I think a few people are confusing their balls with their brains.
Apparently, “[Elon] Musk’s America PAC is running vivid ads featuring an assassination attempt on Trump promoting voter registration resources, but directing swing-state voters through separate forms, which collect extensive personal data and opt registrants into messaging from the group.
“Salon confirmed that zip codes entered on a voter registration section on America PAC’s website in key swing states, including Arizona and Pennsylvania, brought users to a separate form from users who inputted zip codes in states like New York or Texas, who are linked directly to states’ voter registration sites.”[1]
It certainly seems paradoxical that Musk, who used Tesla as an automated teller machine to cover losses at Twitter (now ‘X’),[2] would support a presidential candidate who has pledged to eliminate the incentives he wrongly calls an “electric vehicle mandate.”[3] I think it was just yesterday, nonetheless, that I saw a Tesla Cybertruck sporting Donald Trump campaign posters.
This after Trump supporters have typically engaged in such behaviors as “rolling coal,” which entails modifications to a pickup truck so it will belch black smoke on demand, and blocking EV charging spaces. The climate crisis denial among these folks is strong—very strong—and one of the hypotheses I’ve kept in the back of my mind is that Musk is attempting to make EVs “cool” among conservatives by espousing white Christian nationalist views.
That hypothesis seems less and less tenable these days. Musk just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and this would hardly be the first time we’ve seen him simply be delusional—think nuking Mars to terraform it.[4]
[1] Griffin Eckstein, “Elon Musk's PAC is misdirecting and scraping data from unknowing swing-state voters,” Salon, August 2, 2024, https://www.salon.com/2024/08/02/elon-musks-pac-is-misdirecting-and-scraping-data-from-unknowing-swing-state/
[2] Annie Lowrey, “Why Is Elon Musk Lighting Billions of Dollars on Fire?” Atlantic, December 23, 2022, https://apple.news/AFxJ0q2TgTdiUaXxOmrDseQ
[3] Nathaniel Meyersohn, “Trump is attacking electric vehicles. Automakers already bet their future on them,” Cable News Network, September 29, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/28/business/cars-trump-uaw-electric-vehicles/index.html
[4] Mike Wall, “Elon Musk Floats 'Nuke Mars' Idea Again (He Has T-Shirts),” Space, August 17, 2019, https://www.space.com/elon-musk-nuke-mars-terraforming.html