I just find it interesting you don't disclose your political party then all the sudden right before a big story comes out you say there's a smear campaign and it's political.

Also, sounds like there was a settlement. Not saying he's guilty but sure doesn't sounds like nothing happened either.

The more this guy talks and doubles down, the more he's eroding the floor he's standing on. His lawyers should just take his phone away.

I am very harsh critic of Musk and never felt for his personal or corporate propaganda, but if you asked me 3 months ago I was 99% confident that his net worth will never fall below 15B, no matter what he does or what laws he violates. His cushion and margin of error was simply too wide.

Now I am not so sure anymore. When your wealth and power is a function of how you make people feel, it's easy come and easy go.

People who were once on top of the world are today irrelevant: Carter, Bill Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, Merkel, Gorbachev. They were on top of the world because of how they managed to make people feel.

Sometimes it's way more convenient to own a piece of Metlife or Prudential or General Electric or Coca Cola...uncontroversial stuff which people will always need and doesn't need a social movement behind to increase in value.

Sadly I don't think Tesla will go to bankruptcy anymore. And he isn't wasting that much money yet... Unless he does some really stupid deal with his stock as collateral, which might be possible.

That’s a very weak argument - he wants them to describe scars or tattoos? Come on dude, anyone who believes you at this point is naive af.

Same publication that tried to take down Dave Portnoy of Barstool. He at least had receipts to show that insider and the reporter was trash.

Insider is a garbage publication.

A $250k settlement is questionable though with one of the world's richest men.

Well, one would be naive to ignore the fact that there's an ongoing smear campaign against the guy.

It’s only a smear campaign if you believe everything he says (which I don’t).

It's not just this case, and you don't need to believe him to see that the establishment hates him now. "Elon Musk, Chaos Monkey" is the literal title of an NYT opinion piece published today. [1]

[1]: https://archive.ph/LpkHB

The smear campaign didn't start yesterday. For example, Elizabeth Warren falsely claimed he was "freeloading", and said Musk buying Twitter was "dangerous for our democracy".

That’s a politician’s opinion, not a smear campaign. It’s possible for people to have a negative opinion or to expose the shitty things that a person has done without there being some grand conspiracy. In fact that seems much more likely to me.

Claiming that someone doesn't pay taxes isn't opinion. It's a factual claim, and a false one. That's a smear.

True it's only one example, but surely you don't expect me to list every attack against him in a HN comment? You can find a lot more attacks if you want to investigate further.

What claim did she specifically make that was false? I did a quick search and found that she referenced his 2018 tax return, but can't find any false claims that she made about him not paying taxes. Please provide some evidence, stating that others must do the work to disprove a claim you make is not acting in good faith.

She didn't reference his 2018 tax return in her Tweet.

People have mentioned that tax return to try to defend her, but she tweeted that claim in December 2021, a year for which Musk paid billions in taxes, not 2019.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/15/investing/elon-musk-elizabeth...

What are the accusations?

Sexual assault from a flight attendant of a chartered flight, who had her masseuse license and would give massages on flights. Allegedly happened while the charter company was doing charters for Space X, Elon tried to get handsy and exposed himself in 2016

Problem is no filings happened until 2 years later and the accusers female best friend got a lawyer and they prepped filings.

I'm not saying Elon is innocent. The accusation, the timing, and the publication (Insider) are all sus. Its fishy to say the least.

nobody believes this market manipulator