The Media Research Center clung to the dishonest narrative that Elon Musk’s Nazi-esque salute wasn’t that at all, despite the fact that everyone saw him do it. Jorge Bonilla further pushed the “Salute Hoax” narrative in a Jan. 23 post:
The Elon Musk Salute Hoax marches on, with all manner of Resistance Media types falling over themselves to be seen as being on “the right side” of the Nazi salute that wasn’t. In the most recent instance, New York Times reporter Lulú García-Navarro hilariously gets called a “Salute Truther” by CNN commentator Scott Jennings.
Again, we all saw the salute. García-Navarro is not a “truther” for accurately describing what Musk did. Neither Bonilla nor Jennings offered any explanation for what the salute supposedly really is.
Tim Graham spent a Jan. 26 post cheering that a local weathercaster was fired for accurately describing what Musk did:
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported a young female weather forecaster at the local CBS affiliate was fired by her station one day after “she criticized Elon Musk on social media for his straight-arm gesture that many have likened to a Nazi salute.”
Staffers at WDJT-TV (Channel 58) were alerted by email on Wednesday that meteorologist Sam Kuffel, 31, was out. Her biography and picture had been removed from the Channel 58 website by Wednesday afternoon.
“Meteorologist Sam Kuffel is no longer employed at CBS58,” said the staff memo from news director Jessie Garcia. “A search for a replacement is underway.”
In one post on her personal Instagram account, Kuffel posted a picture of Musk at the podium, saying, “Dude Nazi saluted twice. TWICE. During the inauguration.”
She added, “You (expletive) with this and this man, I don’t (expletive) with you. Full stop.”
Kuffel then posted a GIF from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on Instagram along with the saying, “Screw that old (expletive). He’s a Nazi.”
Local conservative radio host Dan O’Donnell sharply criticized Kuffel for her two “vulgar” Instagram posts, accusing her of “spreading the lie that Elon Musk was giving a Nazi salute” during the presidential inauguration.
But that gesture is universally recognized as a Nazi salute, and Graham didn’t explain what has changed. Bonilla returned for more attempted whitewashing in a Jan. 26 post:
Despite having to pay out the nose due to losing a defamation lawsuit yet again, CNN insists on continuing to disseminate the stupid “Salute Hoax”. The latest instance came via the most recent episode of CNN State of the Union.
[…]Bash quickly called Elon Musk’s innocuous gesture a “Nazi Salute”, unlike her CNN colleagues Erin Burnett and Kasie Hunt, whose nervous demurral when it came time to say “Nazi” led to hilarious verbal roundabouts. If Burnett and Hunt got nervous anti-defamation guidance, Bash seems to have ignored it.
A Nazi salute is an “innocuous gesture”? Bonilla is demanding that we don’t believe our own eyes. He then whined: “The accusation is baseless and was quickly debunked, yet CNN is trying their hardest to make it stick.” Bonilla offered no evidence of it being “quickly debunked.”
Nevertheless, Bonilla persisted in a Jan. 28 post:
A wild segment on CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip, AKA “The Thunderdome”, left bare for all to see that the network is now tripling down on dangerous disinformation. Despite being recently found liable and punished for defamation, the once and former World Leader in News persists on smearing Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk by flogging the dead-and-debunked Salute Hoax.
The segment sought to cobble several events together in hopes of bolstering a narrative of Musk as Nazi sympathizer. There is Musk’s speech at the Trump inaugural parade, his use of Nazi names in puns mocking the Salute Hoax, and his subsequent speech to populist-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the face of many mischaracterizations and misrepresentations, “Lonely Scott” Jennings lived up to his nickname and prevailed as the voice of reason.
Bonilla then tried to defend Musk’s cheerleading for the far-right AfD:
A 10-second Google search yields that it’s not “some of their leaders” that were twice fined by a German court. It was one guy, a state-level leader who is also the same person described by a judge as “fascist”. Phillip takes this one set of facts and chops it up in order to create the illusion of the AfD as unanimously Nazi. This is not unlike someone inferring that the whole of the Democratic Party is anti-Semitic based on U.S. Rep. Rachida Tlaib (D-IL) wearing a t-shirt that erased Israel. But the media would howl bloody murder if such an inference were made.
Musk is accused of calling upon Germans to forget the horrors of Nazism, but no such call is found within his remarks to the AfD (as transcribed on X by @ElonClips). Rather, his statement was in line with the AfD’s stated call to attention to the whole of German history, as opposed to a narrow focus on Nazism.
Given that Nazism was one of the greatest atrocities in human history, there’s no reason not to focus on it, and Musk demand that everyone should move beyond “past guilt” isn’t helpful. Also, Tlaib — who doesn’t have billions of dollars to throw around and didn’t buy his way into the White House as Trump’s toady — is hardly the left-wing equivalent of Musk.
When Philip took a warranted shot at Jennings by noting out that “not everything needs to be defended, even if you think he’s a genius,” Bonilla huffed: “While “not everything needs to be defended”, the truth must ALWAYS be defended. Even against Regime Media demagogues gleefully crossing the line into defamation.” Bonilla didn’t explain how, exactly, it’s “defamation” to accurately describe what Musk’s salute looked like. And despite declaring that “the truth must ALWAYS be defended,” he’s afraid to admit the indisputable truth that Musk did what everyone recognizes as a Nazi salute, whether or not he meant to do so.