I think he's the ORIGINAL, not the one who has been tweeting for a very long time.

I have a theory: from what I understand, clones fail when the origin soul dies. A cloned body (with a transferred soul) vs a clone are 2 different things imho. I believe the originals are held somewhere and likely tortured or placed in stasis of some kind. If tortured, their return would likely have them I masks to be recognized as their unharmed faces. I think this is what happens to the people who disappear and come back changed -- they wanted out and the only way the evil let's them out is to release their grip on their soul (it belongs to God, I don't believe it can be kept if the soul "repents"), but he would never release their bodies, and then he takes the soulless drone instead. One could look at this as Punishment or purgatory.

Either that or different timeline Elon. But I lean to the above for various reasons.