The Rise and Fall of Elon Musk

He began with code and vision—a South African transplant with messianic ambition. Elon Musk made his first fortune not by building cars or rockets, but by wiring the plumbing of internet commerce. He co-founded X.com in the late '90s, a brash online banking startup that eventually merged into what became PayPal. When eBay acquired it for $1.5 billion in 2002, Musk cashed out and set his sights on the stars—and the grid beneath our wheels.

He poured his wealth into SpaceX, promising reusable rockets and Martian colonies. He took over Tesla, turning it from an obscure electric startup into a cultural phenomenon—sleek, silent, zero-emission status symbols for the elite and the aspirational. Wall Street doubted him. Detroit laughed. But Musk defied gravity. For a time.

Yet the cracks were always there, hairline fractures in the armor of genius.

He demanded the spotlight but feared scrutiny. He waged war on regulators, mocked safety standards, and once called a British cave diver a “pedo” for questioning his ego-fueled submarine stunt. And then came The Joe Rogan Show—a single moment that burned through the facade.

There he sat in 2018, CEO of two multibillion-dollar companies, puffing on a blunt mid-interview like a college sophomore in a dorm room philosophy spiral. The image went viral: eyes glazed, tie loosened, muttering about simulation theory while shareholders watched in disbelief. Tesla’s stock dipped. Board members panicked. Musk laughed. But something had shifted. The myth began to wobble.

And yet, part of him seemed to believe the myth, too. That he really was the lone genius who could fix everything. That disruption was virtue. That speed beat substance.

No longer just the boy genius with rockets and dreams, he became something else: a spectacle. A walking contradiction. A billionaire with impulse control issues, broadcast live in HD.

And then he bought Twitter.

That was the pivot—from visionary to vandal. From the man who wanted to save the planet, to the man who couldn't stop retweeting fascists. When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 (renaming it X), he called it a crusade for free speech. What followed was a deluge of hate speech, restored accounts of white nationalists, and a slow purge of institutional memory. He mistook chaos for clarity, mistook freedom for the absence of responsibility.

The world watched the richest man alive burn down a global public square because he thought moderation was tyranny.

By 2024, he had gone from libertarian curiosity to MAGA’s crown prince. He gave Trump nearly $300 million, bankrolled get-out-the-vote schemes that veered into legal gray zones, and declared himself the chief architect of governmental “efficiency.” And when Trump returned to power, Musk followed him into Washington, not as a servant of democracy—but as its saboteur.

Then came election night.

While the country held its breath in November, Musk climbed the inaugural stage behind the presidential seal and raised his arm—not once, not twice, but three times—in a motion that to many resembled the Nazi salute. Straightened elbow. Flat palm. Downward gaze. It was filmed, photographed, replayed in slow motion across networks from Brooklyn to Berlin. And when outrage swelled, he laughed. Made puns about Goebbels. Dismissed the unease as "just more media hysteria." But history doesn't always scream when it repeats itself. Sometimes it smirks.

The gesture was not a fluke. It was the latest in a lineage. Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was a militant anti-communist who once headed Canada’s Technocracy movement and reportedly harbored sympathies with fascist regimes. When the political climate turned hostile, the family left Canada for apartheid-era South Africa, a regime built on racial hierarchy and violent control. This was the soil in which Musk was raised—not just geographically, but ideologically: with the myth of white supremacy humming beneath the circuitry.

And if there was any remaining doubt about where he stood, Musk erased it the night before the German elections in early 2025. Speaking via livestream to a rally organized by Alternative für Deutschland—Germany’s far-right nationalist party with deep neo-Nazi associations—Musk addressed the crowd in English and broken German. “It’s time,” he said, “for Germany to stop apologizing for its sins.” The line landed like a grenade. Holocaust survivors’ groups condemned it. Lawmakers walked out of Bundestag sessions in protest. The Simon Wiesenthal Center demanded an apology. None came. Because Musk wasn’t courting controversy—he was courting a movement. The same ghosts his grandfather admired. The same bloodlines that once chanted "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer."

What began as a tech mogul’s dabble in politics had become something darker, older, more dangerous. This wasn’t disruption. This was resurrection. Not the creation of a future—but the excavation of a grave.

Let’s not pretend this was public service. This was piracy.

He came to Washington not with humility, but with a chain saw—boasting to CPAC how quickly he could “save billions” by gutting what he didn’t understand. In truth, he did what every vandal does when handed the keys to a cathedral: he stripped the copper from the walls, pissed on the altar, and called it innovation.

But now that the lights have flickered back on, and Musk is gone, questions remain—questions his exit doesn’t silence but amplify.

Where is the data? Who holds it?

The Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE, as he mockingly dubbed it—was never about governance. It was a smash-and-grab. His team accessed federal personnel files, slashed agency workforces, and flagged employees for “performance” using opaque AI tools with ideological teeth. Entire programs were deleted with the swipe of a touchscreen. Musk bragged about slashing USAID down to the bone. But as he backs away from the wreckage, no one can say what data DOGE scraped, or where it went.

And the wreckage is real.

