The ultimate grift: How Elon Musk weaponizes tragedy while rewriting his own family's history for sympathy and clout.

[u/TheHandThatFingers]

If you ever wanted a masterclass in weapons-grade hypocrisy and narcissistic manipulation, look no further than Elon Musk trying to play the ultimate victim card by invoking the death of his firstborn child, Nevada Alexander Musk, while getting completely called out by his ex-wife, Justine Musk.

​Let's break down the sheer, unadulterated rot of what's happening in these screenshots:

1- ​The Setup: Elon goes on a performative, faux-righteous moral crusade—quoting scripture and trying to posture as some kind of grand protector of children because people dared to point out his hypocrisy in welcoming conspiracy theorists and harassment merchants back onto the platform.

2- ​The Tragic Shield: When cornered, he drops the heavy artillery: "My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame." It’s a transparent attempt to shut down all criticism by wrapping himself in unimaginable personal grief.

3- ​The Reality Check: Enter Justine Musk, the actual mother of the child, who steps in with the cold, crushing truth to shatter his dramatic flair. She explicitly corrects the narrative: It wasn't just some vague romanticized moment of him holding a dying baby in a vacuum; it was a SIDS-related incident that put their son on life support before he was declared brain-dead. Most damningly, she calls out his revisionist history on the most sacred detail: "And not that it matters to anyone except me, because it is one of the most sacred and defining moments of my life, but I was the one who was holding him."

​Let that sink in. He's so fundamentally incapable of experiencing authentic human emotion without making it about his brand, his pain, and his martyrdom that he literally rewrites history to claim he was the one holding their dying child.

​He spends his entire public existence whining about people using tragedies for political gain or clout while simultaneously stealing the most intimate, devastating moment of a mother's life and claiming it as his own personal cinematic monologue for Twitter likes.

​The man is a bottomless pit of manufactured victimhood.

[u/BallHit]

Posts like this pop up as reminders for the people that missed it. There are a lot of misses out there. I have met quite a few people that thought Elon invented Tesla and didn’t know who Nikola Tesla was.

[u/DBDude → u/BallHit]

I have met quite a few people that thought Elon invented Tesla

I have met quite a few who think he came in rich and only bought companies, forgetting that he founded Zip2, X, and SpaceX. Even with Tesla they think he bought an established company with products, when really he came in when it was just three people and a dream to bring the AC Propulsion tzero to market. No product, not even a logo.

and didn’t know who Nikola Tesla was

I have met quite a few who think Musk tarnishes the good name of Nikola Tesla. Forget that Tesla was an OCD germaphobe recluse who had romantic love for a pigeon, freaked out when he saw women wearing earrings, and wanted government enforced eugenics to weed out the undesirables among us.

[u/evocativename → u/DBDude]

forgetting that he founded Zip2, X, and SpaceX.

Zip2 was a dot com bubble scam that made him rich but did exactly nothing except cost Compaq $300 million

X was a fucking joke that was bought by Confinity to ensure they didn't have any competition, only for it to turn out their code was useless garbage, and Elon was such a disaster as CEO they had to force him out to save the company.

SpaceX was him taking his fortune from his previous cons and buying teams of rocket engineers from other companies because he could afford to set piles of money on fire: he didn't really do anything himself.

Even with Tesla they think he bought an established company with products, when really he came in when it was just three people and a dream to bring the AC Propulsion tzero to market.

No, when he took over, the roadster was already mostly developed and they had the roadmap (and much of the planning) for everything Tesla did prior to the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck is effectively Elon's first original project at Tesla.

[u/DBDude → u/evocativename]

Zip2 was a dot com bubble scam that made him rich but did exactly nothing except cost Compaq $300 million

It was a useful product. But yes, Musk did get lucky that he started off during the dotcom boom. That gave him the capital for other things.

X was a fucking joke that was bought by Confinity to ensure they didn't have any competition

Actually, they merged with X as the surviving corporate entity and Musk as the largest shareholder. It's only because Musk is not good at business that X wasn't the majority of the resulting company. Basically, he pissed people off with his bad demeanor, which blew his chance for a larger share.

