occupymusk.mp4 - Full Transcript * * * This is the story of how the world's richest person, the owner of Tesla and X, bought the global town square and then corrupted it, using his own immense wealth to help elect a convicted felon. April 14, 2022. Elon Musk makes an unsolicited offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion. He claims the site has become politically skewed and says, "for Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral." October 27th, the deal goes through. The next evening, a far- right conspiracy theorist breaks into the San Francisco home of democrat, Nancy Pelosi, intending to kidnap her. Pelosi is away, but the man attacks her husband, Paul, hitting him repeatedly on the head with a hammer. Paul Pelosi escapes with his life, but requires surgery for a fractured skull. While most people take the chance to decry political violence, the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, posts a tweet sharing an entirely false claim that Paul Pelosi was, in fact, injured in a drunken fight with a male prostitute with whom he was involved. Musk includes a link to a false claim on a website that has a history of publishing conspiracy theory, including a story asserting that Hillary Clinton is dead and has been replaced by a body double. Musk's post is retweeted 24,000 times before he deletes it. November 18th. Musk's Twitter starts to unlock previously banned accounts. Misogynist and far-right influencer, Andrew Tate, was permanently banned from Twitter in 2017 after urging women to "bear some responsibility for rape." Now, he's back. Tate posts, "I've decided to fly to the failed state of California, walk into Twitter HQ, and tell @elonmusk he's a legend. On my way." 2 months later, Tate will be arrested in Romania on suspicion of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organised crime group. December 8th. Three members of Twitter's trust and safety council resign. In their resignation letter, they cite research that found slurs against African Americans and gay men jumped 195 percent and 58 percent respectively since Musk's takeover. Three days later, the remaining members of Twitter's trust and safety council are dismissed. Musk then tweets that "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci", a reference to a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was exacerbated by America's top infectious-disease doctor. December 16th. Having claimed he is a "free speech absolutist", Musk bans @elonjet, a Twitter account that tracks the movements of his private jet using publicly available data. Musk also bans the accounts of a number of journalists who have written about @elonjet. February 12, 2023. Ahead of the Super Bowl, both Musk and President Joe Biden tweet their support for the Philadelphia Eagles. Biden's tweet is seen 29 million times, Musk's just 9 million times. Incensed, Musk leaves the game early and calls an impromptu meeting of Twitter engineers at 02:36 AM. Their job? To change the Twitter algorithm to artificially inflate the reach of Musk's tweets by a factor of 1000, making him the pre- eminent presence on the site. July 23rd, Musk announces Twitter is now called X. August 25th, Donald Trump, once banned, returns to the platform by posting a picture of his mugshot from Fulton County Jail with the words "Election Interference, Never Surrender". Musk repost the shot. Four days later, X reverses Twitter's longstanding ban on paid political advertising. November 15th. In a post promoting the racist conspiracy theory that Jewish people are importing immigrants to America to fix elections for democrats, one X user writes, "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them." Musk replies, saying, "You have said the actual truth." In response, several advertisers, including Disney, Warner Bros., and Comcast pause their advertising on X. Musk then tells advertisers concerned by hate-speech on the platform-- [Elon Musk] Fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? [announcer] Over subsequent months, Musk will become obsessed with the false claim that democrats are allowing immigrants into America to create more democratic voters, in effect, stealing the upcoming election, sharing the claim numerous times with his followers and pushing it to tens of millions more who choose not to follow him. A year later, it will be revealed that Musk, a South African immigrant, worked illegally in the US in the 1990s. November 25th. On X, Musk boosts the Pizzagate conspiracy theory; a long-debunked claim alleging high-profile democrats ran a paedophile abuse ring from a Washington pizza restaurant. March 25th, 2024. Musk loses a lawsuit against the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. He'd sued them after they flagged a rise in hate-speech after Musk bought Twitter. In his ruling, a US district judge calls Musk's case "vapid" and that "this case is about punishing the defendants for their speech." May 2024. Musk creates a political action committee which he calls America PAC. Its objective is to mobilise 1 million republican voters in swing states in an effort to hand the election