How can the richest person on Earth do that much damage to themselves in 2 months? It’s been a unique image self-demolition derby.
The circus act with DOGE has cost him a lot of trust and credibility. The X disaster was already an issue for the past two years or so. Tesla is getting unheard-of violence simply due to this self-created image.
A lot of analysts were questioning his business judgment long before DOGE and the Send America Broke, Friendless, and Dysfunctional movement started.
X, aka Twitter, was a fully functional and profitable business with an average revenue of about $4 billion per year. Due to some very iffy management decisions, X got mercilessly hammered by users and advertisers.
This is where Musk’s image started to unravel. None of these problems needed to happen. The X market contracted instantly, and the platform is infested with bots forming up to 50% of users, according to some pundits.
He then merged X with XAI, a privately held company responsible for Grok. The total deal was said to be $113 billion. That valuation is based on internal numbers, not subject to external scrutiny. The X debt is said to be $12 billion, which values X at more or less purchase price. Really?
We’ll leave out the bit about 200 million user records being “released” for another time. The look is truly lousy, and this is not the last you’ll hear of what could well be a massive class action.
Tesla’s woes are well-known. The company is on the receiving end of incredible negativity. Tesla stock prices have borne the brunt of public anger at Musk’s antics with DOGE. Worldwide response has also been horrifically anti-Musk.
SpaceX is a mystery of continuous “incidents”, allegations, photo ops, and skepticism. Just search Google News anytime. It’s a space opera turning into a soap opera.
Then there’s DOGE. Conservatives know less than nothing about administrative government, and DOGE, like Brexit, proves it. If the US revenue system can work at all after DOGE, it’ll be a miracle.
Musk put himself front and center of this disaster, and it’s just a matter of time before debt explodes to cover the losses. Add tax cuts and hyper-expensive trade, and it’s a very expensive funeral.
Some people are great in high-profile roles. Musk isn’t one of them. With a sort of reckless inevitability, he’s a guy who should never say a word and who never shuts up. Every gesture turns into a debacle or a lot of lawsuits.
The moral of the story is “You can’t bluff the future.”
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