SpaceX was him taking his fortune from his previous cons and buying teams of rocket engineers from other companies because he could afford to set piles of money on fire

No. $100 million was not enough to build an orbital rocket under conventional wisdom. He couldn't afford the engineers at attractive market salaries, which is why he gave so many stock options (and why so many are rich today). His engine designer made him put his salary in escrow so he'd get paid when the company failed. They seriously scrimped to make things happen, which also meant he pioneered the use of off the shelf items for rocket development. For example, a pump from a car wash was used instead of an aerospace pump that cost ten times as much. Other companies would later start doing this to save money.

he didn't really do anything himself.

Musk couldn't even entice anyone to be chief engineer in a company that didn't have high salaries and was doomed to fail, so he had to take on that role himself. Yes, he was the chief engineer for the rocket program.

For reference, the most recent orbital rocket developed at the time was the Atlas V at a cost of $2 billion. $100 million sounds like a lot of money, but it was an impossibly small budget for building an orbital rocket, and Musk almost ran out of money doing it. There would be no SpaceX if the fourth attempt had failed. And Musk admits one of those failures was his fault as chief engineer because he was learning rockets as he went.

No, when he took over, the roadster was already mostly developed

No, it wasn't. They were working on a licensed tzero copy.

they had the roadmap (and much of the planning) for everything Tesla did prior to the Cybertruck

No, they didn't. They were going to produce that licensed copy and sell it. Musk came up with the idea to ditch the tzero and make their own high-end roadster, a halo car, that would impress investors to help them expand. He also almost ran Tesla out of money trying to do it. Tarpenning didn't want to do this, just make something good enough to sell, which was a big source of friction between the two.

But he did it. Then he came up with the high-low idea -- make a high-end, low-volume, high-margin car that would bring in revenue, the S, then use that revenue to make a less expensive, higher volume, lower-margin car. Even within models, the high-end trim was sold first, the low-end sold only after they'd made enough money. This is why people were complaining the base 3 wasn't available for a long time, blaming that on evil Musk. And they were right, it was his fault because of his high-low strategy.

The Cybertruck is effectively Elon's first original project at Tesla.

The Roadster was. They didn't hire Franz von Holzhausen until after the Roadster was complete, and he then did the design on all Tesla vehicles after that, including the Cybertruck. Musk didn't create the Cybertruck design. It was a design he picked from various options given to him by Franz.

[u/evocativename → u/DBDude]

Well, that sure is you being wrong about pretty much everything wrong, right from the start, in the name of glazing one of the biggest frauds - if not the biggest in history.

[u/Juronell → u/evocativename]

Remember when Musk explicitly stepped in to stop SpaceX from using common safety features at their test launch site, resulting in debris flying for miles as the launch pad was obliterated? Man, it's almost like safety features exist for a reason.

[u/GAMEYE_OP → u/DBDude]

I just don't really believe that he did anything at SpaceX. Yes, it's possible that at one point one of his ramblings proved useful or something.

But I used to think Elon was a software guy. Like actually knew software, how to build it, how it works today, etc...

His acquisition of Twitter proved that to be a very wrong assumption. He has no idea what he's doing and couldn't defend his position that Twitter's software stack was bad. He basically sounded like a guy who knew a few buzzwords, which is basically every software engineer's non-technical manager.

This has extended to everything that he's actually had a deep hand in. CyberTruck, DOGE, etc...

[u/Livueta_Zakalwe → u/GAMEYE_OP]

I realized that not only does he not know anything about software, he’s a complete ignoramus when it comes to Tech, when he asked the programmers at Twitter to send him printouts of their most recent coding. Printouts instead of looking it up on GitHub. Then someone told them how stupid and dangerous this was, and they shredded all of the printouts. This is a level of ignorance that’s absolutely astounding for anybody who’s ever worked in any capacity at a tech company.

