Elon Musk’s worst courtroom enemy is himself

About five hours into Elon Musk’s testimony, I typed the following into my notes: “I have never been more sympathetic to Sam Altman in my life.”

That sentence came after Musk’s direct testimony — which was actually an improvement over the previous day, even if his lawyer kept asking leading questions like a coach feeding lines to a nervous actor. But any goodwill evaporated the second the cross-examination started.

It was miserable. For hours, Musk refused to answer yes-or-no questions with a simple yes or no. He occasionally “forgot” things he’d testified to just that morning. He scolded defense lawyer William Savitt like a frustrated schoolteacher. I watched a few jury members glance at each other. During one especially testy exchange, a woman in the jury box looked like she was mentally editing her grocery list.

This is the same guy who built Tesla and SpaceX and runs Twitter like a chaotic hobby project. But in a courtroom, none of that matters. You can’t out-engineer a cross-examination. You can’t fire the judge. And you can’t just tweet your way out of a deposition.

Musk’s problem is that he’s used to being the smartest person in every room he walks into. But courtrooms don’t care about your track record. They care about rules. And Musk has never been great with rules he didn’t write himself.

Savitt, for his part, was patient but relentless. He’d ask a simple question. Musk would give a rambling answer. Savitt would ask again. Musk would get defensive. Rinse and repeat for hours. It was like watching someone try to negotiate with a toddler who happens to own a car company.

I’ve covered enough tech trials to know that juries don’t like when a witness acts like they’re above the process. And Musk, whether he realizes it or not, is on trial as much as his arguments are. The case is about OpenAI and the alleged betrayal of its nonprofit mission, but the subtext is always: can you trust this man?

After watching that cross-examination, I’m not sure I’d trust him to hold my drink order.

The irony is thick. Musk spent years positioning himself as the savior of open, ethical AI. Now he’s in court arguing that Sam Altman and OpenAI betrayed him. But the person doing the most damage to his case isn’t Altman or Savitt. It’s the guy in the witness chair who can’t stop talking long enough to let a lawyer finish a sentence.