Elon Musk told CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday that he doesn’t care if his tweets scare away potential Tesla buyers or Twitter advertisers.
“I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” said Musk, who owns Twitter.
Musk has for years tweeted controversial items, including “conspiracy theories” and comments his critics have called broadly “discriminatory”.
His defense came after Musk caught renewed criticism for a tweet in which he likened controversial neo-liberal billionaire and Democratic donor George Soros to X-Men villain Magneto.
“He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity”, Musk tweeted Monday.
Musk has previously criticized Soros, whose family office, Soros Fund Management, recently cut its stake in Tesla.
Soros, who is also Jewish but he identifies himself as an atheist, is a favorite target of right wing pundits and politicians.
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Faber on Tuesday also asked Musk why he tweeted a link to someone who said that attributing with no evidence to a “white supremacist” a mass shooting at a Texas mall earlier this month, might be part of “a bad psyop” or “psychological operation”.
Musk explained that the only evidence was “some obscure Russian website that no one has ever heard, that had no followers and the company that found this is Bellingcat. And do you know what Bellingcat does? Psyops”, adding “I thought this ascribing it to white supremacy was bulls— … We should not be ascribing things to white supremacy if it’s not”.
Last week, Musk hired former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino to replace him as Twitter’s CEO, a move widely seen as a way to jumpstart Twitter’s ad business. She started Sunday.
