‘Do It Right Now on TV!’ Catherine Rampell Dares Scott Jennings To Mimic Musk’s Salute After He Claims It Wasn’t a ‘Sieg Heil’

CNN’s Scott Jennings and Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell brawled on Monday over the salute Elon Musk gave at a rally last week.

The Tesla CEO, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to return President Donald Trump to the White House, spoke at a post-inauguration rally last Monday where he thanked supporters. In doing so, Musk placed his right hand on his chest and thrust it upward in a manner identical to a Nazi salute. Musk and his supporters – including Jennings – have scoffed at the idea Musk intended the gesture as an homage to Nazism. But on Monday’s CNN NewsNight, Rampell dared Jennings to make the same salute on television, which he unsurprisingly declined to do.

Rampell, who during the segment noted she was the only Jew at the table, recounted some of Musk’s questionable remarks about Jewish people.

“I don’t understand why this guy keeps getting the benefit of the doubt, whether or not he believes this stuff, personally,” Rampell said, referring to the people who have defended Musk through his controversies.

“We’ve moved on from Trump derangement syndrome to Elon derangement syndrome,” Jennings replied. “So, he has a long record of supporting the Jewish people, number one. Number two, anybody who is asserting this thing he did on the stage the other day was a Sieg Heil, which I just heard you say, you know, lawyer up maybe because, absolute[ly] ridiculous thing to say.”

“Why don’t you do it on TV right now?” Rampell shot back. “Why don’t you do it on TV right now if you think it’s so, so banal.”

Jennings rejected the challenge, but moments later, Rampell reissued it:

JENNINGS: This salute trutherism is outrageous. This is the most–

RAMPELL: So do it right now on TV.

JENNINGS: This is the biggest conspiracy theory–

RAMPELL: Do it right now on TV. If you think it’s normal, if you think it’s a normal way to greet people, do it right now on TV! Why won’t you?

Musk has endorsed the far-right German political party, Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), whose leading members have made controversial, if not downright fascistic statements over the years while downplaying the Holocaust. Speaking to an AfD gathering via video over the weekend, Musk told party members that in Germany, there is “too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that.” Moreover, in 2023 Musk agreed with a tweet claiming that Jews “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The billionaire replied, “You have said the actual truth” before trying to walk back his reply.

Watch above via CNN.