“Elon Musk tweet promotes baseless anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack”, San Francisco Chronicle
Demian Bulwa, Oct.30, 2022
Three days after completing a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, Elon Musk used his new platform Sunday morning to spread a bizarre, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi in San Francisco that had been published by a fringe Southern California website.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had used Twitter to spread a bizarre, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi.
Kiichiro Sato, STF / Associated Press
Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla and the richest person in the world, according to Forbes, posted the tweet — which was deleted later Sunday morning after generating intense reaction online — while facing scrutiny over his plan to roll back the monitoring of content on the social media site. He was responding to a tweet by Hillary Clinton.
The former secretary of state — apparently referring to the arrest of a suspect in the attack on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband — wrote Saturday morning, “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.” The suspect had professed conspiratorial, far-right views.
Musk responded Sunday at 5:15 a.m. Pacific time with a tweet that said, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” and posted a link to a baseless, anti-LGBTQ article in the Santa Monica Observer. By 10:30 a.m. Sunday, the message and link had been retweeted more than 30,000 times and liked more than 110,000 times, before being deleted less than an hour later.
Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Santa Monica Observer was “notorious for publishing false news,” and once claimed “that Hillary Clinton had died and that a body double had been sent to debate Donald Trump.”
Paul Pelosi was attacked in the couple’s Pacific Heights home early Friday morning. Authorities believe 42-year-old East Bay resident David DePape forced entry into the home looking for Nancy Pelosi, who has been a central target of far-right conspiracy theories such as the QAnon mass delusion.
DePape had filled websites with these theories along with bigoted screeds directed at people of color, women, Jewish people and others. State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, said Saturday that online conspiracies were inciting people to violence, and that politicians like himself and Pelosi have become targets.