Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher swatted down billionaire Elon Musk as highly immature on live TV Thursday.
The tech mogul billionaire and close adviser to President Donald Trump has taken his disruptive business model to the federal government, where he's attempting sweeping cuts to its budget and workforce. Swisher, who has interviewed Musk multiple times and has maintained contact with him for years, told CNN's Dana Bash that his efforts were familiar to longtime observers of Silicon Valley.
"Well, the idea that they know best, it's a, you know, dictator is another word for it," Swisher said. "Essentially, most corporations are run by a compelling CEO and sometimes in the case of tech companies, they have complete control, like at Facebook, for example, or Meta. You cannot fire Mark Zuckerberg, he has total control over the company via the way he organized the stock, and so the idea is that there's a single CEO who decides things. It's also sort of founder mode that they get to make changes, they get to wreck things, and it's for the good of everybody."
"It's very similar to what's happening with the presidency," she added. "There should be a stronger president rather than the other co-equal branches. It shouldn't be quite that equal. In fact, the executives should have more power, and that's something that's been growing in politics for a long time."
ALSO READ: 'Hero': Latest school shooter celebrated as followers float copycat plans
Musk recently changed his X handle to "Harry Bolz," which Bash said sounded like a joke a 7-year-old boy might appreciate.
"I think 7-year-old is charitable," Swisher said. "I mean, one of the things that he has is, he loves dank memes and jokes, and he loves to make jokes himself and then laugh at his own jokes, and then all the people who work for him laugh at him, and therefore he thinks he's funny – and he's not funny. He's sometimes funny, I guess. I never thought so, but he likes to do this. He likes to engage in sort of these juvenile little pranks, and when he's not doing that, he likes to insult people and, all kidding aside, we don't mind being called these names, but it's a 53-year-old man does not do this, I mean, or this one does, and so he just, like, this is what he likes, to slag people."
"I guess it's part of video game culture or something," Swisher added. "But I find it unusual for someone of his age to be such a juvenile."
Watch the video below or at this link.