Oddly enough, Russell's political transformation came long before the world's least surprising revelations, probably because he'd got to the point of his "revolution" where the left considered him tiresome and the pandemic was a reboot opportunity.

Elon is the starkest example of "journalist contacts him about historic allegations that were never going to amount to anything other than embarrassment and within a couple of hours he's come out as a Republican and therefore rendered himself immune to shame over personal indiscretions of the sort only Teh Wokes care about". Again, trending that way because he was genuinely annoyed at pandemic regulations and not a fan of Teh Wokes but interesting to see how far he's taken it...

he was setup though.