So much of the banter that I get into with everyday folks in real life — yes, I exist outside the internet — centers around the fact that most people have no idea what they’re talking about. That may sound arrogant, but it was most recently proven with Elon Musk’s whole Nazi Salute episode.

The fact that anyone defended him or pretended that it wasn’t exactly what it was completely hinged on whether they knew anything about him at all. But the fact is, I had to remind even my liberal friends that Musk immediately reinstated Nazi accounts on Twitter when he bought it.

In fact, I’ve had to remind people that Musk wasn’t the founder of Tesla. That seems like pretty fundamental knowledge to not have about a guy who’s helping run the country, based on his fame from Tesla.

I’ve long understood with Donald Trump that the issue is more one where he does so much shady stuff that it’s hard to keep up with specific things. I keep a few handy for just that purpose, big stuff that was caught on camera or audio or that he’s admitted.

• He bragged on a tape (that he admitted was a recording of him) about performing a very specific act that he was later found by a jury to have done to E, Jean Carroll
• He obstructed justice live on television when he told NBC’s Lester Holt that he fired FBI Director James Comey specifically because Comey was investigating him
• The “business expenses” he keeps insisting he was wrongly prosecuted for in the hush money case are from an affair ten years before he paid the hush money.

That last one gets confusing for people. They say “You really think he would’ve been prosecuted for that if he wasn’t running for president?” But he wouldn’t have committed the crime if he hadn’t been running for president. There is, as Trump insisted the entire time, nothing illegal about having someone sign a non-disclosure agreement or even paying someone hush money. It’s that he specifically did it when he was running for president that made it illegal.

My problem, my biggest frustration with the political writing I do and the interactions I have regarding politics, is that I am conversant. I remember everything, back to Denny Hastert and Tom DeLay, back to Phil Gramm, back to Nannygate and the first female Attorney General that never was. It’s a curse.

Here and there, though, it comes in handy, like when I need to explain a very simple point, using someone’s own words or actions, like I described above. That’s what you get today: Elon Musk admitting, through a retweet of a very prominent right-wing account, that he believes his $290 million that he spent to get Donald Trump elected was an election of HIM, as well.

Now, I’m going to embed the picture here, not because the tweet isn’t still up — it absolutely is — but because if I embed the tweet, you’ll just see the tweet that he reposted, instead of something showing that he reposted it.

This should come in handy when you get into that conversation with your right-wing neighbor. Elon clearly believes that electing Trump was a package deal.

That’s terrifying for a number of reasons. Number one, it means that he believes that American democracy is for sale. He literally contributed nothing to the world of politics or even to Trump’s campaign other than money and free advertising (more money).

Number two, he believes that the made-up entity Trump has bestowed on him, the fictional “Department of Government Efficiency,” actually has literal legal power to act. He believes — because Trump allows him to believe it — that he actually has some measure of authority in the United States government.

And number three, because Donald Trump thinks he has a mandate from the American people, Elon believes the same for himself.

A mandate is a strange thing. It means that enough people spoke out in their individual voices and wanted a certain candidate or policy. That cannot be determined by the Electoral College. It can’t be determined by some partisan city council that issues nothing but split decisions in a “purple” jurisdiction. It is purely a popular vote thing, a mandate, and in that sense, there really only have been a few presidents that have had one that can be measured.

Only about two thirds of all people in America who are eligible to vote are registered. Only about two thirds of those who are registered actually voted the last time around. And less than half of those, by a small but measurable number, voted for Donald Trump. There isn’t a twisted enough definition of “mandate” to call that “the majority of Americans,” but not only does Trump believe he has one, we now know that Elon Musk thinks he has a mandate too.