Mother Jones illustration; Jordan Strauss∕AP

In an alternate universe where you had no access to any source of information beyond Elon Musk’s tweets, it might appear that the owner of Twitter/X is currently fighting a pitched and heroic free speech battle with the Brazilian government. In reality, an extremely petty spat—Musk’s refusal to name a local legal representative in Brazil, per its laws—has spiraled wildly, leading Justice Alexandre de Moraes to suspend X from the country last week.

Now Musk is interweaving his feud with Brazil with his ever-growing boosterism of Donald Trump, warning that if the former president isn’t reelected, America will become just like Brazil.

Musk has directly linked his Brazilian feud with the need to defeat Kamala Harris.

In recent days, Musk’s Trump-backing has taken a more frenzied turn, with constant tweets about the need to reelect Trump, and warning of dire and increasingly farfetched consequences if he doesn’t retake office. He’s shared a lengthy series of stories about crimes supposedly committed by undocumented people, writing in one instance, “So many lives have been lost, because Democrat policies pander to the criminal clients. Criminals vote overwhelmingly Democrat, so they don’t want to lose their votes.” In a continued fixation on........

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