Using repetition, deflection and schoolyard taunts, Elon Musk can transfer markets, confound, distract and offend with a single tweet – closely evoking the tactics of former US President Donald Trump.
Their shared strategy to on-line communication and mercurial personalities invite apparent comparability, with the similarities coming into even sharper aid because the Tesla Inc chief and world’s richest particular person has swerved into politics and forged his first vote for a Republican.
Musk’s infatuation with Twitter Inc impressed him to make a US$44bil (RM193.59bil) bid for the corporate, a deal that might give him even higher affect over a digital ecosystem the place he instructions outsized energy. That might be particularly helpful as federal bureaucrats pose a rising problem to his empire.
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Musk has indicated he would welcome Trump again to the social platform, lifting a suspension that started when the previous president violated the location’s insurance policies with tweets surrounding the Jan 6, 2021, assaults on the US Capitol. But that permissive therapy – and Musk’s current right-leaning political epiphany – aren’t a sign he’ll again Trump within the 2024 US presidential race.
“I’m undecided at this point,” he mentioned final week on the Qatar Economic Forum in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. That demurral got here a number of days after he tweeted he was leaning towards supporting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The cautious reply for a public viewers of traders demonstrates he can swap off the freewheeling, provocative on-line persona when wanted – a restraint that Trump may by no means fairly muster.
‘Flooding the zone’
As a lot as Twitter has labored to enhance what it calls the “health” of dialog on its website – by down-ranking harassing voices and providing prompts to nudge customers to rethink offensive replies, for example – the platform nonetheless rewards incendiary behaviour by way of re-tweets, likes, replies and follows. Banning those that cross the road of their use of the service, together with Trump, has finished little to calm these dynamics, and has left room for Musk to change into the centre of consideration.
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Musk’s presence on Twitter is so forceful that even his absence is seen: He hasn’t tweeted since June 21, leaving his admirers resorting to on-line hypothesis in regards to the billionaire’s whereabouts. Typically, although, Musk serves up what his viewers desires, emulating and fine-tuning Trump’s technique to construct his fan base and types.
Musk and Trump are each efficient at “flooding the zone”, mentioned Inga Kristina Trauthig, a senior analysis fellow at The University of Texas at Austin. They hammer easy opinions repeatedly, she mentioned, whether or not it’s Musk’s current fixation with decreases in international start charges or Trump’s frequent claims of a deep-state conspiracy working towards his agenda.
Flooding the zone is an strategy popularised by Steve Bannon, Trump’s onetime political strategist. In 2018, Bannon advised creator Michael Lewis that “the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
With this sort of onslaught, accuracy is much less vital than persistence.
“Their narratives are not nuanced. They’re not complicated,” mentioned Trauthig, whose analysis focuses on how rising applied sciences are used in political communication.
Those easy tales typically body the lads as victims of politically motivated assaults, typically timed to unflattering information tales. Musk, for instance, speculated in May that Democrats would unleash a “dirty tricks campaign” towards him due to his assist of Republicans – and the following day, Insider reported allegations of sexual misconduct towards him, which he dismissed as a “hit piece” designed to “interfere with the Twitter acquisition”.
Trump’s social media behavior had singularly high-stakes penalties, along with his tweets used to disseminate misinformation and to try to overturn his failed re-election bid. Still, Musk’s missives have a sure significance, shaping the funding selections and world view of his acolytes.
Both discovered huge on-line attain, with Trump notching 88.9 million Twitter followers earlier than he was kicked off the platform, and Musk counting some 100.3 million followers.
Musk’s Twitter acumen evokes Trump’s in one other pointed manner: He has a penchant for seizing the every day information cycle and reframing it. For Trump, tweets had been typically easy media commentary – he watched cable information voraciously, and delighted in mocking the scores of the Oscars and the NBA. Others, although, had been large information: He fired his secretary of state by Twitter and even tweeted his personal Covid-19 case.
“I call Twitter a ‘typewriter’,” Trump mentioned in 2019. He recalled one tweet declaring that Israel has sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a publish that bucked a longstanding US place. “I go: ‘Watch this.’ Boom, I press it, and within two seconds, ‘We have breaking news.’”
Musk’s tweets can blot out chatter about Tesla’s plunging inventory worth and his Twitter deal – or any effort to wriggle out of it. One Sunday in June, for instance, he tweeted Father’s Day needs, mentioned he was nonetheless shopping for Dogecoin and that he feels “swindled” each time he drinks LaCroix glowing water.
Sowing mistrust
Both males use the platform instinctively and gravitate to subjects will thrive there. Trump amplified conservative media to stoke feuds that underpin the US tradition warfare. Musk, in between bulletins about his corporations, has weighed in on distant work, video video games and the media, which he accuses of skewing too detrimental. He and Trump have sought to domesticate followings that belief them and mistrust mainstream information retailers.
Followers carefully hold on each phrase. Musk tweets cryptically, reminiscent of in April when he tweeted a clean area for a phrase adopted by “is the Night” – spurring a flurry of hypothesis and sleuthing about whether or not the primary phrase was “tender”, indicating he deliberate to make a young provide for Twitter. Trump was much less coy, however his tweets had been nonetheless closely dissected, reminiscent of his notorious unfinished one about “negative press covfefe”.
Musk, Tesla and a consultant for Trump didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Notorious tweets
Still, their impulsivity on-line has generally blown up spectacularly. Trump misplaced his Twitter megaphone in January 2021 within the aftermath of the deadly swarming of the Capitol, when the corporate decided his tweets violated its insurance policies round glorifying violence. The scope of Trump’s involvement within the rally remains to be coming to mild. A former aide testified Tuesday that Trump urged safety to let armed individuals into the protest, demanded he be a part of them on the Capitol and grabbed on the wheel of the presidential SUV to redirect it.
Musk landed himself in hassle with a 2018 tweet wherein he falsely claimed to have lined up financing to take Tesla personal. That led to an settlement with the Securities & Exchange Commission wherein he and Tesla every agreed to pay US$20mil (RM87.99mil) in civil fines over the tweet.
More not too long ago, Musk’s personal workforce has chafed at his on-line theatrics. On June 16, SpaceX fired workers who had been behind an open letter condemning the behaviour of Musk, their CEO, as “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks”.
Should Musk’s acquisition of Twitter shut, Trump has mentioned he received’t return to the location, pledging to persist with issuing proclamations on Truth Social, his personal platform.
The lure of regaining the attain and cache of his Twitter account, nonetheless, could show too tough to resist. – Bloomberg