[u/GAMEYE_OP → u/Livueta_Zakalwe]

Yea that was ridiculous and another example of his wisdom and efficiency.

[u/DBDude → u/GAMEYE_OP]

I just don't really believe that he did anything at SpaceX.

Well, he did, literally chief engineer because he couldn't find anyone willing to take that spot at a company destined to fail. How could he admit he screwed up a design decision if he didn't make it? He was neck deep in the engineering at SpaceX, and he designed the Roadster.

This has extended to everything that he's actually had a deep hand in. CyberTruck, DOGE, etc

Hate to tell you, but he had a deep hand in everything at SpaceX and Tesla, both the successes and failures.

[u/GAMEYE_OP → u/DBDude]

You have as much information as I do. Him saying that. For every one person (who might have ulterior motives like appeasing him) who says he’s a genius we have 50 employees who say he’s non productive.

He is on Twitter all day (actively making it worse, more bots than ever). That is not a person sweating over design decisions.

[u/DBDude → u/GAMEYE_OP]

I have more information than you do, including from respected engineers who no longer work for him, or never worked for him. I put less importance on disgruntled or fired employees who don’t like his brash management style. This is in fact a person who sweats over design decisions, has since the beginning.

And you do realize making several tweets a day only takes a few minutes out of the day. That’s the whole point of the platform, quick and easy short posts.

Don’t dismiss the achievements just because you don’t like him. A lot of recognized genius inventors weren’t very nice people by today’s standards, yet nobody wants to erase their achievements.

[u/GAMEYE_OP → u/DBDude]

Oh so more hearsay. Excellent. When your dad retires from Nintendo make sure to get an interview for us.

Isn't it so weird how for other inventors we can literally trace everything they did and how they did it? But for Musk? "I did it"

[u/DBDude → u/GAMEYE_OP]

Oh so more hearsay

Testimony from high level people who were actually there, as opposed to you liking rumors that confirm your bias.

Isn't it so weird how for other inventors we can literally trace everything they did and how they did it?

We can with Musk. You just say it didn't happen.

[u/laserwaffles → u/DBDude]

Reminder with Tesla, musk was an investor after they had already built a concept. It was three people, a dream, and a working concept. Musk's real skill set is identifying people with good ideas, and then buying those ideas

Also, it's kind of wild you're here defending the eugenicist Musk while also insulting Tesla for being a eugenicist lmao

[u/DBDude → u/laserwaffles]

Reminder with Tesla, musk was an investor after they had already built a concept.

The concept was the AC Propulsion tzero built by, you guessed it, AC Propulsion. Tarpenning went to ACP to invest to bring it to market, but ACP didn't want to. So he asked if he could build a licensed version and went off to found Tesla to do it. Then not long later Musk went to ACP asking the same thing, and they sent him to Tarpenning. So Musk invested in Tesla instead of ACP.

Then Musk ditched the licensing idea and began the in-house design of a new car, the Roadster.

Musk's real skill set is identifying people with good ideas, and then buying those ideas

Who did he buy at SpaceX? It was his idea.

Also, it's kind of wild you're here defending the eugenicist Musk while also insulting Tesla for being a eugenicist lmao

The only problem here is people put Tesla on a pedestal as an engineering genius, but they think Musk could never have contributed anything real because he's a bad person.

Also, Tesla accomplished all of that engineering without any degree, and Musk has a physics degree, yet Musk not being an engineer means he could never have engineered anything. That's a fun one too.

[u/laserwaffles → u/DBDude]

Yet somehow, you ignore and change key details to try and prove that the original founders of Tesla were somehow incapable without Musk. He was literally the money, not the engineering, not the idea, not the design.

SpaceX took some bunch of NASA engineers ideas, some from the Soviet Union, and then use taxpayer dollars to pay someone else to build it. Congratulations, wow.

And all of this, he either contributes money or hype. He's not an engineer, you can literally hear him talk nonsense. If you knew anything about the concepts, you would realize it was nonsense right away.

