Elon Musk’s mother has urged the billionaire’s critics to “stop being mean to him” and says that because of his massive success her son “gets a lot of hate.”
Maye Musk defended the new Twitter owner in a BBC documentary in the United Kingdom in which she described the world’s richest person as a “genius.”
Mr Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has come under a withering barrage of criticism since his chaotic $44bn purchase of Twitter.
Half of the company’s 7,500 staff have been fired, along with a string of top executives who handled security, safety and privacy issues at the platform.
And a new $8-per-month verification system has seen users with a blue tick mark pretend to be major corporations, athletes, politicians and celebrities.
Twitter was quickly forced to pause the new system for Twitter Blue in response to the imposter accounts, with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly seeing a large drop in its stock price after a fake account tweeted “we are excited to announce insulin is free now.”
Despite his huge success with the electric automaker and launching rockets into space, his mother told The Elon Musk Show that “With those companies, he gets a lot of hate”, according to Business Insider.
Earlier in the week, Joe Biden said Mr Musk’s ties to foreign countries are “worth being looked at” over national security concerns.
The president was asked about the world’s richest person’s financial and commercial connections to the likes of China and Saudi Arabia and whether he viewed the South African-born billionaire as a threat to American security.
“I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at, whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate – I’m not suggesting that, I’m suggesting it’s worth being looked at. That’s all I’ll say,” replied Mr Biden during a press conference on Wednesday.
