I don't know the exact context but Thomas Edison was a cutthroat businessman yet people still reference him alongside the Wright brothers. Same for Henry Ford and Walt Disney.

The fact Elon is not an inventor at all, at best a visionary investor, seems more at odds with the other names.

Doesn't Tilly mention going to a school named after him?

While Musk very quickly turned into an obvious shitheel in the time between that episode being filmed, and that episode airing, I think it seems obvious that without his influence in power generation and space travel spheres, assuming no one else took on that role in the same time, we'd be in a world that is largely changing in those aspects right now.

I think without his influence, we have much less innovation in energy or in space tech in the last several years.

Especially related to space travel -- without Musk's influence in space travel, the US space business basically died with the Shuttle program. MAYBE something else state sponsored might've replaced it, or some corporate/government mix, but .. my guess would be that putting it all in perspective in the Star Trek universe, there's probably a reasonably direct line that can be traced from Elon's influence with SpaceX in the early 2000's to Cochrane's warp drive.

Of course, that's all speculation because we don't know what would've happened without a SpaceX.

I'm not defending him, I'm defending that he put significant influence into things that are affecting our world right now, and that would also be relevant to the mid 2000's era of Star Trek.

The Sanctuary City riots are a perfect example of doing a great job of tackling social issues without tying it directly to a specific contemporary event. I would have preferred a fictional near-future event than an event that had barely just happened, much less one that we still haven't felt the full effects of yet.