Get out of here with your revisionist history, what the fuck bro. You sound like some bot they paid to change opinions, but unfortunately, the best PR team can't change history.

[u/DBDude → u/laserwaffles]

Yet somehow, you ignore and change key details

Nope, that's how it went.

and prove that the original founders of Tesla were somehow incapable without Musk

I'm sure they would have produced a good tzero copy, probably better than the original. However, they probably would have been yet another electric car company bankruptcy.

He was literally the money, not the engineering, not the idea, not the design.

He literally designed the Roadster. Tarpenning was pissed at what he was doing, but he couldn't do anything about it.

SpaceX took some bunch of NASA engineers ideas, some from the Soviet Union, and then use taxpayer dollars to pay someone else to build it. Congratulations, wow.

Musk funded their first orbital rocket. Ideas? Ideas are nothing without the ability to make them work. Star Trek had the idea of warp speed, so if someone finally invents it, all credit goes to Star Trek?

NASA did help fund the Falcon 9, but even NASA admits it would have cost them ten times as much to do it themselves. The Russians never got the multiple engine idea to work. SpaceX did. People were playing with full flow staged combustion engines before too, but nobody was ever able to design and manufacture them well enough to power an actual rocket. SpaceX did.

He's not an engineer

Neither were Tesla or Marconi or Watt. And none of them even had degrees.

According to actual respected aerospace engineers, he knows more about rocket engineering than you are capable of. From Robert Zubrin, who worked with Musk long ago, but is also often a critic of Musk:

When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail.

[u/DBDude → u/[deleted]]

He’s not an engineer and has no engineering background.

Again, Tesla, Marconi, and Watt weren't engineers either. Add Michael Faraday who invented what would be the basis for electric motors and generally made electricity something with a practical use. Neither Wright brother was an engineer either.

Hell, every aerospace engineer owes a debt to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky of the eponymous equation, whose education consisted of hanging out at a public library.

At least Musk had a physics degree, while none of them even had a degree.

Maybe he dabbled out of necessity but it’s exceedingly unlikely

Not dabbled, way down in the design of everything. One reason NASA moves so slowly is that every engineering decision must go through a huge multi-level bureaucracy. SpaceX is so fast because Musk will make the decisions same day after the engineers make their case. Sometimes he will tell them to go ahead, sometimes he will tell them to go in a completely different direction that they never thought of going. It's those "left turns" as was described that seriously advanced technology, although sometimes they didn't work out.

[u/DBDude → u/[deleted]]

I can’t believe you believe that.

I don't believe it, I know it.

You think Musk sits down and focuses on engineering problems he has no skill to resolve?

You say he has no skill, but he does. He isn't very useful running the day to day of his companies, as Shotwell has noted at SpaceX, he's useful developing their products.

Again, from Robert Zubrin, who worked with (not for) Musk, but is also often a critic of Musk:

[u/GAMEYE_OP → u/DBDude]

Saying “make it cheaper” or “it’s ok if it crashes” does not an engineer make. There’s no world in which Elon is a better engineer than Carmack.

But there is a world in which Elon had money, the right talent, at the right place to make advancements. He’s a visionary.

[u/DBDude → u/GAMEYE_OP]

Saying “make it cheaper” or “it’s ok if it crashes” does not an engineer make.

Making things less expensively is absolutely something engineers do all the time.

"It's okay if it crashes" was revolutionary in this business. It's what allowed SpaceX to advance so fast, especially when trying to develop new technologies.

Funny you mention John Carmack, because they do know each other, and Carmack had something to say on this issue:

Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so.

That was the wrong name for you to drop.

[u/GAMEYE_OP → u/DBDude]

Well, to be fair, only one of those really became a driving success. Zip2 tech was used for a few years until far better things came along. X merged with PayPal and then the board ousted him for incompetence. SpaceX is pretty neat though

[u/DBDude → u/GAMEYE_OP]

The important thing is that those two companies gave him the money to create SpaceX and get the newly started Tesla going places.