Elon Musk entered stage left in 1999 as a relative nobody in an obscure feature puff piece on CNN as CEO of a company called “X.com”, where in one of the clips he took delivery of a USD 1M McLaren F1 motor vehicle. He stated in the clip that just three years before, he was sleeping on the office floor and showering at the YMCA. At that moment in time, Musk had become one of the newly minted dot.com millionaires.
Perhaps, already at that stage Musk was a media construct of sorts, much like the total nobody Greta Thunberg – who simply tipped up out of nowhere all by herself outside her school in Sweden and spontaneously decided to go on a “climate strike” – and it just so happened at that very moment an ex-financial PR executive along with a freelance photographer stumbled upon her, took photographs and made videos about her and posted them on Facebook and YouTube, which got hundreds of thousands of views to generate huge viral traction for a previously completely unknown Swedish school-girl, who then went on to become the poster-child for the climate change fake agenda.
Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971 to Errol and Mae Musk. He apparently was a computer nerd who taught himself programming at age 10. Musk then moved to Canada in 1989 and to the USA in 1992 to study economics and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He then went to Stanford to get a PhD in energy physics but dropped out after two whole days. In 1995, at the dawn of the dot.com boom, he started a software company called Zip2 and sold it to Compaq in 1999, making USD 22 million in the transaction. He then launched X.Com, a financial services company and then merged it with its competitor called Confinity which had a money transfer service called PayPal. Musk then became the CEO and largest shareholder of PayPal until PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002 for USD 1.5BN. On this deal Musk pocketed USD 165M.
From there Musk founded SpaceX and Tesla, both of which received govt subsidies and borrowed money from the US govt (USD 465M alone during Obama’s presidency) at ridiculously low interest rates, and he then used his Tesla shares to get actual money into his own pockets.
Tony Stark, the fictional Iron Man feature film character, played by Robert Downey Jr., is a genius, billionaire, playboy and philanthropist. The director of Iron Man, John Favreau, got Downey Jr. to visit Musk’s sprawling SpaceX industrial complex which well impressed Downey Jr.
Favreau then pulled off a PR coup for Musk by talking up Musk’s role as the inspiration for Downey Jr.’s character of Tony Stark. The mainstream media lapped it up and Musk became more of a public figure – he went from being the “PayPal guy” to becoming the rich, eccentric businessman behind SpaceX and Tesla.
But let’s fast forward to 2025, past Musk’s multi-billion-dollar income generating involvement in an mRNA vaccine manufacturing venture with Bill Gates during the fake pandemic; past his USD 44BN purchase of Twitter and christening it “X” to further his alleged aims of being a “free speech absolutist”, past his supply of Starlink satellites to the Ukraine (first for free and then getting the US govt to pick up the tab) to where we are right now – Musk as the wingman to Donald Trump POTUS 47.
Musk chucked USD 260M of his own hard cash into Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump got his presidency and Musk got to sit at the private Trump table and a job at DOGE – the Dept of Govt Efficiency. Musk has since joined Trump on a conference call with Zelenskyy and was with Macron to re-open the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Musk will be right by Trump’s side during his presidency – as Musk was during Trump’s presidential campaign. Musk will be Trump’s advisor and have Trump’s ear on Trump’s foreign policy choices and decisions. What this means in the real world, is the US will be driven by Musk’s immense wealth, his clout, his view of the world, all of which will be commandeered by his superhero ego.
It’s already working out just beautifully for Musk. After Trump’s win, Tesla was worth USD 1TN and Musk’s personal estate went through the stratosphere of north of USD 300BN.
USA Vice President Vance already showed his hand by telling the EU to cool it on their taking on of X and their desire to punish Musk for non-compliance, in return for US support for NATO. Musk is lobbying Trump to fiddle with tax credits of electric vehicles so as to kill US fuel-powered vehicle manufacturing competitors, such as GM and Ford.
X has become the propaganda arm of Musk Inc., and he can now share his opinions with the world. Musk has placed himself perfectly – as overlord of social media on X, to space travel (SpaceX), to transport (Tesla), to telecommunications and the internet (Starlink). Musk can play the Tony Stark genius billionaire “private citizen” bloke whom Trump can then send on errands and missions of mercy to stated enemies of the US – Putin of Russia, Pezeshkian of Iran, Maduro of Venezuela. Who knows, Musk may even share a hashish hookah pipe with Pezeshkian, the way he smoked a zol on Joe Rogan’s show. How he even finds the time to post endlessly on X while running his sprawling corporate empire is simply not human, or perhaps the truth is he runs nothing at all.
My parting question is: with Trump in the driver’s seat and Elon “Tony Stark” Musk as his wingman, will they take the declining US empire on a one-way-trip-with-no return-ticket to Mars and then perhaps straight to hell?
Musk’s fame will no doubt grow exponentially as the US empire descends even further into uncharted space and time, while lost-soul-everyman-US-citizens flagellate themselves, looking for a real-life Tony Stark Marvel Comics superhero to rescue them from oblivion; however, when the cold light of day finally arrives, they’ll kick themselves for having failed to walk and desperately try to save themselves.
Contributed by:
Barry Varkel, an attorney of the High Court of South Africa and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales.
Author of Nigiri Law, Goy Vey and Big Jon Harry’s Revenge
This is a classic case of “There is no free lunch”. Musk is getting a seat at the table “rightfully so”
Trump is also getting is revenge for the past 4 years he has not been President.
Welcome to the real world of bullshitters
Well that was a good summary of Musk by the SA lawyer and UK Supreme Court attorney. I can believe it.