@atomicpoet
It kinda reminds me of another crappy parent i know: he keeps making dumb cringe jokes because he never grew out of the fratboy stage and thinks he's the light of the party. Meanwhile his kids are constantly doing damage control ('actually he meant....') so the embarrassment does not rub of on them.
It is tiresome and he'll be fucked as soon as his kids decide they're done.

I don't think there is any deeper plan, not even something as vague as 'maintaining publicity': Elon is just an idiot who doesn't know when to reign in the craziness and refuses to listen when people try to tell him, and any spark of brilliance was due to his handlers polishing a turd.
And that's hard to accept because in this capitalistic society we've all internalized to some extent that there must be *some* connection between intelligence and money.