$1B is pretty pricey for being labeled a champion of free speech for a second. He could've gone on Fox and said something controversial and gotten just as much mileage. I'm tempted to believe he actually thought he could turn Twitter around, and then realized it was a fool's errand.

It's not just $1B, he can't back out of the full $40B deal or whatever it was except for a few very special corner cases, and only in those corner cases does he pay just $1B, as far as I understand.

The problem with him re: US politics is that every job besides president is too small for his ego, but he can't be president.

This is key - I believe Musk wants to gain more favor with the right so they purchase the new Cybertruck pickup truck.

This isn't a problem he had though. When they experience 0-60 in 3.2 seconds, they will buy it.

Because all the traditional pickup buyers do is rip off 0-60s all day.

Probably the number of traditional sheep pickup buyers who will buy it will be very low. But the non traditional ones.. it won’t be demand constrained.

This was my theory. Electric cars are seen as a “left wing thing” now they won’t be.

It will be interesting to see if conservative car types decide to give electric cars a go. Keeping a close eye on a famous YouTube mechanic.

Mechanics have a vested interest in maintenance-prone ICE vehicles, so I would discount their stated opinions on this.

> Electric cars are seen as a “left wing thing” now they won’t be.

You'd have to live very far away from any so-called "conservative car types" to believe this.

Currently, the conservative base is much more prone to thinking that electric cars are going to be _forced_ on them by a cabal who want to erase fossil fuels use from the earth.

Not saying they're correct, but your theory is just as baseless as theirs is.

And maybe the pro-oil and anti-green conservatives will now hate electric cars a bit less because Elon is one of them. Benefits Tesla and benefits Musk.

You don’t have to try and spend billions of dollars to become a fan of conservatives. All you have to do is publicly push back against leftist views. That’s all it takes to be conservative in our culture. In a Political Science lens, Conservatives aren’t some homogeneous group who share the same politics. They are anyone who opposes the left. It’s a broad spectrum.

Musk is not fully trusted by either side. He says a lot of things that traditional conservatives (especially those who don’t buy into climate change) oppose.

The left ideology is the dominant force in pop culture, and those views are in vogue. He’s speaking out against some of those things and that’s getting him a lot of attention.

Let's hope if he ever has a tilt at president, his campaign lasts as long. Then again, I kind of feel like we've been here before...

President of South Africa? He wasn't born in the US, a prerequisite for being president there.

Doh! Forgot about that. In Australia foreign born citizens of Australia can stand for parliament (and hence qualify to be PM) as long as they’ve renounced any other citizenship (or right to another citizenship).

Well, he’d need to be “natural born citizen”. I think at birth he was Canadian and South African, and naturalized to the US much later.

…maybe they’ll change the law one day and he can run against Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger is a governor, not a president. Elon could run against him today.

When Schwarzenegger was governor, many people said he would likely make a serious run for president if he was a natural born citizen. It was mostly used as a statement by people about what a good job they thought he was doing and how they wished he could legally run, not a real desire to amend the law.

I was simply pointing out the facts. The parent comment incorrectly implied that Elon could not run against him.

You misunderstood the parent comment. They were saying if the law changed then the US presidential election (or frontrunners if they compete in the primaries) would be Arnold vs Elon.

Meanwhile, Elon could not run against Arnold for governor of California: Elon is not a citizen of California and Arnold has been disqualified from running again since 2011 due to term limits.

California has citizenship?

All US states have citizenship. It cannot be denied to any US citizen. Basically, it determines which state you get to vote in and what state you primarily owe income taxes on. In California it's automatic if you are a US citizen who primarily lives there for 3 months with no clear indicator you plan to move on. The process is similar, but the amount of time is variable, between the states.

It can get tricky and people (or states) can argue/sue about it because it can make a big difference in taxes. Elon became a citizen of Texas before he made all the money that resulted in his 11 billion dollar federal tax bill last year and in doing so probably saved himself 5 to 7 billion dollars that otherwise would have gone to California.

You’re talking about residency, not citizenship.

https://www.fvap.gov/info/laws/voting-residence

Not a natural born US Citizen, so can't be President.

He’s ineligible