President Biden’s accusation that Elon Musk’s X is diminishing people’s trust drew the tech billionaire’s fury and escalated the war of words between the two men.
Mr. Biden reprimanded X and the internet in a broad complaint about the state of the media in an interview with ProPublica. Mr. Musk responded by mocking the president.
“The corpse in ’Weekend at Bernie’s’ literally looks more alive than Biden,” Mr. Musk wrote on X.
The 1989 comedy “Weekend at Bernie’s” features people pretending a dead man is still alive to avoid ruining their plans.
Mr. Musk’s invective was provoked by a clip of Mr. Biden lamenting the consequences of Twitter’s transformation into X in response to a question from ProPublica’s John Harwood about threats facing America.
“What about what Elon Musk has done to Twitter, lowering guardrails against misinformation, does that contribute to it?” Mr. Harwood said.
“Yeah it does,” Mr. Biden said.
The president ripped changes he observed in the news media in the interview published Sunday. He bemoaned what he said was the nonexistence of editors.
“Where do people get their news? They go on the internet, they go online, and you have no notion whether it’s true or not,” Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Biden’s public criticism of Mr. Musk comes soon after the tech titan visited America’s southern border last week and used his social media platform to air complaints about America’s immigration system.
Mr. Musk said Saturday that the U.S. needs a simplified immigration process where some evidence is required to gain asylum and said border officials told him that America’s border swung open two years ago.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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