What it’s going to do is it’s going to kill the company, and the whole world will know the advertisers killed the company,” Musk said at the New York Times DealBook conference on Wednesday. “Go f—- yourself.”
The post was the “worst and dumbest I’ve ever done,” said Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc.
Still, if advertisers leave the company, its failure will be their fault, not his — saying they were trying to “blackmail me with money,” he said. “I won’t tap dance” to prove trustworthy, he said.
Musk took the stage at the DealBook conference following a tumultuous few weeks for the world’s richest person, with a net worth of around $226 billion.
Earlier this month, Musk agreed with a post that said Jewish people hold a “dialectical hatred” of white people. That message has since drawn criticism from the White House as well as several Tesla investors. Major corporate spenders, including Walt Disney Co. and Apple Inc., distanced themselves from the platform formerly known as Twitter.
From the DealBook stage, Musk called out to “Bob” specifically, referring to Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney. Iger spoke at the event earlier in the day.
For the first time since the post spurred a global backlash, Musk apologized for his choice of words, according to a video posted to the New York Times’ account on X. Musk, who flew to Israel to tour areas that were impacted by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the trip was planned before the advertiser backlash. It wasn’t an “apology tour,” he said. Following his visit, he appeared on stage wearing a dog tag, which has become symbolic of a call for the return of hostages captured by Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and EU.
