Elon Musk, who called himself a "free speech warrior" when he first bought Twitter and renamed it X, is getting blowback from his own fans after calling 60 Minutes journalists "the biggest liars in the world" who "deserve a long prison sentence."
Musk was upset with a piece the news program produced about USAID, one of the agencies slashed by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
CNN's John Berman introduced chief media analyst Brian Stelter Tuesday, saying, "It's interesting because he's saying this at the same time that Vice President [J.D.] Vance is giving speeches overseas about free speech."
"That's exactly right, and I just couldn't help but try to point out the hypocrisy involved in this, John, and it's not just 'yours truly' pointing it out," Stelter said.
He continued, "If you go and look at Elon Musk's Twitter feed, many of his fans are piling on him saying, 'Dude, you said you were a free speech absolutist. You have decried free speech restrictions in other countries. So, what are you doing talking about, prison time for journalists?'"
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"This started on Sunday night when 60 minutes aired a really interesting segment about the cuts to USAID, that agency that was dismantled by Musk and DOGE and the Trump Administration," Stelter said. "Musk responded, calling 60 Minutes 'a bunch of liars' and calling for 'long prison sentences.' That's the kind of really unhinged comment we've heard from Musk time and time again, as he's become the leading, most vicious media basher in the entire Trump administration. "
Stelter then distinguished between "free speech" and "favored speech."
"I don't think we're really oftentimes having arguments over free speech. what we're having are arguments over favored speech versus disfavored speech," Stelter said. "And right now, the Trump administration clearly favors certain kinds of speech. Trump signed an executive order saying he was reversing censorship at the same time that he signed other executive orders policing word choice, policing certain word use...whatever the administration is approving of at that current time versus disfavored speech."
Stelter said that currently, the Associated Press is "disfavored" for refusing to call The Gulf of Mexico, the "Gulf of America."
"The AP has been banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One," Stelter said. "The AP is contemplating legal action to try to reverse that. That's an example of not free speech, but disfavored speech right now. Watch the clip below via CNN.
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