Elon Musk tries to tell John Oliver about comedy

Billionaire grumbles about 'woke' after epic Last Week Tonight takedown

comedy Billionaire Elon Musk has been trying to school John Oliver on what comedy is.

The Tesla and X owner hit back after the British comedian spent more than half an hour trashing him on HBO’s Last Week Tonight over the weekend.

Oliver criticised Musk’s promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories while looking like ‘a man who can pull off pretty much any bad-guy-in-a-movie look’.

But the tech tycoon – who likes to portray himself as something of a comedian – complained: ’Oliver was great several years ago. But stopped being funny when he sold his soul to wokeness where humor is basically illegal.'

During the show Oliver spoke about Musk’s messianic streak', quoting Open AI CEO Sam Altman's opiinon of the billionaire as someone who 'desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.’

'Which is a pretty big asterisk,' Oliver continued. 'It's like Jesus says in the book of Matthew, "Love thy neighbour, but more importantly, me, and if you don't, fuck you. Find your own heaven. J-Crizzle, out."’

Oliver also likened Musk to Henry Ford for managing to build on the technology that others had invented, adding: ’That’s not actually the only way he's like Henry Ford, which you'd know if you ever Google either of their names and the word antisemitism.’

Musk has guest-hosted Saturday Night Live and posted zingers online, such as picturing himself walking into the HQ of Twitter after he brought it, carrying a kitchen sink and captioning the picture: ‘Let that sink in’.

But when he was brought on stage at a Dave Chappelle gig last December, the crowd booed him. Here's a reminder of that:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Turns out Twitter can, in fact, be real life. <a href="https://t.co/FFpups1yEy">https://t.co/FFpups1yEy</a> <a href="https://t.co/41jcZgdDR4">pic.twitter.com/41jcZgdDR4</a></p>— Steven Goffman (@SteveGoffman) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGoffman/status/1602229546383728640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 12, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

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Published: 20 Dec 2023