[sterlind]

I still don't get billionaire populism. like just fundamentally, I do not understand how Musk and Trump built this image that they're men of the people.

there are weak spots, though. Luigi Mangione became a folk hero for murdering a CEO, with a lot of support across the political spectrum. likewise, the Epstein files getting suppressed seemed to agitate just about everyone. those fault lines weren't on the woke/anti-woke axis, they were on an elite/common axis. they were also harder to safely polarize the public on.

[heavyset_go]

> I do not understand how Musk and Trump built this image that they're men of the people.

They say the quiet part out loud and make enemies out of the people their followers already don't like.

One of them had a media machine that painted them as Literally Tony Stark™ for two decades, with literal Iron Man cameos, and the other promises to hurt people with blue hair a lot.

[gruez]

>One of them had a media machine that painted them as Literally Tony Stark™ for two decades

What "media machine"? He only bought twitter in 2022, and even if he had a PR person or two, it can hardly be considered a "media machine" any more than some SMB with one or two social media interns has a "media machine".

[heavyset_go]

Did you live under a rock until 2022? I don't care who was formally on his payroll or not, the media tripped over itself to ingratiate Musk and portray him as Literally Iron Man™ to the world since the millennium.

[hn_acc1]

There are still many tech people who think he's a techno-genius and fully approve of everything he does, including grokAI's hitler episodes, etc..