It’s been way too long since we checked in on how the Media Research Center is simping for Elon Musk. You’d think gaslighting Americans about Musk’s Nazi salute would be enough for the MRC to stop that sort of thing, but no — it became an even more loyal defender of him as President Trump proclaimed him the head of the Department of Government Efficiency. Tom Olohan slobbered over Musk’s alleged support for “free speech” in a Jan. 10 post:
X owner Elon Musk took a strong stand against censorship during an interview with a German political candidate. Here’s what she told him about the dystopian reality of free speech in the European Union (EU).
Musk interviewed Alice Weidel, candidate for chancellor for the German party Alternative for Germany (AfD), during a Jan. 9 X Space and made the case that “free speech is the bedrock of democracy.” Weidel explained to Musk that the interview was being closely observed by E.U. goons seeking to enforce a draconian censorship law: “Now while we talk, 150 bureaucrats of the European Union are watching us, our conversation, to enforce this ridiculous Digital Services Act (DSA), that is nothing else than a censorship on free speech.”
And Weidel isn’t being paranoid here. Politico reported on Thursday that bureaucrats would be listening in. Politico also discussed their investigative powers and mentioned that the EU is already investigating X for refusing to censor free speech in July 2024.
During his discussion with Weidel, Musk defended free speech, telling Weidel: “Without freedom of speech, people are obviously not able to say what they want to say and then they cannot make an informed vote. So if people are simply fed propaganda and have no access to what’s really going on, then they can’t make an informed vote and you don’t have a real democracy, so that’s why I say free speech is the bedrock of democracy.”
Musk followed with another jab at censorship: “It’s actually quite easy to tell who the bad guys are: It’s like who wants to shut down freedom of speech? They are the bad guys. It’s very clear.”
In recent months, Weidel’s AfD and Musk’s X have both been aggressively targeted by voices in government and media in recent months. German legislators have made efforts to ban the AfD, while voices within Germany and elsewhere in the E.U. have called for Musk to be punished for supporting the political party. On Dec. 22, Musk endorsed AfD in a post on X before writing an op-ed for the German newspaper Die Welt, in which he voiced his support for the party.
Olohan didn’t mention that AfD is a far-right party with Nazi-esque leanings; he also failed to mention that Weidel declared during her discussion with Musk that Adolf Hitler was a “communist, socialist guy” though he sent communists to labor camps and invaded the Soviet Union. Olohan was also silent when Musk declared a couple weeks later that there’s too much “guilt” in Germany over “the sins of their parents or even their parents, their great-grandparents” — which, of course, involves that whole Nazi thing; the chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial called that sentiment dangerous.
Joseph Vazquez whined in a Jan. 29 post that Musk got busted for cheating at video games:
“Grasping at straws” doesn’t even begin to properly define The Washington Post’s latest barking mad line of attack against X owner Elon Musk: Virtue-signaling on his video game ethics.
The seriousness of Post technology reporter Drew Harwell’s insane 1,694-word agitprop against Musk to rile up the gamers across the cyberverse could be summed up by his headline: “Does Elon Musk cheat at video games? An investigation.”
Yes, he actually called this an “investigation.” The piece just went downhill from there: “The world’s richest man has admitted to paying to boost his online warriors into global leaderboards, raising questions about his gaming prowess — and his need for digital praise.” Talk about making a mountain out of a very puny molehill!
Vazquez then insisted Musk’s cheating is cool because a lot of people do it:
Harwell sought to pick apart Musk’s X posts and comments to podcasters Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman flexing his gaming bona fides on noted titles such as “Diablo IV,” “Tier 100 Nightmare,” and “Path of Exile 2.” In the process, Harwell just provided more evidence why The Post is virtually obsessed with Musk: “But after poring over his live-streamed gameplay, online sleuths recently made a shocking accusation: Musk had cheated.”
Wow, what a revelation! Well, not really, considering that about 57 percent of Americans who game “revealed that they have used either single-player or multiplayer cheats while playing a video game,” according to a 2022 study by YouGov and PLITCH. As PLITCH summarized, “Using Cheats is Common.”
