Any other CEO would have been fired for what Elon Musk just said

() – Part of the deal of being a CEO is that you get a big paycheck in exchange for being the public face of a company. For most people, in most companies, that means at a minimum, trying not to make a fool of yourself in public.

For example, if you tweet a joke about the Holocaust you are very likely to get kicked out. Attack marginalized communities? It’s also a bad image.

But the same rules don’t apply if you’re the richest person on the planet and run companies full of cronies.

In case you missed it: On Monday Elon Musk invoked the names of two German Nazis in a tweet while at the same time disparaging modern pronominal conventions by attempting, as usual, to make a joke. (I don’t repeat the text here, not because it’s profane, but mainly because it’s just not funny.)

To put it in context, Musk was responding to a post about a Der Spiegel article who compared him to a media mogul who helped Hitler rise to power.

It was not Musk’s first, much less his most offensive, statement related to the Third Reich or its white supremacist progeny. Last month, Musk promoted Tucker Carlson’s widely condemned interview with a Nazi apologist who said the murder of Jews in concentration camps was “humane” and that Winston Churchill was the “main villain” of World War II. . Musk later deleted his post on X that called the interview “very interesting” and “worth watching,” according to The Independent.

Representatives for X and Tesla did not respond to ‘s request for comment.

Musk rarely deletes his social media posts, no matter how provocative. Nor did he delete the one in which reposted the “interesting observation” that women are incapable of independent thought and that only “alpha males” should make political decisions.

And although he once apologized for his post endorsing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory (which led to an exodus of X advertisers), he also did not never deleted it.

The thing is, any other CEO of a large company could expect to be shown the door after airing any of these ideas. Or at least that was the case in 2018, when more CEOs were forced to resign for “ethical lapses” than for poor financial results, according to a PwC study.

So why is Musk special?

This is partly due to the way he has structured his wealth and his companies.

Musk is the largest individual shareholder in Tesla, the only publicly traded company he owns. The second largest individual shareholder is his brother Kimbal Musk, who sits on the board of directors. In fact, Tesla’s entire board of directors is filled with Musk allies who lack sufficient independence, according to a Delaware judge who in 2023 voided Musk’s $55 billion pay package.

In other words, the only people with a fiduciary duty to keep Musk in line aren’t exactly disinterested parties, according to Judge Kathaleen McCormick.

But even optimistic Tesla investors are starting to get nervous about Musk’s online rhetoric and his “dark MAGA” turnwhich could lead to some awkward moments on Wednesday’s earnings call.

“The Musk/Trump dynamic has contributed to Tesla investor turmoil and is not helping to solve demand problems in the United States,” Dan Ives, CEO of Wedbush Securities, told me. “Musk becoming more political is not positive for the Tesla brand.”

The other major source of Musk’s wealth is SpaceX, a rocket manufacturer that has been chosen by NASA to resupply the International Space Station.

There are no public shareholders to worry about, as SpaceX is a private company with virtually zero competition in the market. (Technically it competes for space contracts with Boeing, but given the disastrous Boeing’s last five years, SpaceX probably isn’t suffering too much from competition, especially after NASA I would ask him that returned two Boeing astronauts from the space station after their spacecraft broke down).

Litigation is a key part of Musk’s strategy when dealing with any person or group that challenges him or his businesses. Angry at advertisers for abandoning his Nazi-friendly social media site, Musk sued a non-profit advertising group until it ceased to exist. In fact, Musk and his companies have filed at least 23 lawsuits in federal courts alone since July 2023, according to Fortunetargeting “competitors, startups, law firms, watchdog groups, individuals, the state of California, federal agencies and pop star Grimes, who is the mother of three of his children.”

Bottom line: When you have virtually unlimited money, you have virtually unlimited power to play offense in the courtroom, in the boardroom, or on social media.