This rings false to me because if Elon just "wanted to get everyone to like him" wouldn't he be doing what Mackenzie Bezos is doing with her money? Namely dumping the money into fashionable and socially approved NGOs that seem to all inexorably lead to more regulation and social division. The amount of money Mackenzie and others like Dustin Moskovitz have been dumping into these culture war starters is actually far larger than what the sum total of what "the government gave Elon". And look what that investment gave the government: a capsule that just brought back the astronauts. Flashy, sure, but it's harder to argue it's not real tangible value he focuses on creating.