Elon Musk’s Mother Rails Against Media Coverage of Her Son: ‘Must Be Paid a Lot’ to Lie

Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, railed against the media for not being “proud” of her son’s accomplishments, and leveled a conspiracy theory that all media outlets must lie about him or they’ll lose their “funding.”

Maye Musk appeared on the Pod Force One podcast on Monday, where host Lydia Moynihan asked, “How is it for you as a mother now to see your son who…was so celebrated, now become so controversial?”

“Well, you know, in my book, I do say 20 years ago, the media all hated Teslas,” Musk said. “‘It’s going to fail, it’s going to fail, it’s going to fail.’ And for five years, they hated Tesla. And then they realized that people are buying the Teslas. So then they started hating Elon and hating him on — and that’s when I started going on Twitter and shaming the media, as well as the person doing the —”

“You would find the journalist!” Moynihan exclaimed.

“I would find the journalist and find their tag, and so that I could tag them and say, ‘Shame on you!’ And that’s what I did. It gave me a lot of comfort. It didn’t stop them,” Musk said.

She continued:

And I don’t know why they, why the media, aren’t proud of Elon for all the accomplishments he does. But then I think there’s a lot of money behind it, because when there is something like one — and somebody says something negative about him,  200 outlets say the exact same phrase. And so, somebody’s connecting all the media and saying, “It’s bad!”

And still but Tesla is the best-selling car in the world! And you know, I travel the world giving talks as well as modeling jobs, and they love Elon, and then sometimes they sometimes say “Why is the American media so hateful?” And I say, “I think they are paid a lot.” Because for a journalist who studied new journalism to lie so blatantly, they must be paid a lot. And it can’t be easy, because I think if you study journalism, you actually are meant to tell the truth.

Musk added, “Most of the coverage — So if you go on Grok, It’s like 85% of the media in America are anti-Elon, but they are paid a lot. And then you find out where the funding is — they’re getting funded, you know, and so you either lie and say he’s a bad guy or you lose your funding.”

Watch the interview above via YouTube.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!