Even the judge, who at times prompted Musk to answer “yes” or “no,” was having a bad time. “He was at times difficult,” said Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers after Musk and the jury left the room. (At one point, when she’d cut off his argumentative answer, she got the biggest laugh of the day.) “Part of management from my perspective is just to get through testimony.”

Musk spent a lot of yesterday painting this heroic picture of himself, and this morning, near the end of his direct examination, said, “I don’t lose my temper” and “I don’t yell at people.” He said he might have called someone a “jackass,” but only in the spirit of saying something like, “Don’t be a jackass.”

Immediately afterward, Savitt baited him into being petty, irritating, and generally hard to deal with. At one point, we all watched Musk lose his temper. He spent hours quibbling over simple questions. Again and again, Savitt referred back to Musk’s deposition, where he’d answered questions slightly differently, calling Musk’s accounts into question. Even if the average juror didn’t think he was lying, he was certainly inconsistent.

Savitt’s cross-examination left the distinct impression that Musk quit his quarterly payments to OpenAI because he wasn’t going to get full control of the company, then tried to kneecap it and fold it into Tesla. Initially, Musk wanted four board seats and 51 percent of the shares. The other cofounders would get three seats, together, to be voted on by shareholders (including other employees). Though Musk said that the eventual plan was to expand to 12 seats, it was obvious that Musk had full control on the initial board of seven.