In the beginning it may simply have been a way for him to be able to be able to control Twitter so he could magnify the expose if his own tweets, and he later realized he could earn more by promoting Trump and Putin.
Musk like many men is susceptible to influence my his peer group.
Remember that talk in the beginning with Dorsey?
I imagine this part: Musk and Dorsey having their billionaire bromance phone chat. “Someone needs to go in there and clean house” (remember the sink?) “tech has lost its way, too much woke modern luv” (remember the purge?)
Remember his outed phone texts? All this cryptic cronyism with the big boys and their “everyone else just doesn’t get it” attitude?
I think he believed that crap he was telling himself when he bought the place, and I’m sure he always wanted “X” (his vision) and twitter was a host body for his assimilation.
Musk cannot choose between being an effective entrepreneur and a social-political force of opinionated change (ego eccentric).
I’m pretty sure Dorsey talked him into it with passive language and Musk thought he was the white knight who was going to “show everybody”.
This Trump business is simply more of that ego centricity flaring his billionaire brain.
Even Trump is hardly the man he was in his earlier days.
Power drives men insane.
That’s my take.