The full backstory of how Elon Musk just swung the election.

If you think you know the story, read on. Here are the 22 events that led to Elon swinging the election – and my favorite untold Elon story of all time (at the end):

P.S. - I know this is supposed to be the One Minute Blog (OMB). Those are great. It’s like Oreo Thins - light and crispy.

But sometimes you just need a double stuffed Oreo. Today, we’re double stuffed.

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1/ Back in 2020 -  Elon is not political. He’s an engineer. He just wants to build things. Cars. Rockets. Tunnels.

2/ A congresswoman in California wakes up and decides to tweet “F*ck Elon Musk”.

3/ Elon (who has Tesla HQ in California, providing thousands of jobs) replies “message received” and moves his companies to Texas.

4/ Biden gets elected. He holds an Electric Vehicles Summit. He invites every car maker, except Tesla (you know, the one company that actually makes all the electric cars in America).

You might be wondering – why would they do this? Did he do something wrong?

Why would the President and California congresswoman literally tell Elon to F*ck Off? They’re both heavily backed by unions, and Tesla is the only major car maker that’s not unionized.

5/ Twitter kicks the current President off the platform - removing his ability to communicate with his followers. Elon sees free speech at risk.

6/ He buys Twitter for $44B.

7/ He releases the “Twitter Files” proving the Democrats were actively trying to censor social media during the election.

8/ The gov’t is pissed. They start suing, and over-regulating all his companies.

Instead of letting the greatest American entrepreneur of our lifetime operate - they are all over him like he’s the guest of honor at a Diddy house party.

Advertisers start to boycott Twitter. Revenue drops 80%. He loses $20B of value in the asset.

9/ He fires 80% of the staff. All that’s left is this group that I like to call the ‘H1-B All Star Team’.

10/ He’s down $20B on Twitter, but that’s OK - he’s still rich right? Wrong. A guy who owns 9 shares of Tesla stock, sues Elon, and the judge revokes his ENTIRE $56 BILLION pay package for Tesla.

This is money that he had already earned, by hitting every possible metric of growth, profits, and stock price that analysts thought was impossible when the package was announced 5 years prior.

But yea, the guy with 9 shares sues him (even though the stock is up 10X) and somehow the judge agrees.

11/ So to summarize (we’re halfway there). At this point, Elon is backed into a corner. The Democrats keep trying to attack him - through lawsuits or regulation.

So what does he do? He goes ALL IN on Trump for 3 months.

12/ He moves to Pennsylvania. Starts giving speeches. Gives away $1M per day ($150M total). Hosts town halls on X. Gets Trump on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

The richest, most busy man in the world - decides to become an unpaid campaign volunteer for Trump.

13/ Why take the risk? What if Trump lost? The Democrats already didn’t like him. Now they would hate him.

The polls show the race is tight. 50/50 coin flip. He is screwed if they lose.

Tucker Carlson even tells him this:

14/ But Elon doesn’t process risk the same way the rest of us. Most people saw a 50/50 election and thought it was “too risky to go all in”.

Whereas Elon sees risk differently. He’s a gamer, and the game theory is:

• If I do nothing - the Democrats might win
• If I do a little - it might not have an impact
• If I go all in - I can tilt the odds from 50/50 to be in Trump’s favor

15/ This is what Elon always does. This is the Elon Method:

1. Figure out what is the most Existential Problem
2. Identify the key lever (eg. PA swing state)
3. Go all in. Burn all boats. Throw your entire weight at it

If you play - play to win.

16/ What did he have to gain?

• A pro-tech, pro-crypto, pro-business, anti-regulation government
• A giant “I-owe-you” from Trump…the biggest “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” President we will ever see
• The tears of his enemies

17/ He spent $150M out of pocket… but his companies are worth $1 Trillion. If this gives his companies even a 1% goodwill boost – then he spent $150M to get $10B in gains. It’s a +EV decision.

18/ And look, I get it. I’m 1,100 words in, and all I’ve said is 30 different flavors of “omg, i love Elon”. But the truth is - I just don’t mix up credibility with likeability.

I don’t like his jokes. I don’t like all his opinions. But he’s undeniably the greatest entrepreneur of our lifetime.

19/ In Silicon Valley, the saying is "Hardware is Hard". (That's why I podcast and write, so I don't chip a nail)

Elon is doing the "hardest hardware":

• self driving electric cars
• reusable rockets
• tunnels
• AGI
• chips in brains

Normal founders celebrate app launches. This guy launches rockets and catches them on lily pads in the ocean like it's a YouTube trick shot video.

20/ I'll end with my single favorite Elon story:

Despite co-founding OpenAI. Giving it $40M of his own money. He somehow ended up with zero ownership, and zero say in the business.

(Even Nick Cannon paying child support for 11 kids got a better deal than that).

Instead of taking an L. He creates xAI. But he's at a huge disadvantage: OpenAI has a 10 year head start, and $10B+ funding from Microsoft.

So he goes all in.

He decides to build the biggest GPU supercluster in the world... in 19 days.

21/ Listen to Jensen (CEO of NVIDIA) talk about him:

22/ Here's the punchline. Read the last line of this from a new-hire at xAI:

This chess analogy sums up the last 4 years for Elon:

"it doesn't matter if you're mate in 3...If there's a laser beam from space that shoots down your opponent's king, you win"

Well, checkmate.

-Shaan