Musk Tells a ‘Joke’
Whatever one makes of his salute, the subsequent attempt at humor cheapened the Holocaust.
The board and shareholders of Costco overwhelmingly rejected a proposal for the big-box giant to revise its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. You might call it the first act of wholesale resistance.
Happy Friday.
Stick to Rockets
by William Kristol
On Monday, January 20, preceding the newly-inaugurated Donald Trump on stage at the Capital One Arena, Elon Musk gave what looked like a Nazi salute. Twice.
Controversy ensued. The suggestion that Musk knew what he was doing was made more plausible because Musk had recently stepped forward as perhaps the leading U.S. defender of the extremist German party—considered by many to be neo-Nazi but, at the very least, anti-anti-Nazi—the Alternative für Deutschland.
What did Musk intend with his salute? He could, over the subsequent hours, have explained what he thought he was doing. He could have made it unambiguously clear that the salute was not what it looked like. He could have apologized to those who were appalled by what they believed they saw.
But instead Musk enjoyed the notoriety and milked the controversy. He criticized his critics. He was titillated by the outrage of the anti-Nazis. He enjoyed the frisson of people saying he inhabited what I’d call Nazi-adjacent space.
Musk’s enjoyment culminated in his post Thursday morning:
Does any decent person find this “joke” funny?
I won’t dilate on Musk’s “joke.” Indeed I feel I should apologize for inflicting it on you.
But I think it’s noteworthy. Musk is a very wealthy and powerful man. He has an office in the West Wing of the White House. He controls, and aggressively uses for his own purposes, a major media platform. He has used that platform, that perch, that proximity to power, to trivialize the Holocaust with a supposed attempt at humor. His reluctance to quickly clarify what he meant with his salute has had the effect of further callousing us to such displays in the future.
And his power is such that people who should be sounding alarms and issuing condemnations are choosing flattery instead.
On Wednesday, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, the very epitome of a respectable corporate leader, a pillar of what passes for the American establishment, praised Musk effusively: “The guy is our Einstein,” Dimon told CNBC.
Einstein, we should note, was firmly anti-Nazi.
To add obsequiousness to effusiveness, Dimon also said of Musk: “I’d like to be helpful to him and his companies as much as we can.”
Not everyone has been willing to ignore Musk’s “joke.” And by this morning, Musk felt compelled to post a response:
“It was astonishing how insanely hard legacy media tried to cancel me for saying ‘my heart goes out to you’ and moving my hand from my heart to the audience.”
Poor Elon Musk. The woke mind-virus is out of control! Some people are so censorious about joking about the Nazis! They raise questions and even objections when you make those kind-of-affectionate jokes about Goebbels and Göring and Himmler!
I don’t want to end this week in the sewer with Elon Musk. So I’ll point out that today is the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill.
Here’s Churchill on the topic of the Nazis, in his radio broadcast after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union:
Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. . . . The Nazi regime is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels in all forms of human wickedness, in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression.
That is how one should speak about Nazis.
Quick Hits
SAVE OUR AFGHAN ALLIES: Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin reported yesterday on a letter she’d obtained from veterans groups to President Trump seeking travel waivers “for Afghans who helped the U.S. military and their families who had been given temporary refuge and those who had waited years to come to the U.S. fearing the Taliban, many of whom were en route to the U.S. when the President’s immigration executive order was signed.” The letter was signed by leaders of the organizations Save Our Allies, Sheepdog Response, the Special Operations Association of America, the Mighty Oaks Foundation, and the Independence Fund. It reads:
Dear President Donald J. Trump,
As an organization with strong ties to the veteran community, we wish to highlight an important unintended consequence as a result of your recent executive order regarding immigration and refugee programs. This EO may adversely affect the mental health of countless veterans who sacrificed and forged relationships with their Afghan interpreters, colleagues, and their families who are now being harmed by the sweeping executive order.
Many servicemembers and veterans have formed lasting bonds with our Afghan partners who supported the global war on terror, often at great personal risk to themselves and their families. The current suspension of certain pathways for these allies may unintentionally penalize individuals who could be eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) but do not currently hold them—not because they do not meet the qualifications, but because of the chaotic and disorganized nature of the withdrawal from Afghanistan under the previous administration.
