https://www.jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-...
> “Or did he just have an idea and blurt it out," I asked Vance. > "I'm 99.9-percent sure it's the latter," Vance tells me.
Also that to scapegoat Musk for killing the California train when California was perfectly able to kill it itself:
> Vance then brought up a valid point: "In all this time we've been talking about high-speed rail, there's still almost none that's built....
I like the idea that “he didn’t say that” and “he did say that but a different guy feels like he probably meant something else” are so obviously equivalent that skepticism of that notion constitutes a ‘conspiracy theory’.
That aside I like that the guy whose opinion should be treated as indisputable fact said that he thinks that there hasn’t been any high speed rail built globally in the past decade, which is not even remotely true. Obviously if he meant to say in the US he would have said so, since his next sentence was praise of Musk’s world-wide achievements.
I suppose it’s possible that Vance either doesn’t know anything about high speed rail or was in such a rush to extoll the virtues of the CEO of Tesla that he just sort of blurted something out to make Musk look good?
The full quote is “vaguely accurate but a disingenuous take”. And “Disingenuous” means “misleading/dishonest/untruthful/insincere/unfair”.
> Obviously if he meant to say in the US he would have said so
Come on, from the context it is clear that Vance means the US and specifically California. He also says “we” in the sentence “In all this time we've been talking about high-speed rail” and does not mean Chinese/Japanese/French having this discussion.
You’ve sort of just added “I feel like Vance meant something other than what he said” on top of Vance saying he felt like Musk meant something other than what he said. There isn’t a number of layers of “I feel…/he feels…” that you can pile onto a statement that will equal “he did not say the thing that he is quoted as having said”
Your contention is that by “accurate” he meant “inaccurate” and that he sees Elon Musk as being a global phenomenon and high speed rail as a… thing that’s local to the US? That is notable for its… absence?
Seems like “yeah that’s what he said but in my opinion you’re being mean to my friend” is more likely than a professional writer not knowing how to say “that’s not true”
It is patently clear what Musk meant, the guy isn’t famous for nuance. That aside I don’t find it difficult to picture the man that publicly claims that he personally elected the president thinking that he could sabotage a rail project. Now, I can’t know for sure that he believes that his Hyperloop pitch was responsible for the failure of the CA high speed rail project but if I had to make a bet about that…