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CNN reporter Brian Stelter claimed Sunday that the United States could experience “democratic backsliding” if Tesla CEO Elon Musk were to acquire MSNBC after the Tesla CEO and Donald Trump Jr. joked about buying the network.

Musk joked on X Friday about potentially purchasing the site, with the Department of Government Efficiency co-chair asking “How much does it cost?” in response to Trump Jr. posting that he had “the funniest idea ever” referring to reports that Comcast is spinning off MSNBC and other cable channels. Stelter fretted that Musk could shift the left-leaning 24-hour news network to a less-critical tone towards President-elect Donald Trump.

“The incoming President Trump is joined at the hip by the owner of the old platform Twitter, now known as X, and every tweet Musk posts is now scrutinized very carefully for clues about what he might do or not do, you know?” Stelter told “CNN Newsroom” host Kayle Tausche. “So I think this solves — this ends the argument about how important these social media platforms are. Over the weekend, for example, Musk is joking, I think, about maybe trying to buy MSNBC. It seems he’s just trying to troll. Comcast is not making MSNBC up for sale right now. Maybe something will change in a few years. But those tweets, those posts from Musk, those memes that he’s posting, it just speaks to his power and his center of power throughout this incoming administration.”

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Musk completed the purchase of Twitter in October 2022 and reinstated Trump’s account the following month.

“He used some of the same phrasing that he used a few years ago, when he ended up actually buying Twitter, when he said, ‘How much is it?’ just fairly casually,” Tausche responded. “I mean, it would seem that yes, there is a fair amount of trolling going on right now, but at the same time, Comcast is cleaving off a part of the business that could potentially be an affordable acquisition. Do you think that there’s… any possibility that it’s more than a joke?”

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“Well, some inside MSNBC are taking Musk’s comments seriously. Whether he’s trolling or not, there is a serious undercurrent to this, and it is the following: In some countries, where we’ve seen democratic backsliding, where some oppositional media outlets have been captured by the government, a process known as media capture, this is exactly what happens,” Stelter claimed. “An ally of the leader, like Musk, comes in and buys a media outlet that is viewed as oppositional, and then he turns the content and makes it more friendly to the person in power. That has happened before in other countries. That’s part of the concern when — even if Elon Musk is just joking, that’s part of the concern here when it comes to MSNBC.”

MSNBC ratings fell by over fifty percent following former President Donald Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, according to the New York Times. MSNBC hosts and guests routinely hyped the claims that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with the Russian government to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and repeatedly had Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who often made claims about alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, on the air.

“But at the moment, this spin off that Comcast is doing will take at least a year to complete,” Stelter said. “There’s no immediate sale or any of that, I‘m told, that is planned. But the idea that Musk talks about it, he likes to say, ‘The most ironic outcome is the most likely.’ And in this case, it would be pretty ironic if he controlled MSNBC.”

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