Elon Musk Tells His Enemies They Won't Define Him

Elon Musk wants to erase the bad memories of the confrontation with the Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis.

Hope decided to announce his presidential bid on May 24 in an interview with Musk on Twitter. The move was an unusual one and was intended to position DeSantis as an underdog and introduce him to Musk's 140 million Twitter followers.

For some, these followers are the billionaire's fans. They do not tolerate negative comments about their hero and attack any slightly negative article for the king of technology, as they call Tesla ( TSLA ) - get a free report .

Musk has become a champion of conservatives in the new culture since he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and set out to turn it into a bastion of free speech, a platform where anyone can say anything as long as it's illegal. War against the "Wake Mind virus", i.e. progressive values.

Musk wants to change history

The problem is that all is not as it seems. The tech mogul believed DeSantis' announcement would go down in social media history. Although the interview made history, it is often remembered negatively. The call, which was a live audio chat on Twitter Spaces, started about half an hour late due to technical issues. These outages were initially followed by hundreds of thousands of people, so by the time the technical issues were resolved, fewer than 300,000 Twitter users were following the two men's exchange. Media coverage was weak and unanimous. fiasco, with more than 69% recalling some of Musk's controversial decisions, such as firing Twitter employees.

This failure appears to be a personal problem for Musk, who is used to impressing the world. In the hours that followed, he tried to play down the issues, saying the event was getting a lot of attention and Twitter had seen a lot of posts, but critics weren't convinced. The botched interview led political pundits to conclude that DeSantis, who is trailing former President Donald Trump in the race for the Republican nomination, has made it a bit more difficult and now has Everest to climb.

Musk did not give up. The billionaire wants to change the history of this event at any cost. He seems ready to accept any argument, even if it is an exaggeration of reality. He did so with fundraising numbers reported by the DeSantis campaign. Musk solved the problem with Community Notes, a fact-checking mechanism he developed on Twitter.

"Happy to announce and discuss @RonDeSantis' presidential candidacy in this forum," the billionaire tweeted on May 26, referring to a CBS story that DeSantis had "$8.2 million" in the last 24 hours of his presidency. in the early hours. Campaign. "But what is peace? set an all-time fundraising record."

He then encouraged organizations and other presidential candidates to consider Twitter for their big news. "It's worth thinking about advertising in general," Musk said.

He does not let his opponents write the history.

The billionaire was immediately criticized by community ratings for false facts and misleading tweets.

"This tweet is actually wrong," Musk wrote, allowing users to add context to tweets to protect content quality and reduce misinformation on the platform. "Trump collected 25 million dollars in 2019. Without big backers, it's still $14 million.

He continued. “Additionally, half of Governor DeSantis' donation went to a space-focused fundraising event. President Joe Biden led DeSantis' online donations, raising $6.3 million.

The correction is a major setback for Musk, as it seriously undermines his desire to change history. But the billionaire's Twitter feed shows just how far he'll go to own up to one of his biggest failures. It also suggests Musk doesn't want to let his naysayers and detractors write his story. The techno king viewed the interview as a rival to US political kingpin Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox empire serves as the route any conservative politician seeking to establish himself must travel for years.

By lending the stage to DeSantis, the billionaire wants to soften the narrative that has politicized Twitter. Attributing the social network to the candidate of the political party, he made the platform the official social network of the party. Most social networks, be it Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok, do everything to avoid being accepted by politicians. They are generally limited to initiatives such as encouraging their users to vote, but not publicly promoting a candidate.