“Hate me, like me or indifferent,” Elon Musk said at the New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday, “do you want the best car or do you not want the best car?"
That sums up the duality of Musk.
His recent post on X, in which he endorsed and amplified an antisemitic conspiracy theory, was the latest to repulse advertisers and sour public opinion. Speaking at the summit, in practically the same breath in which he apologised for his thoughtlessness over the post, Musk told companies that pulled advertisements over his X posts to “go f**k yourselves”.
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Musk now has a collection of indefensibly foolish comments, mostly made on the X platform he now owns. In 2018, when X was still Twitter, he called the diver who helped rescue a children’s soccer team trapped in a cave a “pedo guy.” And before the year was out, he tweeted that he had plans to take Tesla private at $420 a share — a weed joke that landed him in court.
The world’s richest man shouldn’t be making such crass, careless comments, and he deserves criticism for them.