It came to light yesterday that Elon Musk may have made unwanted sexual advances against a flight attendant on his private jet in 2016. Elon and Space-x paid her $250,000 to bury the matter.
It’s probably fake news or greatly embellished. Who knows. It does not matter.
I predict this will not hurt Elon’s brand at all. It does not involve children, so no one cares. It’s similar to Trump’s Access Hollywood tape leak, which the left was certain would doom his presidency. Of course, the left was in fumes after Hillary lost, and zero Trump voters defected. No one really cares about this stuff. Society has become desensitized, not to mention the media’s credibility is way lower than Musk’s credibility.
The narrative is that this story is an act of politically motivated retaliation against Musk:
Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. And Journalists only knew about the sexual assault allegation, the day after he declares support for the Republican party?
Something smell fishy. We have seen this before: pic.twitter.com/5iJvXC1nmN
— Sk Boz, PhD 💙 (@skbozphd) May 20, 2022
I seriously doubt this is the motive. Musk is not running for public office. Because it’s a civil matter, it likely has no bearing on the possible Twitter deal. He’s as close to untouchable as a private individual can be.
The story broke on Thursday night, PST. The timing suggests an attempt to crash the share price of Tesla on the day of weekly options expiration, which is every Friday. This seems like the most plausible explanation. At one point today Tesla stock was down 10%, netting anyone who bought weekly options yesterday a substantial profit.