He was never really liberal, but he had a nasty divorce and went mask off because of it. Same thing happened to Scott Adams. Adams was never really pro worker. He just repeated the stories people would send him and kept doing it because he liked the attention, causing a feedback loop. Musk had that going with the EVs and Mars mission talks. But he kept getting criticism over dates being missed and the divorce cracked him. He then started seeking approval from a less scrupulous group.