THE STATE OF ELON MUSK: Not too long ago, Elon Musk had one of the largest and most impressive fan , clubs of any billionaire in the world. People not only admired his accomplishments and goals, . but many even saw him as a savior as he tackled problems like climate change, clean energy, and , space colonization. There was almost like a cult around his personality that defended anything and everything Elon would say and do. In early 2021, a whopping 66% of American males viewed Elon . favorably giving him a plus 45 net rating. He didn’t rank as well among women, but even amongst women he still boasted a very strong plus 10 net rating. Fast forward just a couple . of years though, and the sentiment around Elon has fallen off a cliff. By late 2022, only 13% . of Americans held a very favorable view of Elon Musk. 29% held a somewhat favorable view. . 18% held an unfavorable view. 23% held a very unfavorable view. And 18% didn’t know. . And if you analyze social media comments, things are looking even worse for the tech , billionaire. In fact, only 19.2% of social media comments are positive about Elon Musk. 42.6% are , neutral and 38.2% are negative. In other words, Elon now comes in at a -19% net favorability rating. A catastrophic fall from +45 among men and +10% among women. In fact, I think , we witnessed this drastic fall firsthand on this channel. Back in 2020 and 2021, we used to make a bunch of videos about Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Tesla. One video that especially insightful . to reflect on is this video that was posted in January of 2021: how Elon musk made $142 billion in a single year. Obviously, this was an obscene amount of money that no one needed and almost all . of these gains were from Tesla stock hype. Yet, if you read the comments, they’re overwhelmingly , positive. “The man who is absolutely worthy of his billions, yet disposing it for the future . of humanity. What a brilliant man!” “For the struggles and hardships he has faced, for , the hard and smart work he has put, this man really deserves at least this.” Fast forward to February of 2024, and we posted this video: Why Shareholders Sued Elon Musk For $56 Billion & Won. This is less than half of the amount quoted in the previous video and this was something . that Elon was legally owed due to a contract as opposed to just stock price exploding. Yet the . comments were overwhelmingly negative. “The board voted for it because he stacked the board with . cronies and yes men, no other reason.” “He stacked the board like crazy and had connections with all of them. Thats why the board approved the plan.” “"Robbed" lmao oh no, somebody think of . the poor billionaire!” Clearly, the tides have turned for the once-cherished billionaire, so what in the world happened to Elon Musk? THE UNDERDOG: If you're interested in deeper dives, interviews with insiders, and exclusive tech analysis, consider subscribing to our free weekly newsletter. But anyway, to really understand why Elon was able to lose his favorability so quickly, we first have to understand why he was so popular and cherished in the first place. . If you read fanboy comments from the surface, you’ll be inclined to think that it was because Elon was working on important issues. He wasn’t creating a photo-sharing app . or creating infinite doom scrolling. Instead, he was working to solve climate change and leading . the effort to make our species multi-planetary. But all of that only tells half the story. , You see, there are a lot of billionaires and powerful people who have done great things, but people are quick to gloss over them. For example, back in 2000, the World Health Organization , reported that 60% of worldwide measles deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fast forward to . 2015 and several African countries had vaccination rates higher than North America coming in at , nearly 100%. A large part of this was obviously due to Bill Gates’ African vaccination effort,
but Bill never had the same fandom as Elon. An even better example is Jeff Bezos. Jeff’s rocket . company, Blue Origin, actually predates SpaceX. Jeff’s goal with Blue Origin has always been to , move manufacturing and heavy-polluting industries into space and other planets so that we can preserve Earth. But when Jeff works on rockets, it’s the bald Lex Luthor copying Elon Musk and blowing money on space tourism. Likely the best example though is Marc Benioff, the founder of . Salesforce. Marc has been working towards a vision of planting or conserving 1 trillion trees. Now, , he’s not even close to accomplishing this goal, but so far, he has already conserved or planted 3 billion trees. I bet a lot of y’all don’t even know who Marc is though. Conversely, I bet all . of y’all know about the time MrBeast planted 10 million trees. With that being said, Elon’s fan . club was never due to what he was building or why he was building it. The core of Elon’s fan club is . rooted in Elon’s underdog persona. The bottom line is that it’s hard to get excited about Bill Gates, . someone who has been one of the richest people in the world for decades, addressing vaccination. Or Jeff Bezos spending a few billion of his Amazon fortune on rockets. Or a background billionaire . with insane connections planting 1 trillion trees. All of these guys only started working on , these groundbreaking ventures when they already had infinite resources and credibility. Elon on . the other hand started working on these issues when he was a nobody. Yes, Elon had $100 to $200 million from PayPal, but in the face of developing and commercializing EVs and rockets, that was nothing. The fact that everyone doubted Elon every step of the way only made his underdog persona even stronger. For example, in 2002, Elon went to Russia prepared to buy 3 ICBMs for , $21 million. The Russians, however, quoted him $21 million for each ICBM and when Elon tried to negotiate, they mocked him saying “Oh, little boy, you don’t have the money?” Fast forward a couple . of years and both Tesla and SpaceX would be