Even if it is, Musk won. He got his $44 billion value back through getting premium position for all his government-contractor companies by becoming the President's right hand man. This is reflected in his share values climbing.

If this kills Twitter, I think Musk will be annoyed but it's still a net success for him.

On the other hand, spending huge amounts of money to become a Presidential advisor and then advising in a way that favors your own companies arguably is anti-competitive.

Next time Democrats are in control he may be looking at an antitrust lawsuit.

> Next time Democrats are in control he may be looking at an antitrust lawsuit.

The rule of law looks pretty ineffectual at that level. Only one of the various trials against Donald Trump got a verdict in the 4 years that he was out of office. Everything else ran out the clock and at this point is dead in the water.

That dog has no teeth anymore, and it likely won't in better health after Trump's people restructure the FTC and the Justice Department - considering Trump and Musk's respective run-ins with financial regulations I think it's safe to say those won't be stronger in 2028.

Given how fickle Trump is, and the fact that he is already talking shit about Elon ... it seems too soon to predict a massive success.

Heck, even the S&P 500 has already taken back all the gains from the post-election spaz. I don't think the economic prospects for Elon or anyone else look assured at this point.

Of course depends on how long Trump keeps him around. Once X is useless, does he have any use for Musk?

I sense an ego clash coming regardless.

The man is so egotistical that every penny he loses hurts him a lot. Losing this amount of money will bother him massively.

I don't follow Musk's personality foibles closely at all, but from what I have seen, I get the sense that profit is not one of the things he ties closely to his aggrandized self-image. Wealth, yes, but only in the sense that it is for spending to do great things, even if the profit isn't there, like "protecting freedom of speech" (there aren't enough quotation marks in the universe). I.e. Tony Stark, not Gordon Gekko.

Another name to throw out there when discussing time in the limelight versus numbers going up: Larry Ellison.