On top of being Trump Regime Media, it looks like we can call the Media Research Center Musk Regime Media as well. After Elon Musk performed a salute that was indistinguishable from a Nazi salute, Jorge Bonilla told you not to trust your own eyes in a Jan. 20 post:
After watching CNN anchors Erin Burnett and Kasie Hunt all but call SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk a Nazi, one thing was glaringly evident. CNN has learned absolutely nothing after just losing a major defamation lawsuit.
Watch as Burnett and Hunt get to working on losing CNN their next billion dollars[.] […]
Do take note of the contortions that Burnett and Hunt go through in order to say “Nazi” without actually saying “Nazi.” They point out the following, in order: The “salute” is “odd-looking” and “evocative of things that we have seen throughout history.” What things? It is at this point that Hunt helpfully points out that Musk has stated support for Alternative for Germany (AfD), which she calls “a far-right party.” So, weird “salute” and German far-right, clumsily strung together. Burnett then further expounds on the weirdness of the “salute” before Hunt points out that it is not often seen at American political rallies.
Except that it is not a “salute”, and never was. Elon was exuberantly gesturing affection to those present at the Inaugural Parade. We know this because CNN aired Elon’s speech and gesture in its full context. And it is in that context that we see Elon’s gesture of affection in its entirety, a minute before Buenett and Hunt cut away from the speech in order to levy a Nazi smear bolstered by a video portion clipped out of context.
Of course, those Nazi salutes were pretty darn exuberant in their day (and, yes, indistinguishable from what Musk did):
Bonilla closed by huffing: “In addition to not learning anything and exposing CNN to the next potential billion-dollar punitive damages award, Burnett and Hunt demonstrate the speed with which the media shifted…from Regime to Resistance.” How does that compare with the speed Bonilla and his co-workers shifted from Resistance to Regime? Bonilla didn’t say — he’s still in denial about being the new Regime Media.
Clay Waters similarly played the don’t-believe-your-lying-eyes gambit in a post the next day whining that PBS accurately stated Musk “gave what appeared to be a fascist salute”:
PBS News‘s contempt for space entrepreneur Elon Musk, a relatively new but influential figure in President Donald Trump’s orbit, is resoundingly obvious. But PBS may have gone dangerously overboard in a 3:55 p.m. Inauguration Day post on “X” (which Musk happens to own) with a smear worthy of MSNBC at its worst, claiming “Billionaire Elon Musk gave what appeared to be a fascist salute Monday while making a speech at the post-inauguration celebration for President Donald Trump at the Capital One Arena.”
[…]Included in the 33-second clip (but absent from the text above) is all the explanation any fair-minded journalist would need. After Musk says “…and I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you,” at the :19-second mark puts his right hand to his heart and then snaps his right arm outward, following up by saying “my heart goes out to you.” In other words, he was metaphorically throwing his heart to the crowd.
Needless to say, there aren’t many fair-minded journalists at taxpayer-funded PBS these days.
[…](Bonus: Regular PBS guest, hysteric leftist historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, doubled down on the Nazi smear, forwarding PBS’s X post and adding, pompously: “Historian of fascism here. That was a Nazi salute – and a very belligerent one too.”)
Waters didn’t deny that Musk “gave what appeared to be a fascist salute.”
Comedy cop Alex Christy defended Musk from CBS comedians, upgrading the corporate description from a “smear” to a “hoax,” even though Musk gesture was captured live on video for millions to see:
CBS’s comedic duo of Stephen Colbert and Taylor Tomlinson repeated the dishonest talking point that Elon Musk did a Nazi salute at a Trump inaugural celebration on their respective Tuesday installments of The Late Show and After Midnight.
Colbert went first and acknowledged the booing from the studio audience as he introduced a video clip of Musk, “Before Trump took the stage at Capital One Arena last night, attendees got a speech from Elon Musk, who—I’m guessing you’ve seen this footage. Who finished with a—well, this is what he did.”
In the video, Musk told the crowd, “I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you.”
Musk also tapped his heart and extended his arm as if to say, “My heart goes out to you.”
Plenty of people have been photographed giving speeches to crowds where they acknowledge the crowd with an outstretched arm, but nobody pretended they were giving a Nazi salute because that would be crazy. However, Colbert was less generous:
Wow. That sure looked like what it was. Now, I don’t know if Musk intended to do a Nazi salute—he says he is not a Nazi—but what I do know is: People who aren’t Nazis know how to avoid doing a Nazi salute. Because, and this is very important. This is very important. For the last 80 years of human history, there are only a couple acceptable positions for a fully extended arm. It goes pet the puppy, tousle your nephew’s hair, and hail a cab. Okay? In between nephew down here and hail a cab up here, this is called the danger zone. Everybody knows that who’s not a Nazi.
Christy didn’t dispute the accuracy of Colbert’s statement. He then disapproved of “After Midnight” host Taylor Tomlinson similarly disapproving of Musk’s gesture:
For her part, Tomlinson put up a picture of Musk and recalled, “Here’s something you will recognize from history. Yup, last night, Elon did what appeared to be a Nazi salute, twice. His defenders say he was just doing a Roman salute to which we said ‘is that better?’”
Christy concluded by going into full Musk defense mode: “It is one thing to mock Musk as “weird,” but to claim he is a Nazi is a smear. Nazis don’t tend to honor the victims of the Holocaust or visit Israel shortly after October 7.
Then again, people who claim to honor Holocaust victims or are a fan of Israel don’t do gestures like that.
Bonilla — who tried to insist last year that Trump saying “bloodbath” was a “hoax” even though it too was caught on video — repeated the narrative again in a Jan. 22 post:
No dumb media hoax is complete until MSNBC’s resident bitter race arsonist jumps into the pile-on. Thus, Joy Reid has entered into the debunked and defamatory narrative suggesting that Elon Musk performed a Nazi salute during President Trump’s inaugural festivities.
[…]Reid joins CNN anchors Erin Burnett and Kasie Hunt in trying to get around defamation by only showing half the clip while not directly saying “Nazi.” In the CNN hosts’ case (mostly Hunt) they dance around using the word by making all manner of inferences, historic and otherwise.
[…]Reid avoids all that by throwing to a clip of Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) saying “Nazi”. No subtlety there.
Bonilla didn’t explain why something that looks like a Nazi salute shouldn’t be called that.
Tim Graham embraced the flawed “hoax” narrative in a Jan. 22 post whining that it was pointed out that actual Nazis embraced Musk’s salute:
The Associated Press claims to bring “fact-based, nonpartisan information to the world.” Fact check? Pants On Fire.
On Tuesday, AP political reporter Steve Peoples wrote a piece all about circulating the Democrat talking points, but pitched as a losing-party narrative, Democrats struggling with all of Trump’s opening flurry of executive orders. The headline was “Democrats struggle to pick their message against Trump’s shock-and-awe campaign.” Peoples eagerly circulated the phony argument that Elon Musk gave “multiple Nazi salutes,” even if “hate watchdogs” aren’t really buying it. It’s a hoax.
[…]AP also published an obnoxious story headlined “Musk’s straight-arm gesture embraced by right-wing extremists regardless of what he meant” .
Graham tried to attack the narrative by insisting that all the cited examples came from “Trump-despising cartoonist Clay ‘Claytoonz’ Jones,” then huffed, “No checking your facts?” Graham later unironically asserted that one of the sources cited in the article is “a leftist who ‘studies extremism'” — but offered no proof the person in question is a “left” nor explained why he put “studies leftism” in scare quotes.