Most would shy away from being associated with a Nazi salute. But not billionaire Elon Musk.
On Monday, Musk made a gesture that many perceived as a Nazi salute at the inauguration.
Musk faced the backlash by posting a series of puns on X Thursday morning.
“Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies,” Musk wrote.
“His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming,” he wrote and added a laughing emoji.
Musk was referring to Hitler’s deputy party leader, Rudolf Hess; Joseph, Nazi propagandist Goebbels; Gestapo head Hermann Gőring; and Heinrich Himmler, who was in charge of exterminating the Jewish race, per The Hill.
Musk clapped back from the criticism and blamed the media. He said the intent of the gesture was to be a symbol of love as an antisemitic salute.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) did not buy that excuse, stating it signaled that President Donald Trump was a part of neo-Nazi movements.
On Wednesday, Murphy said Musk has been “constantly trading in antisemitic conspiracy theories on Twitter.”
“He endorsed the far-right neo-Nazi party in Germany. But you don’t have to believe me,” Murphy said.
“Just look at what happened that night on far-right Telegram channels,” he said. “Neo-Nazi groups and white supremacist groups here in the United States said, ‘That’s our guy. That’s our signal. Donald Trump’s with us. He’s with our white supremacy agenda.’”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) described the gesture as a Nazi salute.
“If you’re cool and want to defend the ‘Sieg Heils’ and the Nazi salutes … whatever you want to do, that’s on you,” she said earlier this week. “I’m on the opposite side of that. I’m not with the Nazis.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, came to Musk’s defense on social media Thursday.
“@elonmusk is being falsely smeared. Elon is a great friend of Israel. He visited Israel after the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists committed the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Netanyahu posted on X.
“He has since repeatedly and forcefully supported Israel’s right to defend itself against genocidal terrorists and regimes who seek to annihilate the one and only Jewish state. I thank him for this,” Netanyahu wrote.
