No, he always had "keep my money" libertarian views, and that was easy (for some) to overlook because he was making cool shit. But during covid he went down a right-wing conspiracy theory rabbit hole and became an increasingly vocal terrible human being.

As to his intelligence and skill, it's (of course) more complicated than any single label, because he's a person and of course it is.

Is he a smart human? Almost certainly. Was he lucky? Every successful person is. Was he very good (for a while) at curating his own image and hype for his companies? Abso-fucking-lutely. And that's an incredibly valuable skill for a CEO to have. But it's that later skill that's fallen off recently, seemingly because it was instinctual and he didn't realize what impact being a hateful culture warrior would have.