USAID’s crowning achievement—its signature moral triumph—was the delivery of antiretroviral drugs to sub-Saharan Africa through PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. This wasn’t just foreign aid. It was a rescue mission of biblical proportions. Over 20 years, the U.S. helped deliver life-saving treatment to over 20 million people and prevented millions more from contracting HIV. Nearly 30 million lives have been saved through this program. Hospitals reopened. Children buried fewer parents. Entire economies began to breathe again. Bono, who spent years lobbying world leaders to fund the program, called it “one of the most eloquent expressions of American values ever created.” And he meant it. This wasn’t charity—it was justice with a passport.

Now that legacy lies in ruin. Since DOGE gutted USAID, PEPFAR’s infrastructure has collapsed. Clinics sit vacant. Stockpiles dwindle. Nurses are furloughed. And in their absence, the virus is stirring. UNAIDS warns that 6.6 million new infections could follow if these lifelines are not restored. So who steps in now? China? Maybe. But medicine isn't just about molecules. It’s about trust. And the U.S., for a generation, was trusted. No longer. The diplomatic goodwill built through PEPFAR—the admiration, the respect, the gratitude—is evaporating like condensation on a shuttered clinic window. Bono didn’t mince words: “The bludgeoning of PEPFAR and USAID.… might be America’s most spectacular act of self-sabotage in generations.” Musk didn’t just kill a program. He amputated the moral arm of American foreign policy and left millions to bleed out in the dirt.

He didn’t just disrupt a government. He disfigured America’s soul.

The nation that once airlifted food to Berlin, that rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan, that sent Peace Corps volunteers into jungles and deserts to build clinics and confidence—that nation now staggers under the shadow of a man who thought foreign aid was a rounding error.

This wasn’t limited government. This was nihilism in a suit.

And still, the media downplays it. Donors stay quiet. Lobbyists make excuses—“At least he tried to change things.” But we know what we saw. The salute. The Goebbels jokes. The platforming of extremists under the banner of “free speech.”

Musk’s departure isn’t closure. It’s evidence. Now it’s up to us to investigate what happened—and who enabled it.

Congress must use its full oversight and subpoena powers to hold Musk accountable.

Every DOGE file must be reviewed. His deputies must testify under oath. Subpoena the logs, the servers, the emails. Freeze every contract signed during the transition. Recover the data Musk took—and find out how it was used.

This wasn’t innovation. It was infiltration.

He didn’t reform the system. He exploited it.

He’s gone. But the institutions remain. And they owe the public clear answers—not statements, not symbols. Just the truth.

Because if we don’t dismantle what he built, someone else will use it.

And next time, they won’t leave.

But even Musk's vast fortune couldn't buy every outcome.

In the spring of 2025, he poured over $25 million into Wisconsin's Supreme Court race, backing conservative Brad Schimel in a bid to flip the court's ideological balance. The election became the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history, with Musk's involvement drawing national attention and controversy. Despite his financial muscle and aggressive campaigning, liberal judge Susan Crawford secured a decisive victory, preserving the court's 4–3 liberal majority.

This defeat was more than a political setback; it was a public rebuke. Musk's overt attempts to sway the judiciary, including offering financial incentives to voters, were met with legal challenges and widespread criticism. The loss signaled that there are limits to the influence of wealth and that the electorate retains the power to push back against perceived overreach.

As Winston Churchill once observed, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they've tried everything else.". In Wisconsin, voters demonstrated that, despite the allure of power and money, democratic principles still hold sway.

And yet, even in the wake of that defeat, Musk showed no capacity for reflection—only retreat. He blamed the bureaucracy, not his own overreach. He complained that Washington was too entrenched, too slow, too stubborn to change. "It was just relative time allocation," he muttered to a reporter, as if the dismantling of institutions were an inefficient spreadsheet.

But the truth is: it was never Washington that failed him. It was Musk who failed. Because this system—corrupted, bloodied, gerrymandered beyond recognition—still has a heartbeat. And some nights, like the one in Wisconsin, it still remembers how to fight.

Musk didn’t quit because government couldn’t be changed. He quit because it wouldn’t be conquered.

And as his political ambitions collapsed under the weight of his own hubris, so too did the house of Tesla. Once the crown jewel of his empire, Tesla has become ground zero for public revolt. Sales cratered in early 2025 as consumers turned on the brand that once promised the future. In blue states and European capitals, activists chained themselves to dealership doors, decrying Tesla as the luxury badge of authoritarian excess. Social media swelled with videos of Tesla owners torching their own cars in protest. The stock followed suit: down more than 40% from its peak, dragging pensions and portfolios with it.

The market didn’t miss the symbolism. A car that once represented green energy and innovation now symbolized moral rot and political delusion. Tesla wasn’t just another casualty of Musk’s political misadventure—it was collateral damage in a war he started, lost, and refused to own.

So good riddance, Elon. Don’t let the escape pod door hit you on the way out.

Because this was a victory. Not just over one man, but over the ideology he carried with him like a virus: the belief that power answers to money, that democracy is just another system waiting to be optimized, that history can be gamified and fascism memed into fashion.

Not this time. Not here. Not yet.

This was the first defeat for those who must be defeated. The first crack in the chrome-plated shell of tyranny-by-tech. Let it echo.

The people, weary and wounded, stood up and said: you may be rich, you may be loud, but you are not right.

And we are not for sale.