to Trump. Musk commits to putting tens of millions of dollars of his own money into the Get Out the Vote push and clears his calendar every Friday morning for 30-60 minutes to meet with the team he's assembled to run the effort. July 14th. Musk calls Trump on behalf of JD Vance, urging Trump to select Vance as his running-mate. Vance says abortion is murder and scolds women who haven't become mothers. [JD Vance] --A bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. [announcer] Musk's phonecall is part of a broad effort by Silicon Valley billionaires to ensure Vance is selected. The next day, Vance is unveilled as Trump's vice presidential candidate. September 6. Trump says that, if he wins, he will appoint Musk to head up a government efficiency commission. [Donald Trump] --And Elon, because he's not very busy, has agreed to head that task force. [announcer] The idea came from Musk, whose companies are currently facing at least 20 federal investigations. If he gets the role, it would give the world's richest man the power to regulate the regulators who won't sway over his companies. Last year alone, his companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 federal agencies. September 9th. Musk spreads a conspiracy theory that immigrants in Ohio are eating people's pets. The following day, Trump repeats the slur during the presidential debate with Kamala Harris. [Donald Trump] In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. [announcer] The false claim leads to multiple bomb threats against the Springfield immigrant community. September 15th and 16th. Over a single weekend, Musk amplifies a conspiracy theory that ABC leaked debate questions to the Harris campaign, falsely claims that "the dems want to take your kids", further fuels racist lies about immigrants eating pets, shares with his nearly 200 million followers on X that "Trump must win...to preserve freedom and meritocracy in America" and insinuates that "it is suspicious that no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala", adding a Thinking Face emoji. The US Secret Service confirms that it is aware of the post. The White House issues a statement saying "Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible." October 4th. Musk posts, "Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations, that have nothing to do with safety, humanity will never reach Mars. This is existential." Musk is the owner of SpaceX, and stands to make billions from US government space contracts. October 5th. The X handle @america is taken from an X user and given by Musk to his America PAC. That evening, he joined the former president onstage in Pennsylvania, jumping about wildly. [Elon Musk] Fight, fight, fight, vote, vote, vote. [announcer] By now, he's moved with his senior team to a war room in a hotel in Pennsylvania to focus full-time on the Trump campaign. He speaks to Trump multiple times a week, is doing a series of pro-Trump townhalls across the state, and has recruited lieutenants from his companies to join. October 15th. Legal filings for Musk's political action committee show that he has personally donated at least $75 million to the effort to re-elect Trump. October 18th. It's revealed that another Musk-funded group called Future Coalition PAC is targeting Muslim voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with diametrically- opposed political advertisements about Kamala Harris. In areas with large Muslim populations, the group is painting Harris as a close friend of Israel and is suggesting that she is beholden to the beliefs of her Jewish husband. But in areas with large Jewish populations, the ads say Harris panders to Palestine. Simultaneously, Musk is offering $100 to any Pennsylvania voter who signs his online petition in an effort to build the list of likely Trump voters. He also starts giving away $1 million a day to a randomly-chosen voter who signed the petition. October 19th. It's revealed that the Building America's Future PAC, another Musk-funded campaign group, is impersonating the Harris campaign by setting up a fake website containing fake policy positions, then sending out text messages driving voters to the fake site. October 24th. It's revealed that Musk gave his America PAC another $44 million in the first 16 days of October. October 25th. The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk has been in regular contact with Russian president, Vladimir Putin, since 2022. October 27th. Musk speaks at the now-infamous Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, a gathering characterised by racism, misogyny, and threats of violence. [Elon Musk] USA! USA! [exclaims] [announcer] Musk has posted more than 3,000 times on X in the last month, including dozens of unfounded claims about the election which have been viewed hundreds of millions of times. Apart from Trump himself, Musk is now the single-biggest spreader of election disinformation. November 5th. Trump wins the presidential election. Elon Musk, a far-right conspiracy theorist, has succeeded in using his immense wealth to help swing the election in favour of the convicted felon. * * *