But Harwell, acting as gaming community gatekeeper, had the backbone to make his newspaper a laughingstock by suggesting this event somehow undermines Musk’s role as President Donald Trump’s leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE):
Vazquez offered no explanation for why his cheating doesn’t undermine Musk’s running of DOGE. He also didn’t explain why it’s totally OK that cheating is what the cool kids do now, or why Musk shouldn’t have the burden of be a role model by, you know, not cheating.
David Milliken whined in a Feb. 5 post that Musk was being criticized for his DOGE antics:
On Tuesday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, Stephanie Ruhle picked up where she had left off the previous night in vitriolically attacking Elon Musk and his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk was a central feature of a panel discussion she hosted, featuring Bloomberg senior executive editor Tim O’Brien, and Max Chafkin, also of Bloomberg, who is also co-host of a podcast entitled Elon & Co., which, based on the name, is apparently and a little bizarrely devoted solely to the subject of Elon Musk.
Milliken then complained that Musk’s own massive wealth was discussed:
“Let’s talk about USAID for a moment,” said Ruhle, “‘because our friend Peter Baker wrote the following: ‘Today, total USAID annual spending to provide food, medicine, shelter, and other services to impoverished countries around the world: $38 billion. Total increase in Elon Musk’s personal net worth since the November election: $156 billion.’”
In reality, Musk’s own net worth was in no way relevant to the status of foreign aid, but Ruhle launched into a discussion about how Musk promised to contribute $6 billion to end world hunger, to which Chafkin responded, “he’s on to the next thing,” stating that the check “wasn’t cut.”
In fact, this statement was false, Musk had in fact made the $6 billion contribution to his own foundation.
Milliken made no effort to check whether that $6 billion self-dealing actually went toward fighting hunger.
Tim Graham groused in his Feb. 7 podcast that “The national media are now focusing a lot of their negative “news” energy on Elon Musk and his drive for government efficiency,” and that “the legacy networks played up small leftist protests” over cuts to the Agency for International Development “as if they represented public opinion as a whole.” He groused further in a Feb. 10 post that NPR White House reporter Asma Khalid “ppeared on PBS, NPR, and ABC hammering away at Elon Musk as ‘the world’s richest man’ taking a hatchet to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is automatically associated with the poor, so Musk will “increase starvation rates.” He’s a killer.” He then added that “They’re so wedded to this ‘starvation’ point and they don’t seem to care at all that Secretary of State Rubio has resumed the humanitarian aid.” Perhaps Musk shouldn’t have cut off the aid in the first place if it had to get restored, but Graham doesn’t want to talk about that.
Milliken returned for more whining in another Feb. 10 post:
Considering they just spectacularly lost a major defamation suit, CNN has seemed remarkably unconcerned about throwing around wild accusations. On Monday’s episode of Inside Politics With Dana Bash, Bash seemingly suggested that billionaire Elon Musk had made his money through illegal means, though she never provided evidence. She also lashed out at President Trump’s voters, calling them “the problem.”
[…]“Elon Musk,” she continued, “has that same MO, just the rules are there to be broken effectively, and that’s how he became the richest man of the world, when it comes to disrupting. But now he is applying that to the federal government”
In effect, she accused Musk, while offering zero actual evidence, of being a criminal, of becoming the “richest man in the world” through illicit means, and of now bringing his criminality right into the heart of the Capitol itself.
Milliken offered no evidence Musk made all his money above board, and said nothing about the fact that Musk has been credibly accused of violating immigration law by working in the U.S. while under a student visa, which prohibits work (something he denies).
Meanwhile, the MRC stayed silent about Musk’s demonstrating his support for “free speech” is just virtue-signaling by demanding that a reporter be fired for exposing the racist tweets of a DOGE staffer, limited the X account of another journalist and suppressed the article she wrote about him, repeatedly accusing people of crimes for which he offers no evidence, and stripping the monetization privileges of X users who criticize him.