Bingo. Elon has a pathological need to be fawned over and will say whatever he needs to to make that happen.

Initially, he found that warm mouth in the left wing for championing products to address climate change, but he was still being held accountable for his failures and obnoxiousness.

When Trump showed him that reactionaries will love you just being a narcissistic asshole and they could be bought for a pittance, he jumped ship. If a bigger, more easily swayed group of people became available to him, he’d rewrite his personality to pander to them instead.