Elon Musk made one of his most dubious and divisive tweets of all time this week, but he has since deleted it. The billionaire posted a reply to Hillary Clinton’s tweet about the attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi. He promoted an unfounded rumor about Paul which made light of the political motives behind the attack.
Clinton shared a link to an article from The Los Angeles Times about Pelosi’s suspected attacker, 42-year-old David DePape, and his active involvement in political extremism and conspiracy theories. It came with a statement from Clinton saying that Republicans’ patience for these kinds of ideas is directly responsible for this attack on Pelosi. Musk replied with a link to a fringe website with an unverified rumor that this attack was of a personal nature, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
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“There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” Musk wrote. The article he linked to was completely baseless – it suggested that Paul Pelosi had secretly visited a local gay bar and met DePape there. It then inferred that DePape attacked Pelosi as a jilted lover, not a political opponent. Not only is this idea based on zero evidence, but it ignores the extensive evidence collected by reports like the L.A. Times‘ article about DePape’s political motivations.
Musk was condemned widely for sharing this article, even with heavy qualifiers. By showing any sign of belief in this theory, his detractors felt he was guilty of exactly the kind of dangerous rhetoric Clinton was speaking out against. Many shared her belief that Republicans are responsible for legitimizing conspiracy theories and extremist ideology.
Musk deleted the tweet within a few hours, but in some ways, the damage was already done. Many commenters took it as a sign of what is to come now that Musk is technically the owner of Twitter. His acquisition of the company was completed on Thursday, and since then he has already fired several of its top executives. Users worry about the proliferation of conspiracy theories on the platform under Musk’s leadership.
The House Speaker was in Washington D.C. at the time of the attack, but DePape went after her husband with a hammer. He was reportedly shouting: “Where’s Nancy?” as he stormed the house and assaulted Paul. Paul Pelosi was rushed to the hospital and given surgery for a skull fracture, among other injuries. His condition is unclear at the time of this writing.
