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Elon Musk’s detractors need to stop the character assassination
Elon Musk’s detractors, especially those working in the mainstream media, need to stop the character assassination.
As a writer, I feel that we should not use our positions to tear down individuals just because we may not like them. And this, I believe, is what many in the mainstream media are doing.
The WSJ article, to me, seems like character assassination
The recent article published in the Wall Street Journal claiming that Elon Musk had an “alleged affair” with the wife of Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, is what I think is one example of a character assassination attempt.
Yeah, the character assassination attacks have reached a new level this year, but the articles are all nothing-burgers.
I work crazy hours, so there just isn’t much time for shenanigans.
None of the key people involved in these alleged wrongdoings were even interviewed!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2022
Although I shared my thoughts about this, it’s been over a day now and I find it incredibly disturbing that many in the media seemed to not care about the truth. Even after Elon Musk shared a photo of himself with Sergey Brin on friendly terms, taken after the supposed falling out.
Character assassination over truth
It seems that the collective hatred of Elon Musk takes priority over the truth. What I mean by this is that many people seem to not care about the facts. The facts are that Elon Musk wrote that this incident never happened and he showed photographic proof of his friendship with Sergey Brin.
Yet these unknown sources that WSJ cited didn’t even have any photographic evidence. Or if they did, they kept it to themselves for whatever reason and I doubt this is the case.
And although the majority of the reports have been either revised or updated, the damage has already been done.
Elon Musk Warned Of This
Elon Musk warned that this would happen. No, not that the WSJ piece itself would happen, but he did say that there would be political attacks on him that will escalate dramatically in the coming months.
Political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2022
Although this attack on him over his personal life isn’t political, there have been many other character assassination attempts on Elon Musk over the past several years. And these attempts influence the average person.
Whether it’s on TikTok, Facebook, or in person, people seem to think that Elon Musk is a bad person. I’ve had friends disown me over my support for him and tell me that I am a bad person. Or that I’ve lost touch over a “billionaire who doesn’t care about you.”
For someone who doesn’t care about me, Elon sure cared when I told him I was nervous when I met him. You can listen to what he said to me in the tweet below.
Short & sweet sound bite from my interview with Elon that won’t be in the podcast.
I was nervous and he was opening fudge I got him from Buccees (hence loud paper sounds)
He wanted to feed @GailAlfarATX and me lol.
Elon is so nice. Good ppl. pic.twitter.com/tbWty5BoEe
— Johnna (@JohnnaCrider1) June 27, 2022
New level of character assassination attacks
Elon Musk pointed out that the character assassination attacks on him have reached a new level this year. This is true and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. He pointed out that the articles aren’t that important and regarding the WSJ article, none of the key people mentioned were even interviewed.
Yeah, the character assassination attacks have reached a new level this year, but the articles are all nothing-burgers.
I work crazy hours, so there just isn’t much time for shenanigans.
None of the key people involved in these alleged wrongdoings were even interviewed!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2022
Elon shared another thought on Twitter about this.
He said that the amount of attention on him has gone supernova. He added that he will do his best to focus on doing useful things for civilization, which is a passion of his.
The amount of attention on me has gone supernova, which super sucks. Unfortunately, even trivial articles about me generate a lot of clicks 🙁
Will try my best to be heads down focused on doing useful things for civilization.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2022
Elon Musk cares about humanity and civilization.
During my interview with Elon Musk earlier this month, he spoke fervently about helping people. We spoke about his work with the Musk Foundation, Starlink, and disaster relief. He shared that one key way to help with poverty is to improve literacy.
“Literacy and access to internet, I think, are fundamentally helpful. Really, we’ve got to think beyond the United States. There are billions of people who have no internet connectivity at all–nothing. Or it’s like a very low bandwidth and it’s insanely expensive. For many parts of the world, this is the case–billions of people.”
He spoke more at length about these topics and you can listen to our interview here.
The Character Assassination of Elon Musk needs to stop.
To be quite honest, I find it disturbing that so many in the media are consumed with hatred of Elon Musk to the point that they seem to have lost all of their senses. They complain about his “behavior” while not even acknowledging that most of the time, Elon is standing up for himself.
Elon Musk isn’t the type of person to let people just walk all over him or mistreat him. He fights back and his detractors don’t like this. This is why many of us in the Tesla community is referred to as a cult.
This is a tactic often used by many of Elon Musk’s detractors. They use these terms to dehumanize supporters so that our thoughts and opinions are rendered valueless.
This needs to stop.
Disclaimer: Johnna is a partial Tesla shareholder with under 1 share currently. She plans on buying more and supports Tesla and its mission.
If you have a tip, feel free to send them to johnna@teslarati.com
News
These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI
The news is the latest in an ongoing feud between Elon Musk and the Sam Altman-run firm OpenAI.

