Recipe for thinking two things are equally important. If one of those is as intrinsically unimportant as Twitter, the other is too.

Maybe he sees twitter as a threat to his other goals? 'Whitey on Mars' could be very compelling to the twitter crowd.

Like it or not, Twitter is extremely important. It sets discourse and gets politicians into office. Remember how much Trump's tweeting dominated the news cycle? Elon buying Twitter isn't him saying he thinks it should be important, just that it is.

So, this is his entree into politics? A way to drive money at federal-government scale the way he wants?

Possible.