(Photographer: Tolga Akmen/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Elon Musk had a hostile message for companies pulling their advertising from Twitter/X because of his controversial views.
“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail with money, go fuck yourself,” he said while being interviewed today at the New York Times' DealBook Summit. “Go. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear?”
“I have no problem being hated. Hate away,” he added.
Musk made the statement after several high-profile brands—including Apple, IBM, and Disney— paused advertising on the platform after Musk seemingly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims Jewish people support replacing white people with immigrants. Around the same time, a Media Matters report found that ads from these companies were being displayed on Twitter/X alongside pro-Nazi and antisemitic posts.
The loss of such advertising threatens to deprive Twitter of a huge revenue source when the company is already struggling financially. But rather than try to make amends, Musk's message to the companies is “don’t advertise.”
Still, Musk conceded that his controversial tweets can backfire. He described one such post as “one of the most foolish, if not the most foolish thing, I’ve ever done on the platform.”
“I did do my best to clarify afterwards that, you know, I certainly don’t mean anything antisemitic,” he said. “The nature of the criticism was simply that the Jewish people have been persecuted for thousands of years. There is a natural affinity, therefore, for persecuted groups. This has led to the funding of organizations that essentially promote any persecuted group or any group with perception of persecution. This includes radical Islamic groups.”
Despite his immense wealth, Musk doesn’t necessarily intend on bailing out Twitter if the company faces a cash crunch. “I mean, if the company fails because advertisers boycott, it will fail because of an advertiser boycott. And that will be what bankrupted the company, and that’s what everyone will know,” he said, later adding, “let the chips fall where they may.”