Ian Hislop praised for ‘perfect’ takedown of ‘contradiction-riddled’ Elon Musk
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Ian Hislop has been praised for his takedown of Elon Musk after the controversial figure’s explosive row with Sir Keir Starmer.
Starmer has been embroiled in a war of words with the tech billionaire Elon Musk, which broke out after the Tesla tycoon criticised the Labour government for rejecting a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal.
The British prime minister hit out at Musk for “spreading misinformation” after he launched into a tirade on social media, in which he accused home office minister Jess Phillips of being a “rape genocide apologist” who “deserves to be in prison”.
On Wednesday (8 January), Have I Got News for You panelist Ian Hislop, who edits satirical magazine Private Eye, appeared on Andrew Marr’s LBC show and questioned Musk’s intrusion into UK politics.
“He’s riddled with contradictions, and at some point I am hoping that even his followers will begin to notice that from sentence to sentence, he makes no sense,” he said.
“So when you get Musk pretending to be a champion of women and young girls, and then he calls Jess Phillips an ‘evil witch’ – I mean, how is that on a scale of medieval misogyny?”
Hislop complained that “it’s impossible to avoid” Musk’s misinformation as “he has enormous power” due to his wealth.
He also said that the X/Twitter owner’s reach is helped by “people who have been persuaded over the past five years or so that the mainstream media hasn’t covered any stories and that the only people who have noticed anything happening in the world are people sitting in their bedrooms and sending messages to each other”.
Hislop noted that reporters are currently “spending half the time pointing out stories that aren’t true”.
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“It’s an amazing feat of deception,” he told Marr, adding that the troubles began when Musk called British diver Vernon Unsworth – who aided in the rescue of a Thai soccer team and their coach from a cave system in 2018 – a paedophile.
“I think he thought from then on, ‘I can say anything I like, it doesn’t have to be true – it’s better if it’s not true – and no one will stop me’, and that’s what’s happened,” Hislop said.
A clip of Hislop’s interview has gone viral – ironically on Musk’s own social media site – with one user commenting: “Ian Hislop hitting the nail firmly on the head” and another stating: “Hislop crystalizes everything we need to know about Musk brilliantly.”
An additional fan of Hislop’s said he had “nailed it perfectly”.
Hislop’s comments arrive after Reform MPs including Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson were accused of profiting from “spreading hateful rhetoric” shared on Musk’s social media site.
Farage, Anderson and Rupert Lowe MP have all declared thousands in payments from the company in their recent parliamentary register of interests, via billionaire Musk’s ‘Creator’ revenue programme.
The scheme allows premium users with more than 500 verified followers to ‘monetise’ their accounts on the controversial site, which has grown increasingly toxic since it was taken over by the Tesla tycoon in 2022.
