"At Least He Gives Us Something To Talk About"

In the post above, former physicist and current contrarian YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder says of Elon Musk, "Whatever you think about the man, at least he gives us something to talk about." The topic of the post is why Musk is wrong about Mars, but that was several months ago, and the things he's given us to talk about keep on coming.

I'm still with the working theory that I posted yesterday, that in the end, Musk works for his corporate boards of directors, who give him his options, his bonuses, his perks, and his planes, and right now, they aren't happy. Consider Trump's remarks in the Oval Office yesterday:

Trump said Musk, the CEO of Tesla and a close adviser, was upset about the repeal of an electric vehicle tax credit. Trump argued Musk was aware of the policy “from the beginning.”

“He knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody. And he never had a problem until right after he left,” Trump said. “I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

What might a Tesla board member be thinking when he hears this? Your CEO, whose job performance you have a fiduciary duty to evaluate, has just spent several months 24/7 at Mar-a-Lago and the White House putting together Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, knew it better than almost anybody, and he let Trump get away with taking out the EV subsidies, on which Tesla relies to sell it cars.

Why was Tesla even paying the guy? Shouldn't he maybe have regarded fixing the world as a post-retirement hobby? Maybe it's in fact time for Musk to retire. I think Trump's comments below are actually directed at the Tesla and SpaceX boards:

Musk's tweets since this exchange have been at best erratic, at worst suggesting a meltdown:

In a Thursday afternoon X post amid a historic falling out between the two former allies, Musk replied “yes” to a suggestion that Trump should be impeached.

“President vs. Elon. Who wins? My money’s on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him,” posted Ian Miles Cheong, a social media influencer who receives lucrative payments from Musk’s X.

Musk agreed.

. . . The fight’s Thursday escalation featured Trump threatening Musk’s government subsidies and contracts and Musk claiming – without evidence – Trump is implicated in the Epstein files.

Musk did not clarify which impeachable act may have been committed by the President, for whom he worked loyally until just days before their falling out.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse, as I do, senses the Tesla board and Musk's lenders have since gotten involved, with Bill Ackman calling for peace:

Phone calls from the Tesla Board, Peter Thiel and especially Larry Ellison, tend to change things.

Remember, Bill Ackman is the billionaire who constructed the SPARC (special purpose acquisition rights company) to save Elon Musk and Twitter financially, before Larry Ellison (Oracle) stepped in.

The problem is that Musk is a flake, and I'm not sure how different he is from Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. Yesterday, I pointed out that his firm SpaceX has the express corporate mission of colonizing Mars and not making money doing it. The YouTube video at the top of this post stresses the absurdity of this goal, with a key soundbite from Bill Maher, "How badly would we have to rat**** Earth before it was worse than a place that's 200 below zero, with no air, no water, with six months. . . " SpaceX has prestigious people on its board, but Elizabeth Holmes had even more prestigious people on the board of Theranos. And really, why would anyone want to be on the board of a company with such a wacky mission?

Musk's wackiness in his personal life is also very troubling. Yesterday I noted the Wall Street Journal story that suggested Musk has far more than the 14 children he's acknowledged by numerous women, most carried by surrogates and kept secret via multimillion-dollar payments and non-disclosure agreements.

The most recent rumor concerns Amber Heard, the Hollywood has-been who during the defamation case with Johnny Depp was alleged to have been in a legal dispute with Musk over frozen embryos they created during their own affair.

Heard shared an Instagram post on American Mother's Day revealing the birth of her twins, which she described as "the completion of the family I've strived to build for years," emphasizing that, "becoming a mother by myself and on my own terms despite my own fertility challenges has been the most humbling experience of my life."

. . . Within hours, X (ironically the platform owned by Musk) was buzzing with theories, memes, and more than a few pointed comments. "Maybe Elon Musk is their father," one tweeter wondered, while another added, "Elon is still bringing children into the world at a record pace," cynically referring to the fact that Musk has fathered many children, as he is already a father to no fewer than 14 offspring.

But why Musk specifically? Of course, this isn't just a random name thrown into the void. The connection between Heard and Musk wasn't born from gossip alone. The two had an on-again, off-again relationship between 2016 and 2018, a relationship that was, according to them, both "beautiful" and "painful." During this time, rumors circulated that they had frozen embryos together.

. . . Despite various denials and a lack of evidence, the Musk theory refuses to disappear as gossip columns continue to provide a platform for rumors, while a spokesperson for Heard told People magazine that the rumors are "100% false." Musk is currently choosing to remain silent.

It isn't unreasonable to speculate that the "twins" are a pair of frozen embryos implanted in a surrogate surrounded by a complicated legal network of secrecy. But what does this say about Musk? How much time, effort, and resource does he spend on all his exes and surrogate children vis-a-vis, say, his duties as CEO of his various companies? How did his efforts to fix the world with Trump damage his performance as CEO? Just how crazy is he, really?

I think his board members and his lenders are starting to ask serious questions, and this is what's behind his current erratic behavior -- but this is something that's always been in the background. He's always been a whack job, much closer to Elizabeth Holmes than people are willing to think, and I suspect he'll be eased out of many of his companies fairly soon.