We fully support your goal of prioritizing American security and believe there is a clear opportunity to address this issue without compromising that objective. Our concern is that, if left unaddressed, some of these Afghan partners may be deported erroneously, and their immediate family members—who face serious threats from the Taliban—may lose their hopes of safe passage.
We applaud your willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Servicemembers and Veterans, along with our allies who served with them in combat. To better meet your intent, we respectfully request that you consider SIV-eligible allies and their families, to prevent them from being inadvertently cast aside due to lapses that occurred under the botched withdrawal. This approach would protect those who have risked their lives for our country while reinforcing your administration’s clear commitment to national security.
It’s a noble effort. Best of luck to them. But appealing to Trump to honor alliances, to admit more Muslim immigrants, to recognize that he made a mistake, to show compassion—yeah, good luck.
STAND BACK AND STAND BY: The Biden administration made a concerted effort upon taking office to crack down on domestic extremist groups. Most notably, they secured the convictions of leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers on charges of seditious conspiracy, resulting in long prison sentences. Then Trump pardoned them all. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The crackdown seemed to spell the end of many of the groups involved, including the Proud Boys and self-styled militias such as the Oath Keepers. As their leaders faced prison, the organizations were torn apart by infighting, members went underground, and many local chapters spun off or went silent.
Four years later, they are jubilant—and feeling vindicated. This week, dozens of Proud Boys once again marched through the streets of Washington. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes visited congressional offices on Capitol Hill, and waves of pardoned inmates were released from jail to cheers of “We are back!”
“Spirits are high within the fraternity right now as some of us return home from the inauguration and are reuniting with our brothers who have been locked away under harsh conditions for the past four years,” the Proud Boys of Kentucky said in an email. “We are forever grateful to President Trump for keeping his promises.”
If I were, say, a state or local law enforcement official, I would keep an eye on these guys.
PENNIES ARE NICKEL-AND-DIMING US: You know that evergreen meme, The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point? Well:
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has a new target to cut down costs: the US penny.
DOGE said on X that the penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in the 2023 fiscal year.“The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced,” the post read in part.
CNN has the full story, including how long the idea of eliminating pennies has been around. Canada did it more than a decade ago.
We can only hope this is the kind of thing Musk will spend his time on.
FAILING THE AP TEST: The Associated Press, responding to Trump’s executive orders to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Mt. Denali, has updated its style guide—the most commonly followed set of rules in journalism. It won’t budge on the former, but will on the latter.
The newswire explained: “The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. . . . AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”
So far so good. But: “The Associated Press will use the name Mount McKinley instead of Denali. The area lies solely in the United States and as president, Trump has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country.”
This raises some obvious questions. If Trump signed an order changing the name of Mt. Rushmore to Mt. Trump, would the AP follow along? It’s important in the Gulf of Mexico example that “all audiences” be able to identify places with their names, but that doesn’t count if the places are “within the country”?
When Trump makes stupid, capricious, or arbitrary decisions, let Nancy Reagan be our guide: “Just say, ‘No.’”
Cheap Shots
I drove home late one night and saw 20-odd bright wooden crosses on my front lawn, “burning” with fluorescent paint. I’d been to the climate march in New York and was feeling exhilarated, until I saw them. I parked, stared, pondered, took photos. I texted my son in Beijing because he would be awake, asking if I should call the police. “Mom,” he said, “there are burning crosses in front of your house. Yes, call the police!”
We never found out who put them there, or why. After much prodding, the police did trace the wooden posts, bought in a nearby town and assembled and painted. Some neighbors tried to make out that it had “just been kids” or “something to do with the climate march in town.” But burning crosses mean something, and maybe some day I’ll find out why they were placed on my lawn.
It was pointed out that the corner they were on has a neighborhood bulletin board so maybe the message was intended for all of us. But most people refused to believe that it was anything but high spirits.
Occam’s razor is a saying that means the obvious answer is almost always the correct answer. And a Nazi salute is a Nazi salute.
I also wonder why so much attention is paid to Musk’s scientific “genius”; he is a venture capitalist who happens to be in tech and bet big at the right time. He was lucky. He could equally be in the poor house with so many other smart people whose gambles did not pay off. Why do we call these billionaires tech bros when, in fact, they're just high stakes gamblers who have lucked into finding great managers of their companies?