That's why he showed up alongside Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 and was treated like a god on an episode of Big Bang Theory.
The media, for the most part, treated him gently until the Thai cave incident when people started to catch onto the idea that this "quirky genius" might be an asshole.
There was lots of high profile reporting calling Musk dumb for believing in EV and landing rockets. Media constantly using burning Tesla to show how bad EV are. The most important car show in the world, as mainstream as it gets, shit on Tesla hard. Lots of interviews with former CEOs of car companies explaining how dumb Tesla was.
So did fucking Larry Ellison lol. Wasn’t that movie basically an ad for Oracle.