TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2025
News orgs avert their gaze: Late yesterday afternoon, we linked you to Alex Griffing's report for Mediaite.
It concerned the latest crazy remark. Shortened headline include, the report started as shown:
Musk Says 60 Minutes Staffers ‘Deserve a Long Prison Sentence’
Elon Musk accused the staff of CBS’s 60 Minutes of being the “biggest liars in the world” on Sunday and declared they “deserve a long prison sentence.”
Musk made the chilling post on X in reply to a 60 Minutes tweet promoting its latest episode.
Those are the things Musk said. We'll start with he obvious question:
Are staffers at 60 Minutes "the biggest liars in the world?" Especially under the circumstances, we're going to guess that they aren't.
Quickly, it gets worse. Under the circumstances, Musk's second assertion—his statement that the staffers “deserve a long prison sentence”—is essentially insane.
These are overtly crazy remarks, made by an extremely powerful person. Within the context of western world reckoning, he seems to be out of his mind.
That said, we can all be glad that Griffing reported these latest bizarre remarks. Elsewhere, news orgs have largely agreed to act like they never were made.
How crazy was this post by Musk, who may need a lot of help? You have to consider the circumstances which led him to fashion his post.
As he directly continued his report, Griffing described those circumstances. This is truly remarkable stuff:
“President Trump says USAID is rife with fraud. But Andrew Natsios, a Republican former administrator of USAID, calls that ‘utter nonsense.’ Natsios says USAID is ‘the most accountable aid agency in the world,’” read the 60 Minutes post, which linked to a clip from the show’s interview with Natsios. Natsios has been a prominent defender of USAID as a key national security tool around the world and has publicly refuted Musk’s claim that DOGE needed to shutter the agency to stop widespread fraud and wasteful spending.
Musk replied and wrote, “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election. They deserve a long prison sentence.”
According to Musk, why do staff members at 60 Minutes "deserve a long prison sentence?” The gentleman cited two reasons:
First, the program allowed Natsios, a deeply experienced (Republican) former director of USAID, to contradict one of the infallible statements made by Pope Donald J. Trump.
Also, 60 Minutes had allegedly "engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election." This was a reference to the way the program had edited one small part of its interview with Candidate Harris—an absurd complaint the Wall Street Journal has dismissed as inconsequential.
There was nothing wrong with the edit in question—but according to Musk, staffers at 60 Minutes should be frog-marched off to prison because of what they did. Even more crazily, Trump has described the utterly pointless edit as “quite simply, Election Fraud" and “the biggest Broadcasting SCANDAL in History!!!”
No, we aren't making that up. To peruse the Journal's dismissal of this apparent insanity, you can just click here.
Transparently, Elon Musk seems to be out of his mind. Once again, we cite last year's lengthy report in that same Wall Street Journal about the concerns expressed by Musk's business partners with respect to his alleged drug use. (For last Wednesday's report on that matter, click here.)
For ourselves, we don't have the slightest idea why Musk says the things he does. But by any normal manner of reckoning, this latest statement would seem to qualify as the work of a transparent nut.
Is something wrong with this powerful person? Also, is something wrong with the high-end reporters and editors who refuse to discuss the apparent madness involved in the things he says?
It's time to lock the staffers up! They let an extremely well-informed man contradict Donald J. Trump!
Musk's second complaint was even dumber. This is the divorce from reality into which we've all been thrown.
In our view, attention must be paid to this free-range meltdown. Luckily, Griffing did. Most others keep looking away—keep refusing to wonder or ask about this modern Samson.
It took Elon Musk three weeks to respond to DeepSeek with a superior product. He is the greatest pioneering figure of our time. How lucky that he is an American.
ReplyDeleteOther industry giants are overwhelmingly impressed and Elon's status as the first trillionaire in history is coming soon and entirely deserved.
Perplexity AI CEO
Congratulations to XAI for building world-class reasoning models in such a short period. This is a super strong response from America to DeepSeek. America builds fast, and xAI team and Elon are setting the bar for it! When the API becomes available, we'll integrate!
How good is Grok3 compared to DeepSeek? We have no idea. All we know is that Musk released a product. Musk, of course, did none of the work himself. He has been too busy smashing up our government. The Grok product has been in development for a while. Slapping a number on it and representing it as a new release is a marketing ploy. For all we know it is no different than it was.
DeleteBut look at the hype @2:18 is dishing out! That's the scary part.
The term 'fanboy' is wildly overused at this site, but it does seem apt when applied to those who admire Musk.
DeleteDOGE has saved taxpayers $110 Billion so far.
ReplyDeleteLET’S GOOOOO
They have. And the tooth fairy will leave it all under your pillow tonight.
DeleteKeep dreaming.
When someone targets political opposition and threatens to throw them in jail, they are not crazy. They are behaving like tyrants, dictators everywhere have done throughout past regimes. Musk and Trump are colluding to take power and destroy our government. They are attempting to govern by fear and threat and that works primarily by targeting people and hurting them, so that onlookers will be reluctant to step up and oppose them. CBS is the target in order to make other media fall in line.
ReplyDeleteDoes it matter whether Musk wants CBS to toe his party line or just agree that 2+2=5? No. Exercising power is the point. Dictators and authoritarian rules are not crazy. They are power seeking individuals with no ethical constraints, but they behave in logical ways once you understand their motives. They are not insane or crazy in that their behavior is predictable and makes sense in the context of their goals.
Somerby needs to wise up. Mislabeling Trump and Musk can be very dangerous if we fail to do what we can now to limit their takeover of our government. Destroying the independence of the media is a step in that direction.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Bob. It wasn't a non-name website. It was the fucking CBS.
How is it not election fraud, to broadcast fake interview of a major presidential candidate over the public airwaves.
Where's the Federal Communications Commission when you need it? Ah, yes, it's owned by the Democrats, most likely. Hopefully, not for long.
They do deserve to be in prison for abusing the public trust. That said, "deserves to be in prison" is common hyperbole.
ReplyDelete