Pretty much. After fucking up PayPal and getting kicked out for being an insufferable POS, he hired a PR firm who constructed the real life Tony Stark image for him on the public. Writing and getting press around his person. They also unfortunately had to tell him to not say or do certain stuff that would damage his image, there’s nothing a narcissist hates more than being told no. They also allowed him to position Tesla as the futuristic libertarian ideal and the overpriced manufacturers they are now, and SpaceX as the renaissance of US space exploration. In my opinion not entirely undeserved perceptions but immensely amplified by a marketing machinery. Then he had a meltdown, fired every single PR, marketing person from every single one of his companies. Declared himself the only marketing that his companies needed. He essentially bought into the crap that his own PR wrote for him.

In his recent “interview” with Alex Jones, Musk called all PR firms “propagandists.”. So that tracks.