“I Have No Problem Being Hated” – Musk Tells Boycotting Advertisers To “Go F**k Yourselves”
In a truth-bomb-filled interview with Andrew Ross-Sorkin at the DealBook Conference, Elon Musk silenced a room full of liberal elites as he proclaimed that “if someone wants to blackmail me with advertising, they can go fuck themselves.”
Reflecting on the actions of various companies to his now-viral retweet of a so-called anti-semitic comment – specifically mentioning ‘Bob’ (Iger from Disney) – Musk confirmed he did not want them to advertise while noting that “an advertising boycott will kill X.”
“Don’t advertise. If someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising or blackmail me with money, go f**k yourself.
Go f**k yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”
But he explains, “the whole world will know those advertisers killed the company… and we’ll document it in great detail.”
Sorkin replies, “Those advertisers will say, ‘we didn’t’ kill the company’, to which Musk cuts him off:
“Oh yeah, tell that to earth.. and let’s see how earth responds to that.”
Fuck you says Elon Musk pic.twitter.com/XailyzZVqZ
— One Tesla Share (@OneTeslaShare) November 29, 2023
With regards to the anti-Semitic tweet, Musk admits his action was:
“I mean, look, I’m sorry for that post. It was foolish of me. Of the 30,000, it might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.
And I’ve tried my best to clarify six ways from Sunday, but you know, at least I think it’ll be obvious that, in fact, far from being antisemitic, I’m in fact philosemitic.”
Musk clarifies once again the thought process behind his retweet:
“What I was saying was that it’s unwise to support groups that want your annihilation,” he says.
If it encouraged anti-semites, he says, “I am quite sorry,” adding, “I should, in retrospect, not have replied to that particular post.”
“Essentially, I handed a loaded gun to the people who hate me,” he said.
He also insisted his trip to Israel was “not an apology tour.”
But he explains, “I have no problem being hated,” and responding to questions about ‘trust’, Musk points out that his work speaks for itself:
“Let the chips fall where they may… I won’t tapdance to prove I am trustworthy.”
If you want to send satellites to space, SpaceX sent 80% of all mass into orbit this year; if you want to buy an EV, Tesla makes the best cars in the world; it doesn’t matter what you think of him.
“We make the best cars… Whether you hate me, like me or are indifferent, do you want the best car or not the best car?”
In fact, he reflects, Tesla has done more than all the companies combined to help the environment, and as the leader of the company, I’ve done more for the environment than any single human on earth.
Sorkin then asked how Musk felt about that and got a response he didn’t expect:
“What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it…
…And what I see all over the place is people who care about LOOKING good, while DOING evil. Fuck them.”
Fuck you says Elon Musk pic.twitter.com/XailyzZVqZ
— One Tesla Share (@OneTeslaShare) November 29, 2023
The mood of the discussion turns a little more morose as Musk discusses the “demons of his mind” that drive the storm inside his brain.
The xAI founder warns that “AI is more dangerous than nuclear bombs” when asked about OpenAI (the company he co-founded):
“I have mixed feelings about Sam,” Musk said about CEO Sam Altman, who was recently ousted and reinstated.
“The ring of power can corrupt.”
Musk added that he wanted to know why OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever “felt so strongly as to fight Sam.”
“That sounds like a serious thing. I don’t think it was trivial. And I’m quite concerned that there’s some dangerous element of AI that they’ve discovered,” he added.
Musk said he believes Sutskever has a “strong moral compass.”
“He really sweats it over questions of what is right,” Musk told Sorkin.
“And if Ilya felt strongly enough to want to fire Sam, well, I think the world should know what that reason was.”
When asked about TikTok, the X owner also points to A.I., which powers the technology that serves up videos to users based on their viewing habits, as his reason for avoiding it:
“I stopped using TikTok when I felt the AI probing my mind, and I felt uncomfortable with that.”
The Tesla founder made it clear he still feels aggrieved at the Biden administration’s shunning of him at the EV Summit at The White House:
“It was an insult.”
Adding that Democrats “appear to be more pro-censorship” and that he “could not see himself voting for Biden,” he also refused to say who he would vote for.
🚨#BREAKING: Elon Musk declares that he will not vote for President Biden in the 2024 election. pic.twitter.com/freyjtbFF4
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) November 29, 2023
Musk also addressed the inordinate amount of power he wields:
“The reason I have these powers isn’t because of anticompetitive actions but because we’ve executed well,” he said.
Simply put, this discussion brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘fuck you money!” as Musk says what he thinks without fear of woke retaliation.
