Elon Musk said that he has no problem being hated on Wednesday at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York. “Hate away,” he said. “There’s a real weakness to wanting to be liked.”
Clad in a leather jacket, black jeans leather boots, and a necklace given to him by a family member of an Israeli hostage that says “bring them home,” Musk added that it’s been “a hell of a year,” and admitted that he sometimes says “the wrong thing.”
A number of prominent brands paused their advertising on X, formally known as Twitter, this month following Musk’s public embrace of an antisemitic conspiracy theory favored by White supremacists.
The advertising exodus included media companies like Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate and Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of CNN.
“I don’t want them to advertise,” Musk said. “If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go f**k yourself. Go. F**k. Yourself,” he said. “Is that clear? Hey Bob if you’re in the audience,” he added, referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger.
But he also said his antisemitic tweet was “the worst I’ve ever done.”
“Look,” he said, “It was foolish of me. Of my 30,000 tweets, it was the worst I’ve ever done. I did my best to clarify, but over time it will be obvious that far from being antisemitic i’m actually philosemitic.”
Musk visited Israel this week, where he went to a Kibbutz attacked by Hamas on October 7, spoke with families of Israeli hostages and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
But Musk said on Wednesday that his trip to Israel “wasn’t an apology tour,” and that “it wasn’t in response to all of that.” Musk said that he is a good person but he’s not going to “tap dance” to show people that.
On Monday, Musk told Netanyahu of the recent attacks that “those who are intent to murder must be neutralized; then the propaganda must stop that is training people to be murderers in the future; and then making Gaza prosperous. If that happens, I think it’ll be a good future…. I’d love to help.”
But in a separate conversation at the DealBook Summit, Herzog appeared uncertain that Musk would remain consistant in his messaging.
“We had an open and frank conversation which I found interesting and I think it was mutually beneficial to both of us,” said Herzog. “I sincerely hope that we will see some of [his activism against antisemitism] in the near future.”
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