The world’s richest man, the guy who’s spent years cosplaying as Tony Stark, was reportedly bawling his eyes out in the Oval Office, begging the former President to save his crumbling empire.

This is so stupid. Musk even now could save his crumbling empire. He could do the following:

1. Resign from the DOGE crap.
2. Announce that he’s cutting a large check to every government employee he fired as recompense.
3. Sell Twitter and make it a publicly traded company again.
4. Announce that he’s done with politics and will never donate to a campaign again.
5. Make a billion dollar donation to the ACLU and other human rights and civil society groups.
6. Publicly apologize, blame it on the ketamine, and announce he’s going to sober up and focus on his companies from here on out.

He could do that today. And it would cost him a tiny tiny fraction of what this meltdown is costing him. And you know what? It would probably work. Sure, some people would never forgive him. And I wouldn’t blame them for that. But if he showed genuine contrition and a willingness to do what he can to make things right? Most people would probably forgive him. He’s still relatively young, and in time, his foray into politics would be largely forgotten, a tragic misstep on an otherwise bright career. In time his reputation would return more to what it was in the mid 2010s, rather than whatever the hell his current madness is.

Even now, it isn’t too late. Get out of government and politics, throw a few billion around as restitution, and go back to making cars and rockets. People love a good redemption arc. And in time, Tesla sales and the stock price would likely recover.

This would be completely out of character for Musk, so I don’t expect him to ever do this. But it does show that he is absolutely not the victim here. If he really wanted to, he could wash his hands of all of this. He holds the keys to his own jail cell.