When Billionaires Get Bored

Elon Musk discards toys he no longer has use for. Just look at what happened to Matt Taibbi.

by Ben Cohen

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Twitter Files story was the very obvious fact that Elon Musk was feeding cherrypicked files to handpicked journalists for political purposes.

Musk chose reporters like Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Alex Berenson and Michael Shellenberger because he knew they would run with the narrative he wanted to promote, namely that Democrats, intelligence agencies and tech executives were suppressing free speech and throttling conservatives’ reach on the network.

If you look at Musk’s behavior over the past few years, one particular behavioral trait stands out that reveals the underlying motive behind his chosen narrative. His immense wealth and influence have allowed him to indulge in this idiosyncrasy, with enormously destructive results for not only society, but those in his inner circle too.

When it comes to cars and space rockets Musk may have Midas touch. But when it comes to the fourth estate, the Tesla CEO is destroying everything and everyone he gets close to. The most public example of this was Musk’s most prized journalist Matt Taibbi, who dutifully abased himself during the Twitter Files debacle, and now finds himself discarded with no reputation left to salvage.