Tech wizard Elon Musk’s fans hang on his every word when he tweets about the next SpaceX launch, or about the next Tesla electric car – or, it turns out, about President Donald Trump and America’s legal system.
That was the subject of a tweetstorm this morning, coming in the wake of the past few days’ developments over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. A federal judge in Seattle issued a reprieve from that crackdown on Friday, in the form of a temporary restraining order, and this weekend an appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s plea to reinstate the ban immediately.
The almost dizzying back-and-forth caught Musk’s attention, and not just because he happens to be an immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in South Africa and also acquired a Canadian passport. Musk is a member of Trump’s advisory council, and in fact participated in a discussion of immigration policy at the White House on Friday.
His status as a Trump adviser has generated some pushback from his fans, and today’s tweets touched on the reasons why he’s remaining on the council even though he disagrees with the president’s views on immigration. Here’s an effort to untangle the Twitter threads that the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla spun with his followers today:
Many in America don't realize how proud they should be of the legal system. Not perfect, but nowhere is the cause of justice better served.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk I was one of your largest supports up until this tweet.
— La’Tosque Adams (@TheLAAdams) February 5, 2017
@TheLAAdams The laws need to change. Judges are responsible for evaluating whether an action breaks the law, not making law.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk Tell that to the Natives who lost all of their land. Elon it would be wise to avoid politics.
— KENEMONICS (@KENEMONICS) February 5, 2017
@KENEMONICS You’re right. Politics is a no-win situation. Somebody is going to hate what you say no matter what that is.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk doesn’t make your defense of the order a few days ago any better
— David Watson (@FifthRocket) February 5, 2017
@FifthRocket Did you read my tweets? I attacked it hard. Did not defend.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk It is becoming clearer that it is time for you to stop working with Trump. How many Tesla sales have you lost as of now?
— Seb (@W4AS) February 5, 2017
@W4AS Good grief, I’m not “working” for Trump. I’m trying to provide advice that helps take things in a more positive direction.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk haters gonna hate… :)
— Don Julio (@BullFlags) February 5, 2017
@BullFlags Yeah. And Twitter is a hater Hellscape.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk I prefer your “Tesla tweetstorms” over your “justice system tweetstorms”, but hey it’s your twitter…
— Fred Lambert (@FredericLambert) February 5, 2017
@FredericLambert Me too. I hope to get back to regularly scheduled programming soon …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk It certainly produces fewer toxic responses, which are often based in miscommunication more than disagreement.
— Fred Lambert (@FredericLambert) February 5, 2017
@FredericLambert Yeah, it is hard to convey complex ideas in 140 chars and tone is lost in text
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
Musk and his followers gave shout-outs to a number of other countries and their legal systems. Britain? “OK, but what’s up with the wigs? … Actually I think it’s kinda cool.” Switzerland? “There are many good legal systems on par with US. Just don’t know of any that are better.” Norway? “Norway is great on all levels. Love Norway!” New Zealand? “Great country! Looking forward to taking my kids for a visit. I’ve heard it is incredibly beautiful.”
Musk slipped in quick answers to questions about the public education system (“Needs a major overhaul”) and the reason why the U.S. has the highest prison population rate in the world (“Mostly anti-drug laws”). And he repeated his view that it’s better to work with Trump than to work against him:
Activists should be pushing for more moderates to advise President, not fewer. How could having only extremists advise him possibly be good?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk more extremists means higher risk of not winning next elections (earlier). More moderates increases the risk of 8 years of Trump.
— trylks (@trylks) February 5, 2017
@trylks A lot of terrible things could happen in four years of extremism. Do you really want another war? That’s where extremism leads.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk @rtoro20 Some of my fresh grad friends are disavowing you due to President Trump. Do you have words of wisdom I can give to them?
— Cycle Trades (@CycleTrades) February 5, 2017
@CycleTrades @rtoro20 People should push to have as many moderates advising the President as possible. Blind hate is never the right answer.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@IanrossWins @elonmusk Elon will work with anyone that will help get him to Mars. That’s bipartisanship.
— thelogicbox (@thelogicbox) February 5, 2017
@thelogicbox @IanrossWins Mars is critical for the long-term survival of humanity and life on Earth as we know it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
Musk joked about how a seemingly random tweet turned into a tweetstorm:
@elonmusk @FredericLambert Unusual this chatty for Elon ;)
— martinengwicht (@martinengwicht) February 5, 2017
@martinengwicht @FredericLambert I just had three coffees :)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk thanks for being pragmatic. Too many oversensitive nerds.
— Micah (@DaringKid) February 5, 2017
@DaringKid True. Me being one of them :)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk Can you tweet more please.
— Ryan Santoro (@rtoro20) February 5, 2017
@rtoro20 Really? I already have both feet in my mouth and am levitating on my own idiocy…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
But he got a vote of support from Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, who is now chairman and CEO of the investment firm Revolution as well as chairman of the Case Foundation. In a tweet, Case said he agreed with the view that activists should be pushing for more moderates to advise Trump, and linked to a blog posting in which he praised Ronald Reagan’s immigration reforms.
In addition to politics, Musk dropped some hints about Tesla upgrades and SpaceX’s launches from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A:
@elonmusk @FredericLambert This is perhaps your largest Tweetstorm! When is the Tesla App update scheduled? And the Linux kernel update?
— MacTechGenius (@MacTechGenius) February 5, 2017
@MacTechGenius App update is about two weeks out. Linux kernel and browser update probably a month or so. HW2 Autopilot has priority.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
@elonmusk @trylks on a happier note, how is 39-A coming along? Looking good for static fire?
— Campbell (@camdtor) February 5, 2017
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
To check out all the nuggets of information, make a careful scan of Musk’s Twitter feed. More than two and a half hours after his first tweet of the day, he finally stepped away from the keyboard:
Signing off now. That was more than enough Twitter trouble for one morning!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2017
