![Tesla CEO Elon Musk: I'll say what I want to say, and if we lose money, so be it](https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/107242253-16842779811684277978-29482695866-1080pnbcnews.jpg?v=1684278481&w=750&h=422&vtcrop=y)
Elon Musk told CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday that he doesn’t care if his inflammatory tweets scare advertisers away from Twitter.
“I’ll say what I would like, and if the consequence is losing money, so be it,” said Musk, who owns Twitter.
Musk has been posting controversial articles on Twitter for years, including conspiracy theories and comments that his critics call broadly discriminatory. His defense comes a day after Musk was again criticized for tweet wherein he compared liberal billionaire and Democrat donor George Soros X-Men villain MagnetoJewish survivor of the Holocaust.
“It desires to destroy the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity,” Musk tweeted on Monday.
Musk has previously criticized Soros, whose family office, Soros Fund BoardThese days reduce shares in Tesla. Soros, who can also be Jewish, is a favourite goal of right-wing pundits and politicians and sometimes the goal of anti-Semitic attacks. Soros and his family fled the Nazis during World War II.
Critics said Musk’s tweets about Soros fit right into a broader pattern of attacks on the 92-year-old investor and Democratic donor. “Musk Soros’s comparison to Magneto is just not accidental; is a nod to the harmful anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish global control,” he tweeted Alex Goldenberganalyst on the Network Contagion Research Institute. the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairssimilarly, he said Musk’s tweets had “anti-Semitic undertones.”
Musk on Tuesday denied being an anti-Semite. “I’m pro-Semite, if anything,” he said when Faber asked him in regards to the criticism. Musk has also previously tweeted and deleted memes using Hitler.
On Tuesday, Faber also asked Musk why he tweeted a link to someone who said the mass shooting at a Texas mall earlier this month may very well be part of a “bad psychological operation” or “psychological operation.” Investigators investigated whether the shooter the police killed expressed white supremacist views, since he wore a “RWDS” patch, a reference to the phrase “Right-Wing Death Squad”, utilized by extremists.
“I believed attributing it to white supremacy was bulls…” Musk said, adding that he believed there was no evidence that the shooter was a white supremacist. “We shouldn’t attribute things to white supremacy if they’re … if that is false.”
Since Musk took over Twitter last fall, the social media network has seen a pointy decline in ad revenue as brands and firms assess changes to the platform, with some calling it an open latest owner.
Last week, Musk hired former NBCUniversal promoting head Linda Yaccarino to interchange him as Twitter’s CEO, in a move widely seen as a option to speed up Twitter’s promoting efforts. She began Sunday.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
– Lora Kolodny of CNBC contributed to this report.