Elon Musk has become a big supporter of Donald Trump, and that support has seriously paid off. After winning the 2024 presidential election, Trump decided to reward Musk by making him the co-chair of the Department Of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE). The X (formerly Twitter) CEO courted controversy with all of his Trump support, but this is one case where being controversial seems to have paid off.
Other times, though, Musk’s controversies did nothing but leave him looking foolish. What kind of controversies are we even talking about? Keep reading to discover some of the weirdest Musk controversies in recent years.
Endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory
If you’ve spent any time on X, you know that Elon Musk posts many stupid and misguided things. Despite this tendency (or perhaps because of it), he rarely makes any apologies for his mistakes. However, even he had to admit how badly he screwed up when he publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
It all started with a post describing the Great Replacement Theory and how Jewish people were deliberately inciting hatred against white people. This completely unsubstantiated theory is a staple of racists around the world, but Musk endorsed the post by calling it “the actual truth.” Later, Donald Trump ally Musk admitted that it was “foolish” of him to endorse such an explosive and dangerous lie. In fact, he went so far as to say “it might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.”
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Spreading Pizzagate lies
One of Elon Musk’s quirkier qualities is that he seemingly can’t stop responding to the stupidest posts on his own social media platform. It’s a tendency that has gotten him in trouble on multiple occasions, including when he brought back the Pizzagate conspiracy that was debunked ages ago. If you’re unfamiliar, this was a theory that Democrats were somehow organizing and running a pedophile ring from a Washington, D.C.-based pizza restaurant.
Ever late to the party, Musk posted a meme involving the NBC sitcom The Office which showed the characters debating if Pizzagate was real. He also added his own comment that the whole thing “Does seem at least a little suspicious.” Meanwhile, everyone with two brain cells to rub together wondered how the world’s wealthiest man kept falling for the stupidest things.
Betraying Ukraine to Russia
Most of Elon Musk’s recent controversies have been confined to things he says, either in real life or on X. However, his most infamous controversy wasn’t confined to social media. This controversy is tied to Ukraine’s ongoing war against their Russian invaders.
Back in September 2022, Ukraine was planning to use Musk’s Starlink satellites for a drone attack on a Russian naval base. Musk went out of his way to prevent this, later claiming that he didn’t want to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” Many felt this was just an excuse, though, and that he was effectively helping Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
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Musk endorsed fake news regarding Israel and Hamas
For better or for worse, X became a major platform for people to debate the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. Shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Elon Musk endorsed a couple of X accounts that he thought were good for getting real-time updates on the war. On paper, this makes sense…after all, why wouldn’t the X CEO shine a spotlight on the usefulness of his own platform?
However, users were quick to point out that the accounts in question were very suspect. One of them had recently shared an AI-generated image about an attack on the Pentagon, and the other was infamous for its antisemitic posts. Needless to say, neither account was trustworthy when it came to war updates!
Banning journalists for doing their jobs
In retrospect, the strangest thing about Elon Musk’s purchase of X is that he has frequently tried to cast himself as a champion of free speech. He complains that “woke” people are constantly censoring other viewpoints, but this doesn’t keep him from suppressing views he doesn’t agree with. For example, he has never stopped freaking out over the existence of trans people, and X will automatically censor posts that mention the words “cis” and “cisgender.” Musk considers these slurs, which is notable because he doesn’t seem interested in cracking down on actual slurs shared on his platform.
And nobody gets cracked down on harder than those who report anything negative about the controversial Tesla CEO. In December 2022, he banned several reporters who reported negative things about him, and he faced some harsh EU sanctions because of this. As for Musk, he claimed that because these reporters wrote about an account that tracked his private jet’s movements, they had “doxxed my exact location in real-time” and given “assassination coordinates” to his enemies.
Later, he reversed the ban after a majority of users supported this action in an online poll. But Musk banning journalists for doing their jobs and writing about an account that shared publicly available data proved, once and for all, that free and unfettered speech is the last thing this man cares about.