WILMINGTON, Del.– Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis refuses to condemn Elon Musk’s post endorsing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, claiming Sunday he was unfamiliar with the post even as it prompted major companies to pull ads from the billionaire’s X social media platform .
“I didn’t see the comment,” DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “And so I know Elon has had a target on his back since he bought Twitter, because I think he’s taking it in a direction that a lot of people who are used to controlling the narrative don’t like.”
Musk has sparked outrage with a recent tweet responding to a user who accused Jews of hating white people and professing a general indifference to anti-Semitism. “You said the actual truth,” Musk tweeted in a response on Wednesday.
IBM, Disney and other major advertisers have since pulled funding from
DeSantis announced his presidential bid on Musk’s platform, even as research shows it has become a haven for hate speech since the billionaire took over the company last year. “State of the Union” put Musk’s message on the screen and host Jake Tapper read it to DeSantis before urging him to condemn it — but the governor continued to object.
“I know you tried to read it. I have no idea what the context is,” said DeSantis, who joined the show via video conference. “I know Elon Musk. I’ve never seen him do anything. I think he’s a man who believes in America. I’ve never seen him do any of that. So it’s surprising if that’s true, but I haven’t seen it. So I don’t want to just pass judgment there.”
The governor also said he opposes anti-Semitism “across the board,” regardless of whether it comes from the right or left of the ideological spectrum.
“It’s wrong either way,” DeSantis said.
The post has drawn criticism from the White House, where spokesman Andrew Bates said last week: “It is unacceptable at any time to repeat the appalling lie behind the most fatal act of anti-Semitism in American history, let alone a month after the deadliest day. for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
That referred to Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel, which took place on October 7.
Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin personally appeared on Tapper’s show immediately after DeSantis and said it was not credible to believe that someone running for president had not seen Musk’s post: “This is four days later and he hasn’t had a chance to Read what Elon Musk wrote?”
“I find that hard to believe,” Raskin said. “Anyway, you showed it to him, and he still refused to condemn it.”
“If you are serious about condemning and confronting anti-Semitism, racism and this bigotry, which are the gateway to the destruction of liberal democracy, then you must be explicit and open about it,” Raskin added. We must denounce anti-Semitism and racism across the board.”
Raskin himself called the post “outrageous and dangerous” and suggested that he and other members of the House of Representatives planned to write to Musk “asking him to relinquish those comments and clean up his act.”