Dave Chappelle brought Elon Musk on stage to huge boos and jeers from the crowd.
The comedian was performing at the Chase Center in San Francisco on Sunday (11 December), when the Twitter owner made a surprise appearance.
However, the crowd were unimpressed and could be heard heavily booing Musk, who was left “withering” from the reception.
“It sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience,” Chappelle joked, referring to the reports that Musk fired a number of Twitter staff members who criticised him on internal employee message boards.
Musk also reportedly cut thousands of jobs in November after firing outsourced contract workers, including those who fight misinformation on the platform as content moderators.
In a video shared on social media, Musk can be seen standing on the stage, awkwardly, unsure of what to do. He then says to Chappelle: “You weren’t expecting this were you?”
Chappelle, appearing to defend Musk, then says: “Have you noticed one thing? All those people who are booing, and I’m just pointing out the obvious, they have terrible seats.”
Crowd member James Yu tweeted after the event to say that the Twitter owner asked “what should I say??” as the boos continued for minutes.
Yu added: “Was at the Dave Chapelle show at SF tonight and who comes on but Elon Musk! A good 80 per cent of the stadium boos. 18k people. and he withers. Like absolutely turns into a corncob... I actually felt bad for him.”
Last week, Elton John decided to leave the social media site following Musk’s takeover, which has prompted an exodus of several celebrities since October.
John wrote: “I’ve decided to no longer use Twitter, given their recent change in policy which will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked.”
