Elon Musk appeared on stage with Dave Chappelle in San Francisco on Sunday, the location of Twitter’s headquarters, where the world’s richest person recently lay off many of its employees. It went about as well as one could imagine.
The Chase Center audience booed Musk, who had spent much of the weekend wallowing in the culture wars, making transphobic slurs and appearing to parrot QAnon clichés.
People in attendance took video of the event during Sunday’s Chappelle concert, which shows the controversial Twitter owner climbing the stage and uttering Chappelle’s famous Rick James impression: “I’m wealthy, b***h.” Musk was booed for several minutes after that.
The outcry prompted Chappelle, who has been chastised for making jokes about transgender individuals, to inform Musk that “some of those folks you fired are in the crowd.”
When Musk began to speak, Chappelle cut him off, adding, “Don’t say nothing. You hear that sound, Elon? That’s the sound of pending civil unrest.”
Chappelle closed his program with a rebuke and a prayer after more jeers.
“Booing is not the best thing you can do,” he said. “I wish everybody in this auditorium the joy of feeling free and may your pursuit of happiness set you free. Amen.”
Musk appeared to acknowledge the event on Monday in response to a person tweeting at him about “a crowd full of boos.” Musk said that there were “90% applause and 10% booing (except during quiet periods), but there’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter).”
According to numerous witnesses who posted recordings of the event, Chappelle gave Musk several chances to address the audience, but Musk simply remained on stage with no emotion.
Musk used a variety of cost-cutting initiatives following his $44 billion buyout of Twitter. He has fired off about half of the company’s employees, prompting a group of former employees to sue, citing several labor rights abuses.
The remaining employees were forced to commit to “very intense” labor, which appears to have resulted in some workers sleeping at Twitter’s headquarters. The city of San Francisco is looking into accusations that Musk turned numerous portions of the office building into improvised beds.
This episode at the Chase Center closed off a weekend in which Musk, who has a history of unpredictable conduct and inflammatory outbursts, thoroughly immersed himself in the cultural wars. Musk tweeted that the outgoing head of the National Institutes of Health and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, should be prosecuted, using the pronouns “Prosecute/Fauci.” Musk has criticized Fauci’s reaction to the Covid epidemic, including lockdowns at Tesla factories.
Musk also used a QAnon conspiracy theory cliche, erroneously claiming that Twitter’s former trust and safety executive Yoel Roth’s PhD dissertation made him an advocate for child sexualization. Roth was subjected to online bullying and aggressive conduct as a result of his tweets.
Musk’s cultural war effort continued on Monday, with Musk once again warning about the “awake mind infection.”