White House Slams Elon Musk For Repeating ‘Hideous Lie Behind the Most Fatal Act of Antisemitism’ in US History
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In a statement provided to Mediaite, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates condemned Twitter/X owner Elon Musk for his agreeing to a wildly anti-Semitic comment on his platform, calling his statement “abhorrent.”
Bates said:
It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Like President [Joe] Biden said weeks ago memorializing the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the October 7 “devastating atrocity has brought to the surface painful memories left by millennia of Antisemitism;” and under his presidency “we will continue to condemn Antisemitism at every turn.”
We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans. We all have a responsibility to bring people together against hate, and an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities.
The statement was in response to Musk replying, “You have said the actual truth,” to a post that claimed the Jewish community pushed a “dialectical hatred against whites.” It wasn’t just a blatantly anti-Semitic remark — it’s part of the far-right conspiracy theory that inspired the perpetrator of the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The shooter, Robert Bowers, was convicted and sentenced to death after killing eleven people and wounding six.
Musk received massive backlash over his response, with CNN’s Jake Tapper calling the tweet “unvarnished” anti-Semitism amid rising hate speech and violence against Jews following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 and the ongoing Israel-Hamas War.
Journalist Matthew Yglesias tweeted that Musk basically said, “Jews are getting what we deserve for being liberals.” Computer giant IBM also pulled its advertising from Twitter/X citing “zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X” after ads for IBM ran next to neo-Nazi content on the site.
Meanwhile, Twitter/X CEO Linda Yaccarino tried to clean up Musk’s mess without much success, releasing a completely conflicting statement of her own:
X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board — I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform — X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world — it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.
Yaccarino was also widely mocked for her tone-deafness on what was happening on the platform she runs with entertainment reporter Kim Masters telling her, “You will never get your reputation back.”
