Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), says the advertisers that have stopped spending on the platform due to his endorsement of an antisemitic post can \u201cf\u2014\u2014\u201d themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat it\u2019s going to do is it\u2019s going to kill the company, and the whole world will know the advertisers killed the company,\u201d Musk said at the New York Times DealBook conference on Wednesday. \u201cGo f\u2014- yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The post was the \u201cworst and dumbest I\u2019ve ever done,\u201d said Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, if advertisers leave the company, its failure will be their fault, not his \u2014 saying they were trying to \u201cblackmail me with money,\u201d he said. \u201cI won\u2019t tap dance\u201d to prove trustworthy, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk took the stage at the DealBook conference following a tumultuous few weeks for the world\u2019s richest person, with a net worth of around $226 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this month, Musk agreed with a post that said Jewish people hold a \u201cdialectical hatred\u201d of white people. That message has since drawn criticism from the White House as well as several Tesla investors. Major corporate spenders, including Walt Disney Co. and Apple Inc., distanced themselves from the platform formerly known as Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the DealBook stage, Musk called out to \u201cBob\u201d specifically, referring to Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney. Iger spoke at the event earlier in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the first time since the post spurred a global backlash, Musk apologized for his choice of words. Musk, who flew to Israel to tour areas that were impacted by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the trip was planned before the advertiser backlash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t an \u201capology tour,\u201d he said. Following his visit, he appeared on stage wearing a dog tag, which has become symbolic of a call for the return of hostages captured by Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk urged people to judge him by his actions rather than his words and brought up two companies he runs as justification. Tesla, he said, made more electric cars than competitors. SpaceX, formally named Space Exploration Technologies Corp., sends more satellites into space than any other company or country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHate me, like me or indifferent. Do you want the best car, or do you not want the best car?\u201d he said. He said he\u2019s done \u201cmore for the environment than any human.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Political Clout<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk also addressed the inordinate amount of power that he wields given his market power in key industries such as cars, space, satellites and social media. The billionaire holds the keys to technological tools that provide him with political clout that world leaders have come to rely on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe reason I have these powers isn\u2019t because of anticompetitive actions but because we\u2019ve executed well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk, who had been close to President Barack Obama, has had a contentious relationship with the Biden administration and said on Wednesday that he couldn\u2019t see himself voting for President Joe Biden in the 2024 US presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He cited the president\u2019s snub of Tesla, a reference to a 2021 electric vehicle summit where Biden invited legacy Detroit automakers to the White House lawn but left out Musk and Tesla. The brush off of the Musk-led automaker, which has 140,000 employees globally and is the world\u2019s leading EV manufacturer, has remained a sore point for the billionaire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, Musk has appeared to be leaning closer to the Republican party. In October, he appeared at a fundraiser for Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and in May Musk hosted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on X as he announced his 2024 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk also bristled at the upswell of union activity at carmakers, which inked a record contract with the United Auto Workers union earlier this year after Biden showed up on the picket line to support unionized employees. Now, the UAW is going after Tesla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI disagree with the idea of unions,\u201d Musk said, noting that if the UAW\u2019s unionization drive proves successful it\u2019s because Tesla failed to provide a good enough working environment. If the EV maker\u2019s plants are unionized, it\u2019s because \u201cwe deserve it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The billionaire also addressed the debacle at Open AI, the maker of ChatGPT that Musk cofounded but later stepped down from. \u201cI have mixed feelings about Sam,\u201d Musk said about CEO Sam Altman, who was recently ousted and reinstated. \u201cThe ring of power can corrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said the public should know the reason Altman was fired, in case it has to do with some dangers of AI. \u201cI don\u2019t think it was trivial.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk is building a rival, called xAI, using the data from X, the social network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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