OpenAI, the xAI competitor for which Elon Musk previously served as a boardmember and helped to co-found, has reportedly poached high-level engineers from Tesla, along with others from xAI, X, and still others.
On Tuesday, Wired reported that OpenAI hired four high-level engineers from Tesla, xAI, and X, as seen in an internal Slack message sent by co-founder Greg Brockman. The engineers include Tesla Vice President of Software Engineering David Lau, X and xAI’s head of infrastructure engineering Uday Ruddarraju, and fellow xAI infrastructure engineer Mike Dalton. The hiring spree also included Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta.
“We’re excited to welcome these new members to our scaling team,” said Hannah Wong, an OpenAI spokesperson. “Our approach is to continue building and bringing together world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and deliver the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people.”
Lau has been in his position as Tesla’s VP of Software Engineering since 2017, after previously working for the company’s firmware, platforms, and system integration divisions.
“It has become incredibly clear to me that accelerating progress towards safe, well-aligned artificial general intelligence is the most rewarding mission I could imagine for the next chapter of my career,” Lau said in a statement to Wired.
🚨Optimistic projections point to xAI possibly attaining profitability by 2027, according to Bloomberg's sources.
If accurate, this would be quite a feat for xAI. OpenAI, its biggest rival, is still looking at 2029 as the year it could become cash flow positive.💰 https://t.co/pE5Z9daez8
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 18, 2025
READ MORE ON OPENAI: Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit clears hurdle as trial looms
At xAI, Ruddarraju and Dalton both played a large role in developing the Colossus supercomputer, which is comprised of over 200,000 GPUs. One of the major ongoing projects at OpenAI is the company’s Stargate program,
“Infrastructure is where research meets reality, and OpenAI has already demonstrated this successfully,” Ruddarraju told Wired in another statement. “Stargate, in particular, is an infrastructure moonshot that perfectly matches the ambitious, systems-level challenges I love taking on.”
Elon Musk is currently in the process of suing OpenAI for shifting toward a for-profit model, as well as for accepting an investment of billions of dollars from Microsoft. OpenAI retaliated with a counterlawsuit, in which it alleges that Musk is interfering with the company’s business and engaging in unfair competition practices.
Elon Musk confirms Grok 4 launch on July 9 with livestream event
News
SpaceX share sale expected to back $400 billion valuation
The new SpaceX valuation would represent yet another record-high as far as privately-held companies in the U.S. go.

A new report this week suggests that Elon Musk-led rocket company SpaceX is considering an insider share sale that would value the company at $400 billion.
SpaceX is set to launch a primary fundraising round and sell a small number of new shares to investors, according to the report from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous due to the information not yet being public. Additionally, the company would sell shares from employees and early investors in a follow-up round, while the primary round would determine the price for the secondary round.
The valuation would represent the largest in history from a privately-owned company in the U.S., surpassing SpaceX’s previous record of $350 billion after a share buyback in December. Rivaling company valuations include ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as well as OpenAI.
Bloomberg went on to say that a SpaceX representative didn’t respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing. The publication also notes that the details of such a deal could still change, especially depending on interest from the insider sellers and share buyers.
Axiom’s Ax-4 astronauts arriving to the ISS! https://t.co/WQtTODaYfj
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 26, 2025
READ MORE ON SPACEX: SpaceX to decommission Dragon spacecraft in response to Pres. Trump war of words with Elon Musk
SpaceX’s valuation comes from a few different key factors, especially including the continued expansion of the company’s Starlink satellite internet company. According to the report, Starlink accounts for over half of the company’s yearly revenue. Meanwhile, the company produced its 10 millionth Starlink kit last month.
The company also continues to develop its Starship reusable rocket program, despite the company experiencing an explosion of the rocket on the test stand in Texas last month.
The company has also launched payloads for a number of companies and government contracts. In recent weeks, SpaceX launched Axiom’s Ax-4 mission, sending four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 14-day stay to work on around 60 scientific experiments. The mission was launched using the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a new Crew Dragon capsule, while the research is expected to span a range of fields including biology, material and physical sciences, and demonstrations of specialized technology.
News
Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings
Tesla sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab components around the Giga Texas complex.

Tesla may be extremely tight-lipped about the new affordable models that it was expected to start producing in the first half of the year, but the company sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab castings around the Giga Texas complex. This is, at least, as per recent images taken of the facility.
Cybercab castings galore
As per longtime drone operator Joe Tegtmeyer, who has been chronicling the developments around the Giga Texas complex for several years now, the electric vehicle maker seems to be gathering hundreds of Cybercab castings around the factory.
Based on observations from industry watchers, the drone operator appears to have captured images of about 180 front and 180 rear Cybercab castings in his recent photos.
Considering the number of castings that were spotted around Giga Texas, it would appear that Tesla may indeed be preparing for the vehicle’s start of trial production sometime later this year. Interestingly enough, large numbers of Cybercab castings have been spotted around the Giga Texas complex in the past few months.
Cybercab production
The Cybercab is expected to be Tesla’s first vehicle that will adopt the company’s “unboxed” process. As per Tesla’s previous update letters, volume production of the Cybercab should start in 2026. So far, prototypes of the Cybercab have been spotted testing around Giga Texas, and expectations are high that the vehicle’s initial trial production should start this year.
With the start of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi service around Austin, it might only be a matter of time before the Cybercab starts being tested on public roads as well. When this happens, it would be very difficult to deny the fact that Tesla really does have a safe, working autonomous driving system, and it has the perfect vehicle for it, too.
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