Elon Musk Says Liberal Journos Smearing Matt Taibbi Should Be ‘Looking in the Mirror’ and ‘Accepting Responsibility’
Matt Taibbi
In a lengthy Twitter Spaces call on Saturday, Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk was asked about the backlash against journalist Matt Taibbi for his “Twitter Files” thread, and the tech billionaire said journalists doing so should “look in the mirror” and confront their own deceitfulness.
Many journalists, particularly from MSNBC, joined activist progressives, liberals, and even elected Democrats in trashing Matt Taibbi’s ethics, standards, and worse on Saturday after the big reveal Musk teased for hours relating to the social media censorship of a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden turned out to be a Twitter thread posted by Taibbi.
That backlash included a massive number of tweets that repeated only slight variations on essentially the exact same tweet, which effort likewise and rather embarrassingly featured politicians, activists, and journalists, notably from MSNBC.
In the call on Saturday, Musk said that he gave the documents and information he is collectively referring to as the “Twitter Files” are in the hands of both Taibbi and journalist Bari Weiss, and that he hasn’t read nearly as much of what is in them as they have.
He made the claim several times, indicating he told the two journalists to expose whatever they found that they thought was of public interest, rather than reading through it himself.
Newsmax’s Eric Bolling at one point asked if there was indication in any of the files that there was “collusion” with other social media sites such as Facebook and TikTok.
“I’ve not directly seen that, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but I have not seen it yet,” said Musk. “In fact, in terms of the Twitter files, Matt Taibbi’s read way more than I have. By a ton. Because my priority has been just getting Twitter healthy.”
“I’ve read hardly any of the Twitter files,” he said.
Musk was also asked by podcaster Clayton Morris for his thoughts on the reactions to Taibbi over the release of data from the files.
“Are you surprised at all about the blowback against Matt Taibbi over the past 24 hours? A number of liberal news organizations, a lot of liberal news reporters came out and really slammed Matt Taibbi, which was really shocking,” said Morris. “What was your response to that?”
“Well, I think those people should be looking in the mirror and wondering why they were deceptive. Why did they deceive the American public?” said Musk. “And instead of trying to redirect blame to Matt Taibbi, accepting some responsibility themselves for not being truthful to the American public.”
Listen to the clip above, via Twitter Spaces and Elon Musk.
