Elon Musk may own Twitter, but he definitely doesn’t own the public’s opinion of him. On December 11, Dave Chappelle Musk led the crowd at a comedy event at the Chase Center in San Francisco and introduced the CEO of Tesla, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world. “ In one Video shared on Twitterthe crowd can hear Musk booing loudly.
“You didn’t expect that, did you?” Musk said to Chappelle after the negative reaction. “It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience,” Chappelle replied. Chappelle later attempted to defuse the situation, quipping, “All these people booing, I’m just pointing out the obvious – they have terrible seats in the stadium.”
As the boos continued, Musk asked, “Dave, what can I say?” per forbes. “Don’t say anything. It will only spoil the moment,” Chappelle replied. “Do you hear that sound, Elon? This is the sound of impending civil unrest. I can’t wait to see what store you decimate next, motherfucker.
Musk addressed the crowd’s reaction in a Response to a tweet shared on December 14th. “Technically it was 90% cheers and 10% boos (except during quiet times), but that’s still a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequently on Twitter),” he wrote. “It’s almost as if I insulted SF’s disjointed leftists.”
According to Musk, he currently has a net worth of $188.7 billion forbesacquired Twitter on October 27 for $44 billion. Since taking over the platform, Musk has laid off thousands of employees, The edge reported, including many who criticized him publicly or on Slack.
The Tesla CEO has delved deeply into right-wing talking points since taking over Twitter, posting tweets such as, “The woke-mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters” and “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” The latter tweet was supported by the likes of far-right MP Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose Twitter account was restored by Musk. axios reported after the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy ended in November.
Since Musk’s acquisition, a number of celebrities and public figures have left the platform, including Elton John, who quit on Dec. 9. “All my life I have tried to use music to bring people together. Misinformation is now being used to divide our world,” he wrote at the time. “I have decided to stop using Twitter given the recent policy change , which will allow misinformation to thrive.”