The Media Research Center loves to promote Elon Musk as a champion of “free speech” (except when he doesn’t by not using his Twitter/X to sufficiently hate Democats). But it has been silent about the fact that Musk believes some speech should be freer than others.
Musk made his hypocrisy on this all too clear when it was reported that, in a fit of pique over President Biden’s tweets on the Super Bowl getting higher engagement than his, he ordered Twitter/X engineers to artificially boost the visibility of his tweets, making them exempt from Twitter’s usual filters — even firing one engineer who dared to point out that Musk’s tweets weren’t getting visibility because people are tired of reading about him. Twitter/X is also reportedly artificially boosting other select users, including right-wing writer Ben Shapiro and the right-wing account known as Catturd.
This becomes an an issue as Musk has slid further to the right and become a vocal and financial supporter of Donald Trump’s campaign:
- Despite originally claiming he would stay out of the 2024 presidential election, it became clear that he was lying. He soon pledged to give $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC, tough he later denied he was giving that much. In May, it was reported that Musk was in talks with Trump to play a role in his administration if he is re-elected.
- In August, Musk conducted a softball interview with Trump on the X platform that was plagued with technical difficulties, which Musk blamed without evidence on DDoS attack (and Lara Trump laughably blamed on the “deep state”). Rather than admit the technical disaster or concede that Musk exhibited media bias in not offering Kamala Harris a similar interview, the MRC’s Curtis Houck whined that non-right-wing networks refused to buy into Musk’s pro-Trump rah-rah and framed one reporter’s reference to the technical disruptions as “shill[ing] for her friends in the Harris campaign.” MRCTV’s Nick Kangadis uncritically repeated Musk’s DDoS excuse.
- Musk has also been posting all sorts of Trump sycophancy — which, again, is artificially boosted to force as many Twitter users as possible to see — such as gushing that Trump’s criminal mugshot was “next level.” He has also posted numerous examples of lies and misinformation, such as an AI-generated image of Harris wearing a communist uniform and a false claim of a bomb found near the site of a Trump rally.
If any other tech executive was caught doing even half of this, the MRC would be screaming “election interference!” But because it’s Musk, and his election interference benefits its preferred candidate, the MRC has stayed silent.