Elon Musk Tags ‘Retard Finder’ Account in Response to Critic Claiming He’s Suffering From ‘Cognitive Decline’
Brandon Bell/Pool via AP
Elon Musk continues to reclaim the controversial term “retard” as an acceptable insult.
In a post on X — the social media platform he purchased for over $44 billion — Musk tagged an account called “Retard Finder” after a writer suggested he’s suffering from “cognitive decline.”
Musk is of course the world’s wealthiest man who donated roughly $300 million to the campaign to elect President Donald Trump, and has since been given unfettered access to government computer systems and, apparently, an executive agency as he tries to make massive cuts to the federal budget.
Late Sunday evening, Musk replied to a critic on X who lamented Musk’s “tragic cognitive decline” by tagging the right-wing troll account “Retard Finder.”
Claire Lehmann, founder of Quillette, wrote, “Elon Musk’s tragic cognitive decline is a lesson for all high performing people: drugs are no substitute for exercise when keeping your mind & brain healthy in your 40s, 50s & beyond.”
Musk replied by tagging “@IFindRetards,” the handle of the aforementioned account.
Are you unfamiliar with this particular troll account? It is not dissimilar to “LibsofTikTok,” and has become popular among the now wildly influential set of extremely online Trump supporters who tend to tag the account to alert the owner of posts and comments they find stupid. Among others, the account has claimed to have accomplished its stated mission by posting images of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Anderson Cooper alongside captions like “Found one.”
Musk tagging this account is at once both predictable and shocking. That someone of such power and influence would casually use a word that, over the past few decades or so, has gone from an acceptable description of someone with developmental challenges to a profoundly offensive term is rather strange.
This is the second time Musk has used the term in just over a week. Eleven days ago he called an astronaut “fully retarded” during a Thursday social media argument about two people he claimed had been abandoned in space by the Biden administration.
