The way Elon Musk spent his New Year’s Day, and what is evidently on his mind, are ominous signs of what’s to come.
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It has been quite a year for Elon Musk. He has accused the US president of treason, focused on the quality of a car that his company built as the nation was dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack, tried to undermine a European democracy, and thrown his support behind a guy who seems too radical for even Great Britain’s right-wing party (which the billionaire has endorsed).
Oh, by the way, the year we are talking about is 2025.
And, if New Year’s Day is a harbinger of things to come, Musk will continue his hard-right turn this year, try to make his influence (and newly purchased political power) felt, and cause trouble across the globe.
First, the receipts:
Here is Musk saying that the Biden administration committed “treason,” a crime carrying the death penalty (but no less than five years in prison) for putting in place immigration policies he disagrees with.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1874646268800323935
Now, you may think about these policies whatever you like, and, as Donald Trump’s election has shown, American voters were not in favor of them, but they hardly meet the definition of treason… even if you believe that all of the people who came across the border are “enemies” of the United States.
However, that tweet was a one-off.
On Wednesday, Musk had more important things to do than worry about mere treason.
Primarily, that meant touting the benefits of the truck his car company Tesla manufactures.
The so-called Cybertruck was used in what may have been a deliberate attack. Filled with fireworks and camp fuel canisters, it detonated outside of a Trump-branded hotel in Las Vegas, killing the suspected perpetrator. Seven bystanders sustained minor injuries.
Investigators are still unsure whether this should be classified as an act of terror, and, if so, whether it is linked to the attack in New Orleans that cost at least 15 people their lives.
Guess which one Musk focused on!
That’s right, the one in which the truck his company built was involved.
Above all, Musk wants Americans to know that this is a great vehicle.
He tweeted/retweeted statements touting its sturdy frame that may have prevented more people from being harmed.
That includes this gem from a Tesla investor (which Musk deemed worthy to share with his 200 million followers):
A bomb went off in the Cybertruck's bed and the tires didn't pop/deflate, the exterior of the truck is intact, the bed door is still attached & the 1.4mm-1.8mm steel exterior (2x thicker vs normal trucks) helped contain the blast.
It's the toughest & most badass truck ever made! https://t.co/LATz90Ra3F pic.twitter.com/ylncuKblUJ
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) January 2, 2025
If that’s the kind of thing you worry about on the day of a terrorist attack that killed more than a dozen people, then that says a lot about you.
To be fair, there was another issue he was even more concerned about… and it wasn’t what happened in New Orleans.
Based on his tweets, the main topic of the day on Musk’s mind was whether a far-right figure in Great Britain was getting a raw deal.
His name is Tommy Robinson, and Musk thinks he should be freed from prison, where he is serving an 18-month sentence for contempt of court.
Obviously, if you are anything like the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, you won’t trust anything the media has to say about Robinson, or his Wikipedia page.
Therefore, to understand how radical he is, here is something you should know about him: He is too radical for Nigel Farage, who leads Reform UK, a far-right populist party in Great Britain that Musk supports as the only party that can “save Britain.”
Speaking of, the billionaire, who recently used his wealth and his reach as the world’s greatest individual spreader of misinformation to help install Trump as president, now has his sights set on the UK (along with also supporting a far-right party in Germany, of course).
He frequently posts about both countries and amplifies the talking points of Reform UK and Alternative für Deutschland.
On Wednesday, he also called for a new election to be held in Great Britain because some polling shows that the current left-of-center Labour government, which was elected in 2024, wasn’t popular.
That’s not how democracy works, of course, but that is much less of a concern to Musk than whether his trucks are sturdy or extremists serve out their prison sentences.
The fact that all of this happened on one day (when the rest of the world was occupied with the New Orleans terrorist attack) shows that Musk’s self-radicalization seems to be progressing — and that he will be a real menace in 2025.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
