If the rule is that you can get extraordinary access to state power if you are rich enough, then no, we are not meaningfully operating under the same rules. Saying “like Elon, you too can do that” is like saying anyone can influence housing policy by buying every apartment building in town. Hypothetically yes. Practically, not true and also not desirable as a system.

The problem is that wealth can buy a level of political access that ordinary citizens cannot realistically obtain at all. Once someone can spend hundreds of millions helping elect a president or pay people a million dollars to vote their way, and then get a quasi-governmental role with influence over federal agencies, then the system is no longer a system but instead a service.

Saying the system allows the ultra-rich to do this because of builtin ambiguities does not mean therefore no billionare is blameworthy for using it. If a loophole lets billionaires buy political influence, them exploiting that loophole is still part of the problem.

Your defense of him seems to reduce to: the system is corrupt, and if you were rich enough you could exploit it too. I agree that this describes how power works, but I just do not see how it defends it.