Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has torn into President Joe Biden on Twitter after being triggered by a presidential tweet praising other manufacturers for producing electric cars in the US.
After Mr Biden tweeted that “I meant it when I said the future was going to be made right here in America” and “Companies like GM and Ford are building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before,” Mr Musk responded: “Starts with a T, Ends with an A, ESL in the middle”.
“Biden is a damp [sock emoji] puppet in human form,” he wrote.
It is not clear whose “sock puppet” he thinks Mr Biden is.
Mr Musk’s precise partisan politics are not clearly defined, but he has poured scorn on the current president before.
He also briefly endorsed Kanye West’s third-party 2020 presidential campaign, though he claimed to have told the rapper that “2024 would be better”. Mr West’s brief effort was marred by episodes of bizarre behaviour that fuelled concern for his mental health.
More consistent are Mr Musk’s views on the Covid-19 pandemic and the response to it, which he has previously described as “fascist”. In a welter of tweets yesterday, he ranted: “If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny” – and called on Americans to “vote them out”, again not making it clear who “they” are.
He also questioned why the UN “has not released 2020 world death rates” while endorsing the fringe group of Canadian truckers planning to stage a protest in Ottawa tomorrow in favour of abolishing all government public health measures.
Mr Musk’s views on the implications of lockdowns and social distancing have never been ambiguous, and he has also questioned the seriousness of the virus itself.
In May 2020, he told podcast host Joe Rogan (who has repeatedly helped spread Covid-related misinformation) that “the mortality rate is much less than what WHO say it is,” that “people really wanted a panic”, and that lockdowns are “fundamentally a violation of the constitution” and an “infringement of our civil liberties”.
