Our friend Elon is in the news again. Yes, this is something that repeats every day, as the owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter tends to be very controversial in his statements. What we hadn’t seen until now is what happened last night in the middle of an interview.
Elon Musk, in his first media interview since his anti-Semitic post on X earlier this month, apologized on Wednesday for what he called his “dumbest” social media post.
However, he lashed out at the advertisers leaving his platform due to the rise of anti-Semitism on Twitter.
A clear message to the sponsors: “screw you”
At the DealBook summit of The New York Times in New York, Elon Musk stated, ‘I don’t want advertisers. If someone’s going to try to threaten me with advertising or money, screw them. Get out. Go to hell,’ he said. ‘Is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel,’ he added, referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who spoke earlier at Wednesday’s summit.
Elon Musk made these statements while X CEO Linda Yaccarino was among the audience. Yaccarino joined the company to attract major advertisers back.
In a conversation that lasted over an hour, Elon Musk also mentioned that he has no problem with being hated. ‘Let them hate me,’ he said. ‘There’s a real strength in not caring if you’re liked.’
Clad in a leather jacket, black cowboy leather boots, and a necklace gifted by a family member of an Israeli hostage that reads “bring them home,” Elon Musk added that it has been “a hell of a year” and admitted that sometimes he says “wrong things.”
A series of major companies paused their advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, this month after Musk publicly embraced an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory favored by white supremacists.
The advertising exodus included media companies like Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate, and Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN. Elon Musk wants them back, but not through coercion. Meanwhile, his social network is depreciating every passing hour under his leadership.
