Elon Musk has a new role in US politics — and his erratic style is unchanged
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
- Laura Loomer, an Elon Musk supporter-turned-critic, says Musk has demoted her account on Twitter/X.
- Musk has accused Loomer of "trolling for attention."
- It's a reminder: We've seen Musk run Twitter on a whim. Now that he's got an important role in politics: Will he behave the same way there?
Laura Loomer has been kicked off lots of social media sites, including Twitter. After Elon Musk bought the service in 2022, he reinstated her, along with many others who had been booted by Twitter's previous management.
Now, Loomer claims, Musk's service has demoted her by stripping her account's "premium" blue-check status and other benefits. She says Musk made the move because she was criticizing his stance on immigration.
You may be unaware of Loomer — described by Wikipedia as "an American far-right political activist, conspiracy theorist, and internet personality" — and/or the online rock fight about immigration and racism breaking out among different wings of Trump supporters. If so, that could mean you have a healthy relationship with the internet. Good for you.
If you'd like to know more about the latter, my colleague Hasan Chowdhury has an explainer. You could also, at your own risk, consult Twitter/X's own summary of the story.
My point is, you don't need me to tell you about this.
I simply want to remind you that — if Loomer's allegation is correct — this would be par for the course for Musk and his social media company. (Musk hasn't denied Loomer's charges, and has told his followers to ignore her because she's "trolling for attention." I've asked her and Twitter/X for additional comment.)
As I've noted before, the most consistent thing about Musk's management style at Twitter is his erratic, flip-flopping, inconsistency.
Sometimes it's about relatively small stuff, like wooing Don Lemon to start a talk show on Twitter, and then canceling the deal before the show ever started. Sometimes it's about really big stuff — like agreeing to pay some $44 billion for Twitter, then spending weeks in court trying not to buy it.
In any case, the only way you can be surprised by stuff like this at this point is if you never paid attention.
But I do think it's still worth pointing out. Because while Musk's management style at Twitter hasn't changed, his responsibilities have changed.
He's no longer just the richest person in the world, who runs important companies like Tesla and SpaceX, in addition to Twitter. Musk may now be the most powerful unelected person in America, given his importance to Donald Trump and his upcoming administration.
There's his role at DOGE, for starters. And the fact that he appears to be conducting foreign policy for Trump. And that he used Twitter to temporarily tank a government funding bill this month.
We don't know how long this arrangement is going to last, and what kind of impact Musk is going to have. But we do know that for now, a man with the power to affect the way the American government operates is the same man who can change the way he runs Twitter depending on how he feels at any given moment. We shouldn't ignore that.