Yes, Musk is a crappy character, but that's not a reason to make things up. This isn't Reddit.
The point is this isn't happening.
Almost everything you're complaining about happened under Biden, who Musk wasn't on good terms with.
SpaceX is the cheapest provider of the services it offers, and the government is a large customer but has been less than half of revenue since before 2024.
If the government wants to build a space station (Vast, Axiom, Voyager) or land something(Firefly, Intuitive Machines) or someone on the moon(SpaceX, Blue Origin) , it will find contractors that can do all or part.
The contractors here are BAE Space & Mission Systems (fka Ball Aerospace), L3Harris, and Teledyne. i.e the "NASA" money always ends up at some corp. And complaining about SpaceX stealing money is ignorance.
It's worth noting that the primary contractor for the ISS is Boeing, but Leidos and KBR are involved.
The Artemis program was developed out of the Constellation program, which was initiated sometime around 2005 or 6.
Of course there have long been plans to go back to the moon because its a cool fun thing to do and whoever happens to be president would likely be well remembered for taking credit for it. That doesn't give it credibility as a useful endeavor.
Humans have intuition and curiosity, they can spot something quickly in the distance that looks peculiar, go to it and quickly inspect it.
That should be enough clue.
The Chinese car ban (not just electric mind you) was at the instigation/behest of Unions and Ford in particular. Another Biden thing
Blue Origin matters because they got more money to do less.
> How is landing on the moon not a publicity stunt?
That's fine, we all have our personal heros and villains. But don't be so disingenuous with your arguments or your reasoning.