I still, as a dude whose primary source of income is managing my investment stash, can't believe how this supposed and self proclaimed genius rose to his fortune by his electric car company decided to come out of the closet as an extreme conspiracy laden right winger... basically offending the current core base that he so productively sold his cars to.
He's basically making his identity a marketing anchor that it's no surprise that his sales and his base is deteriorating like Tesla has seen.
If he's playing 4d chess don't see it. If I was a heavy Tesla share owner I'd be livid with his public choices to firebomb his brand which has turned his cars from 'this is a forward thinking genius' to 'this guy is batshit crazy and cruel thinking child'. He appeals to those that see EV's as a threat, not as potential owners.
We've seen the negative impact of trying too hard to be loved by extremes with Twitter and it's massive revenue losses since he's basically turned it into a 4chan board and advertisers have left in droves which has him mad and trying to sue advertisers for not wanting their brands to be on his site from lack of control over moderation of where your brand will be featured. It could be next to a pedophile, drug dealer or literal Nazi.
My favorite meme with Musk was one that went something like 'I don't know anything about EV's so I assume a genius like Musk is correct when he talks about it. I also don't know anything about space so again, I believe the words that a genius in space says. I am a coder and have been doing that most of my life and I can tell you, when that self proclaimed Genius talks coding....it's literally the dumbest, nonsensical, laughably stupidest nonsense I've ever heard which means....I wouldn't want to drive his cars go to space in one of his crafts'.