Elon Musk

Musk’s shock praise after presidential debate

Author: Editors Desk, Sarah Keoghan Source: News Corp Australia Network:

June 29, 2024 at 06:43

The Tesla boss was all praise after the US presidential debate – but who he was lauding came as a surprise.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has shocked his followers by praising CNN for doing a “good job” of managing the presidential debate, in rare praise from the billionaire for traditional media.

Musk took to his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to share his thoughts on the first debate between President Joe Biden and Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying it was a win for “clear victory for memes”.

According to a CNN flash poll, taken straight after the debate, 67 per cent of registered voters said Mr Trump had won the debate.

Prior to the debate, 55 per cent of the voters expected Mr Trump to prevail.“Have to say that @CNN did a good job managing the debate,” he wrote.

“Questions were reasonable and nonpartisan. No favouritism was shown to either candidate. This is what the public wants from the media.”

The tweet has already emassed more than 250,000 likes. Picture: X

Musk also shared how there was “record usage” of X during the debate.

“The scale of the global conversation on X was staggering: we’ve tracked over 2B impressions with over 242M video views and 2M posts,” the post said.

His tweet was met with surprise from fans, who are used to a more sour take from Musk when it comes to mainstream media outlets.In September, Musk declared to his followers he believed “legacy” media was “propaganda” and a “waste of time”.

“Just get my news from X. Much more immediate, has actual world-class subject matter experts and tons of humour,” he wrote in a post to X.

“Sooo much better!”

Last year, Musk labelled mainstream media outlets as “propoganda”. Picture: Reuters

The praise of CNN was also surprising given Musk’s recent affinity with Mr Trump.

Last month the Wall Street Journal reported the pair have discussed a possible advisory role for the Tesla leader should the presumptive Republican nominee reclaim the White House.

However, Musk has since denied the claims.

Earlier this year, Musk defended Mr Trump by criticising an NBC News headline, calling it “deceptive.” The headline featured Mr Trump’s quote that there would be a “bloodbath” if he were to lose the upcoming election.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been staunchly defensive of Mr Trump in recent weeks. Picture: AFP

He posted, “This headline is deceptive, as he was referring to the auto industry. Shame on NBC.”

Popular anti-leftist account “End Wokeness” shared a screenshot of several of the headlines together, and wrote, “We are witnessing the invention of the ‘bloodbath’ hoax in real-time. Unfortunately for them, we have X.”

Elon Musk responded to the post, writing: “Yup, hoax-making in process. And it is surprisingly effective.”