all been recent victims of the eccentric billionaire.
But his calling a member of the team rescuing the Thai soccer kids a “pedo” did more than raise eyebrows.
The July 15 tweet prompted an open letter from Loup Ventures’ Gene Munster, who described Musk’s behavior as “fueling an unhelpful perception of your leadership — thin-skinned and short-tempered.”
The Munster letter on July 17 wasn’t the only red flag raised about Musk. Going back in time, here are some others:
Musk called in a request to Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune to make public the $6 million-plus in previously anonymous donations that Musk made to the environmental group.
His purpose, as reported by Bloomberg, was to deflect flak for donating $38,900 to a pro-Republican PAC last quarter.
Musk got around to apologizing to the “pedo guy” on Wednesday, acknowledging the rescuer’s criticism of the minisubmarine Musk sent to assist in the soccer team’s rescue does “not justify my actions against him.”
Musk’s sincerity was suspect, however, as the “pedo guy” had already threatened to sue.
Musk’s 22.2 million Twitter followers give the entrepreneur a bully pulpit that he ill-advisedly used this month to dress down the blog writer Linette Lopez.
On July 5, he tweeted, “@lopezlinette has published several false articles about Tesla, including a doozy where she claimed Tesla scrapped more batteries than our total S,X &3 production number, which is physically impossible.”
He also accused the Business In- sider writer of being motivated by short-seller Jim Chanos, whom Musk called “Tesla’s most prominent short-seller.”
“Her articles print Chanos’ view verbatim,” he added. “This is not journalism.”
Musk doesn’t limit his wrath to individual journalists, which is why on May 23 he said he’d take on the entire industry by developing a fake news/honest journalism scorecard.
“Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication,” he tweeted. “Thinking of calling it Pravda...”
“The holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them,” he continued.
Many believe the cloud over Musk’s head took shape during a May 2 analyst earnings call.
“Boring, bonehead questions are not cool,” he said in response to a question about Tesla’s projected capital expenditures. “These questions are so dry. They’re killing me.”