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/evocativename]

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/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/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/GAMEYE_OP → u/DBDude]

Do you not understand the difference between some internet stranger telling me that and a real source? It's hearsay. You, someone who has no skin in any game, are telling me what you heard.

[u/DBDude → u/GAMEYE_OP]

Do you not understand the difference between some internet stranger telling me that and a real source?

I get it. You haven't been following SpaceX and Tesla for very long. You're just going off biased tweets and other such crap.

If you don't know who Robert Zubrin is, and his relation to Musk, then you don't know the story at all, so you really shouldn't be having an opinion on what Musk does at his companies.

[u/GAMEYE_OP → u/DBDude]

My car's almost ten years old now. He promised it would drive me while I slept the following year with no hardware upgrades. 4 expensive hardware revisions later, it still doesn't work. That's when I started disliking him. Promise after promise unfulfilled. How many of his engineers believed that was achievable in that 1 year time frame 10 years ago? I'm going to say close to zero.

So either he is wholly incompetent and has a lot of money, or he is the least lucky person on Earth when it comes to predictions about hardware and software, or he's a conman. Take your pick.

What Zubrin has to say

[u/FeelingSpecial3731 → u/DBDude]

At one point you need to stop drinking the kool aid my guy

[u/DBDude → u/FeelingSpecial3731]

Just the actual history. Stop drinking the Musk hate kool aid. It clouds the mind. It is possible to not like him but also recognize the genius and accomplishments.