Suppose you send an e-mail to every federal employee, asking for a list of 5 things they did last week. (You may also enjoy seeing Tesla shareholders asking Elon the same thing, but of course Elon’s plans are definitely genius-er than we will ever understand!)
Then, you get sued for that by lawyers representing some Federal employees, because sending that e-mail and requiring a response may not be allowed. Oopsie!
You probably know most of that already, and you may not see the genius in it. But we need to keep going, inside the courtroom. See, Elon’s lawyers argued that the e-mail was fine, very legal and very cool. Because they’re totally voluntary! See judge, look at our policy! Anyone can opt out of this fun game we’re playing by just not responding! Look- here’s the proof in our official document!
(Image and the pretty red pen are from this post on Bluesky by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo.
That’s pretty compelling. The judge probably thought so too. But also, Elon sent out a Tweet (an X?) that used a slightly different version of the word “voluntary”:
And then! They changed the wording of that original document! And didn’t tell the judge about it! Simply genius. Here’s the current version of the document:
It’s different! and not-so-voluntary sounding.
This is the true genius of Elon that not many people understand. Why don’t other people just change a document, show a judge that version, and then change the document afterwards? Why bother changing it at all? Why not just show the judge a changed document?
Some people might call that a fraudulent document, and the process of changing it fraud. But the genius of Elon surely just sees this as clever.