Scott Galloway’s Epic Two-Minute Takedown of ‘New Jesus Christ’ Elon Musk and His Disastrous Twitter Acquisition Goes Viral

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour spoke with author and marketing professor Scott Galloway this week about the “unraveling” of Elon Musk. Galloway’s takedown of Musk and his “God complex” went viral in the days following as his comments appeared prescient given reports of Twitter’s near collapse.

“Musk is unraveling before our eyes. You think and you feel that there’s a cult growing around the personality of Elon Musk. You kind of made some parallels with Donald Trump, but so, you know, develop that. How is he unraveling and what does that mean for the bigger picture?” asked Amanpour on Wednesday.

“Yeah, I don’t think, I think we’re seeing the unwinding not of a company, but the unwinding of a person,” Galloway began, adding:

And I believe it’s a larger trend as society has become wealthier, more educated, the reliance on a super being and church attendance goes down, but they still look for idols into that void have stepped technology leaders because technology is the closest thing we have to magic. And, you know, our new Jesus Christ was Steve Jobs.

And now Elon Musk has taken on that mantle. And every ridiculously mean, nonsensical, irrational move he makes is somehow seen as chess, not checkers. We’re just not privy to his genius yet. I think this is an individual who has demonstrated a total lack of grace, has no guardrails around him, and is going to see his wealth probably cut in half. This is already the second-worst acquisition in history, just a week or two weeks after the close.

“Is that because he’s bitten off more than he can chew? Because most people believe his other enterprises are hugely successful. His competition with NASA, his Tesla cars, Starlink, which is right now paying off on the battlefield in Ukraine so importantly,” Amanpour pushed back, noting Musk’s accomplishments.

“Well, the warriors that returned in Rome after a huge victory and they would have a ticker tape parade for them and they would hire a slave to follow and shout of the person and whisper in the conqueror’s ear, ‘You are only a man.’ I have never met a man or a woman that is infallible, Christiane,” Galloway replied.

“They all eventually screw up. A universal pillar of truth is that the universe doesn’t want a consolidation of power among any country, any society or any individual. This is someone who, in my opinion, shows a bit of a God complex, vastly overpaid in a fit of mania or seeing something we don’t see,” he continued, adding:

This is a company probably worth 10 billion that he paid 45 billion and thinks he can lay off half the staff and treat them poorly and disparage them and not have any ramifications. So I think, quite frankly, I think he’s a terrible role model for young business people. You can’t deny his incredible accomplishments. But now he’s running three different companies. So this notion that there is a super being. I have found that that notion never proves out.

The segment continued to make the rounds online Friday as news reports noted that Musk had locked Twitter’s employees out of their offices, but was also pleading with programmers to report in. Twitter also saw mass resignations after Musk gave employees an ultimatum this week, demanding they pledge to work “extremely hardcore.”

Below are some reactions to Galloway’s analysis:

https://twitter.com/HayekMG/status/1593481437067501568