on the brink of bankruptcy during the 2008 financial . crisis, and Elon had already burned everything he had on these companies. In fact, he had to borrow . money from friends to pay rent, and both companies would survive by the skin of their teeth. Fast forward a couple more years and Tesla and SpaceX were finally somewhat stable but the mainstream media and authoritative figures were still doubting Elon. In fact, there’s a famous clip of Elon nearly crying when told that his heroes didn’t believe in him. And on the EV side of , things, Tesla was literally the most shorted stock of all time. If you don’t know what shorting is, , basically, out of any company that ever existed, Wall Street was betting bigger than ever . that Tesla would go bankrupt. Looking back, these events may not seem like a big deal because , you know that he made it to the other side. But, in real-time, these were the events that created the Elon fan club, not the big rocket launches or crazy visions. It was the fact that Elon . was trying to do something good but he was being beaten down every step of the way just like the average person. I could make entire videos about Elon’s hardships, and in fact, I have and these are some of my most viewed Elon videos. All the haters and doubters basically made Elon into a martyr, and 2020 was the year of reckoning. This was the , year that SpaceX became the first private company to put humans in orbit and it was the same , year that Tesla finally achieved consistent profitability and got added to the S&P 500. The , man who had been put down for 18 years by everyone in power had somehow made it against all odds. , And in making it, he brought the entire retail community with him. When Tesla stock 25xed, , it wasn’t the big institutional investors and venture capital funds that made a bunch of money. , All of these guys were betting against Tesla, and they lost $38 billion as Tesla rocketed. , The people who actually made money were Tesla’s employees and retail investors who bought a few
dozen or a few hundred shares. Retail support for Elon simply went into overdrive when he supported the Gamestop movement and the Dogecoin movement, leading us to the peak of Elon’s favorability: May . 8, 2021 - the day he went on Saturday Night Live. OVERRATED: Even before Elon went on Saturday Night Live, we were starting to see some inklings of unfavorability pop up. Most of the criticism around this time centered around . how Elon was basically promoting and enabling degenerate gambling. While the movements behind , Gamestop and Dogecoin were intrinsically good, a lot of people were just blindly gambling, and , while some may have made life-changing amounts of money, the vast majority lost it all. And . as someone of rising power and influence, was it really a good idea for Elon to be promoting this? Probably not, but what really turned the crypto community against Elon was when Tesla , announced that they would stop accepting Bitcoin and that they may have sold some Bitcoin. Tesla . had only bought into Bitcoin a couple of months before this, and it was one of the driving reasons . behind Bitcoin's run from $30,000 to $65,000. So, for Tesla to immediately sell, it kind of . felt like a pump and dump. Elon was no longer the retail hero that was taking on Wall Street . short-sellers, Elon was the one that was selling. The crypto community almost immediately turned . on Elon. In fact, here’s what happened at the Bitcoin conference just a few weeks later. Fast , forward 10 months, and out of nowhere, Elon would purchase a 9.2% stake in Twitter immediately . making himself Twitter’s largest shareholder. Initially, Elon insisted that this was just a passive investment but just a few weeks later, he launched a hostile takeover attempt. Twitter . had no interest in selling to Elon, but because Elon’s offer was so stupidly high, they had to , accept. Elon was no longer the kid that was being mocked for not being able to afford a $21 million , ICBM. Elon was the guy who could throw around $44 billion to force the hand of a Fortune 500 company on a whim just because he felt like it. And after he bought Twitter, he simply further polarized his base by getting political. He would become one of the leading supporters of Ron DeSantis, and many of his statements seem to indicate that he’s pro-Trump. And let me clarify, I’m not . saying that there is anything wrong with that, but there is a clear transition at play. Both , Tesla and SpaceX were largely kept alive by government subsidies and tax credits made possible , by the Democrats, but here Elon was supporting the Republicans. Elon has also made a lot of , controversial tweets about the Ukrainian war and the Israel situation. And let me be clear , here, any statement about these conflicts is a controversial one. Likely the best example of the new Elon though was his interview at the Dealbook Summit in late 2023. During the interview, he was , questioned about how he felt about big advertisers like Disney pulling away from advertising on . Twitter due to Elon’s antics and this was his response: When he says Bob, he’s referring to Bob . Iger, the legendary CEO of Disney. And while it’s great that Elon is able to stand up for himself and not be blackmailed, it’s also obvious that Elon is no longer the struggling man who was on the verge of tears after his heroes dismissed him. Elon is of such high status that he can publicly and repeatedly tell people like the CEO of Disney to f off. And that is what has really changed , about Elon. Nothing has really changed about what Elon is working on. He’s still trying to electrify , the world, he’s still trying to reach Mars, and he’s still trying to make humans a multi-planetary . species. And regarding his controversial tweets and political statements, he’s been doing that . the entire time. The only thing that has changed is that Elon is no longer the underdog, and that has made all the difference. If you're interested in having companies pay you, check out our bond . investing platform Silo in the description below..