Elon erased his goodwill when he started his crypto pump and dump scams. Or there's the whole vaporware thing to sucker in more investors. Or there's the fact that he argued Ukraine should concede to Russia's demands.
No, I'm pretty sure this is just another in a long list of mistakes by Elon. I don't believe he knows what he's doing here.
And when Elon decided to call a rescue worker a pedophile. To me that demonstrated that Elon was willing to truly destroy people for merely offending him on social media. He later double-downed on the pedophile claim by elaborating on his reasoning for why he thought the rescue worker was a pedophile.
Elon clearly never admits mistakes involving his ego. Same with the discussion now with Kasparov where Elon clearly didn't know he was fighting the Putin regime for a long time, but still doubles down on his mistake.
I think this turned a corner. He lost some credibility as a serious person with crypto pump and dump, and also with pedo guy, and with other shenanigans, but he had a trust fund of credibility from the other businesses.
This is one where his business acumen is under scrutiny too, that's a whole new game. But let's see, it's only the bottom of the first inning.
No, I'm pretty sure this is just another in a long list of mistakes by Elon. I don't believe he knows what he's doing here.