“He Told Me He Voted For Me, So He’s Another Bullshit Artist.”

Trump's recent remarks about Elon Musk reminded me how refreshing his perceptions of other public figures used to be: Nancy Pelosi is “highly overrated and highly incompetent”. Jeb Bush is "an embarrassment to his family. . . . Frankly, he’s a stiff." Hillary Clinton "may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States.” Drs Fauci and Birx were "two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,”

I hope that, regardless of the outcome, we get this sort of thing back, even for a little while. In the case of Elon Musk, I'd been having doubts already that even if he was the richest man in the world, he maybe wasn't the smartest, but Trump's assessment pushed these questions to the front of my mind. In the meme above, which it appears Musk put together himself and posted on Twitter, he seems to be laughing just a little too hard. The whole Twitter distraction left investors unimpressed:

Tesla shareholders have publicly expressed concern about Musk’s ability to effectively run Tesla while owning Twitter — along with his handful of other companies that include SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company. Their cries became progressively louder as Tesla’s shares continued their downward trajectory.

In early April, when Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter, becoming the social media company’s biggest shareholder, Tesla shares were priced at $1,145.45. The share price has since fallen more than 34%.

So Musk can go haw haw over the twists and turns of his public battle with Twitter, but the question of whether this basically frivolous issue will take his attention away from actually making money for his investors is still there. What's his strategy? Is he playing 3-D chess to drive the Twitter stock down and force them to renegotiate the deal?

Let's grant that's what he's doing. He buys a failing company whose business model is probably not viable to start with for only $20 billion instead of $44 billion, but now he basically has to fire everybody and start again from scratch, apparently with some vague idea of turning it into a subscription-based business.

Isn't this whole idea, er, BS? I think I'd be shorting Tesla myself no matter what.

But this leaves out the question I raised a few days ago, that the guy just had twins with a senior executive who worked for him. This is the sort of thing that would even have gotten Bill Gates fired from Microsoft had their board found out about it. That he would do this suggests he just isn't a serious guy in the 21st century. But let's look at the bigger context:

The tech icon has 10 children with three women — including twins born last year.

Musk, 51, and a top executive at one of his companies, Shivon Zilis, welcomed the two new members of his brood in November in Austin, Texas. . . . That brings the tally of confirmed children for the South African-born business magnate to 10 — six with his first wife Justine Wilson, two with Claire Boucher, also known by her stage name Grimes, and the twins with Zilis.

Musk and Wilson’s first child, born in 2002, died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks, according to Marie Claire.

Grimes’ second child with Musk, a daughter born through surrogacy, arrived weeks after Zilis delivered her twins.

Zilis has worked for Musk’s companies for years. She is the director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, according to her LinkedIn profile.

. . . Grimes, 34, and Musk were first romantically linked in May 2018 when they appeared together at the Met Gala.

They welcomed a son in May 2020 named X Æ A-Xii, who they call X, and a daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl, who goes by Y, via surrogate in December 2021.

Although Musk did not have any confirmed children with Amber Heard, they began dating in mid-2016 before calling it quits for good in February 2018.

. . . Heard, 36, gave birth to a daughter, Oonagh Paige Heard, via surrogate in April 2021 but never revealed the identity of the father or sperm donor.

However, his relationship with Heard was apparently more complicated:

Amber Heard and her former billionaire boyfriend Elon Musk were involved in a legal battle over frozen embryos following their split, a former friend of the actress’ sister said under oath.

Radar has obtained a bombshell declaration submitted in court by Jennifer Howell — which included claims that the actress accused the tech mogul of "bugging" her Tesla.

All this business about surrogates and frozen embryos sounds pretty hinky to me. But it gets worse. Not mentioned in the story is his son by his first wife, Xavier Alexander Musk, who

has filed a request for a name change over gender identity in an effort to cut ties with their father.

"Gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form," Musk's child gave as reasoning for the petition.

Notwithstanding, Musk took his other sons with Justine Wilson, three of whom are triplets, to have an audience with Pope Francis, who we must assume is not normally with the frozen embryo-IVF program.

On July 1, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX tweeted a pic of himself with sons Griffin, 18, and 16-year-old triplets Kai, Damian and Saxon posing with Pope Francis during a recent trip to Italy.

Elon wrote, "Honored to meet @Pontifex yesterday."

According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the businessman and the pontiff had a 40-minute meeting at Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City. Elon talked about his ideas on improving the world and humanity, the outlet said.

So he gave the Holy Father his thoughts on improving the world. I can imagine. I'm thinking Donald Trump has a point.