By Tom Jones | Senior Media Writer, Poynter Institute
On pretty much a daily basis, I am amazed that Elon Musk is one of the wealthiest people on the planet. That’s because, on pretty much a daily basis, Musk says or does something that is either dumb, or offensive, or insulting, or just plain uncool — which might be the most derogatory thing you can say about him since he fancies himself as really cool.
In the aftermath of what is believed to have been an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, a user on X tweeted, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”
Musk, who owns X, replied, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” He then included a “person thinking” emoji.
According to CNBC’s Rebecca Picciotto and Lora Kolodny, “Within an hour, Musk’s tweet had been viewed by at least 1.3 million users, while over 3,000 users had reposted it and at least 18,000 users had liked it.” Later, it had nearly 30 million views. Musk has 198.7 million followers.
Musk left up the post for nine hours before deleting it.
Then he posted at 2:58 a.m. Monday morning, “Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X.”
Wait, people laughed at that? Who laughed at that?
Then, two minutes later, Musk tweeted, “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”
Or maybe, Elon, assassination jokes aren’t all that funny — especially when the nation is completely on edge and the people you tweeted about — Kamala Harris and Joe Biden — have had death threats.
The White House said Monday that Musk’s first post was “irresponsible.”
Maybe Musk should’ve just deleted his original tweet and then said, “Hey, I took down my last post because it was an insensitive and incredibly thoughtless thing to say. I am sorry.”
But only someone really smart would do that.
Editor’s note: Tom Jones is senior media writer for the Poynter Institute. This commentary was posted on Poynter.org and distributed via the Poynter Report newsletter. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.
