It might be said that hell hath no fury like a billionaire scorned. Such is the case with Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, and to the left, arguably the single most dangerous wildcard in the upcoming election. Leftists furious with their world-famous one-time ally are discovering a fundamental truth: It is one thing to engage in the sword fight of politics, but quite another when they come for your child. It immediately gets personal, and deeply so.
For those with lingering curiosity about the real reason the founder of Tesla and Space-X spent a big chunk of his legendary fortune to fashion an essentially hostile, and possibly unprofitable, takeover of Twitter in 2022, his answer came in blunt and emotional terms in a conversation with host Dr. Jordan Peterson on July 27 about “gender-affirming care”:
“It’s really child mutilation and sterilization. It’s evil. You’re taking kids who are far below the age of consent. It’s very possible for adults to manipulate children who are having an actual identity crisis into believing that they are the wrong gender.
“[I]t happened to one of my older boys … I was essentially tricked into signing documents … This was really before I had any understanding of what was going on, and we had COVID going on, so there was a lot of confusion. And I was told Xavier might commit suicide.
“[T]he people that are promoting this should go to prison. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead, so my son, Xavier, is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Obviously, Elon Musk is a man loaded for bear, driven by overwhelming emotion – something the left should well understand since that seems to be the basis for so many of their own policies. And a very angry man on a mission with his wealth, fame, and platform, and all but invulnerable to cancelation, should rightly send a chill up the spines of the Democratic left.
It is true that every presidential campaign is replete with wildcards, but 2024 has set a new standard. Most years, such variables are things like a gaffe that hits the news for a day or two, a candidate’s approval rating rising or falling, or the old October surprise. This year, it is the arrest and prosecution of the leading candidate for president, followed by a historically abysmal debate by a sitting commander-in-chief, then an assassination attempt on the former president, and finally the withdrawal of the incumbent and the immediate de facto nomination of a candidate who did not receive a single vote.
That is hard to say in one breath. And for voters still trying to process chaos rivaling a third-world election campaign, it would be easy to overlook the Musk factor. But it stands as a political Sword of Damocles hanging above progressives, and the media’s pile-on after Musk’s comments reveals their level of concern.
Knives Out for Musk
In another iteration of an all-too-familiar phenomenon, as soon as Musk’s remarks went viral, woke media immediately sharpened its long knives. In a Google search for Musk’s explosive revelation, the first several pages of results five days after the interview are not about his comments, but rather the reflexive attacks on him throughout leftist elite media. At the same time, they published some hit-piece click-bait on Musk after he posted a hilarious video of Kamala Harris dubbed with an obviously phony audio track. No one in their right mind would believe the vice president actually said what’s in the video, but The New York Times, reprising the word “deepfake” as it serves as pied piper for Big Media, focused on how Musk apparently “broke his own rules” on X by re-tweeting (re-X’ing?) it.
This is how it’s always done. Trump or any conservative makes a statement outlining a line of attack – and there are many to pick from this year. Big Media largely skips right past the content itself, instead focusing like a laser on all the leftists who twist the words, and better yet, attack the person who spoke them. They play the violin for their self-appointed victim, in this case attacking Musk’s cruelty, how it is he who is responsible for breaking his son-turned-daughter. And worst of all, underlying it all is the subtext of a disgraceful turncoat who shunned his friends on the left to cozy up to Trump for personal gain – as if he is exclusively concerned with his own wealth. Deflection complete.
In truth, Elon Musk is following in the footsteps of titans from days gone by, the likes of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, who spent the first part of their lives amassing fortunes and the second part dedicating their wealth to the betterment of mankind. This is exactly what Elon Musk believes he is doing with his willingness to invest a stupendous sum of money and then go through the wringer, suffering the slings and arrows of everyone from betrayed ex-allies to vengeful social justice warriors for the sake of preserving the culture for which the republic stands.
That is why Elon Musk unleashed is a bigger problem than the left can handle. Progressives in the thrall of wokeness can no longer effectively cancel, silence, or renounce him without admitting what they are: opponents of any speech they personally find offensive. More importantly, unlike in 2020, they can no longer employ the nation’s most impactful media platform to censor unapproved information about Trump, the pandemic, the southern border, migrant crime, inflation (note to the VP: it really was 1.4%, not 9%, when you took office), or, of course, the Biden laptop. The left’s dilemma is perhaps best summed up by The New York Times headline, mimicking a classic song from The Sound of Music, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Elon?”
If Musk’s position sounds familiar, it should. It runs almost parallel to that of Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance – embraced by leftists as long as he sided with them politically, only to be dumped, discredited, and defamed once he had the audacity to tack rightward. Like Vance, Musk turned tail from the Hollywood elite and became the worst kind of enemy – a traitor to the cause, a man once welcomed into the most elite progressive circles who is now sleeping with the enemy.
Musk Above and Beyond
As significant as Musk’s rescue of Twitter from the hands of leftist censors has been, the impact is not limited to the platform itself. Like any other industry, social media is driven by prevailing trends. Facebook and other left-of-center platforms in competition with X have been forced to respond to a social media environment dramatically altered by Musk’s emergence from the right. He has, quite simply, done what no other person on earth could, would, or should have attempted. He put unthinkable amounts of money where his mouth is and altered the course of an industry that has long since surpassed print and electronic media as the most influential in the nation.
Musk will serve as an unpaid ambassador for the Trump campaign, which has smartly aimed its economic message at a suddenly less progressive tech sector. It is no coincidence that Trump’s appearance before Bitcoin bigwigs in Nashville on July 27 came on the same day as Musk’s revelation and on the heels of his endorsement of the 45th president and promise to contribute tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to a Trump Super PAC
In the end, it really doesn’t matter what one thinks of Elon Musk, about his shocking statement that the woke mind virus killed his son, or whether X becomes profitable or even survives beyond the November election. What matters is that the wealthiest man in the world has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to kill the woke mind virus dead in its tracks here and now. Anyone blessed with children understands why. Now that he has made his big reveal about something that has wounded him to the core, you can well expect that Elon Musk’s crusade is just getting started. Progressives beware.
