Elon Musk slams John Oliver's 'wokeness' for Last Week Tonight
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Elon Musk appears to be holding a grudge against John Oliver, the host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” who skewered the mogul in a recent monologue.
“It is rather tragic to see an otherwise capable comedian like John Oliver become weak sauce,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X on Tuesday.
Musk added that Oliver is “not very funny these days” due to his being “keen to pander to wokeness.”
The Tesla mogul, who is the world’s richest person with a fortune valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $227 billion, said that “wokeness…is fundamentally a lie, whereas great humor requires revealed truth.”
Musk was reacting on Tuesday to a sympathetic blog post from writer Casey Handmer who denounced Oliver for his “tired anti-Elon canards.”
The Post has sought comment from Oliver.
On Dec. 19, Musk took another shot at Oliver, writing on X: “Oliver was great several years ago, but stopped being funny when he sold his soul to wokeness where humor is basically illegal.”
In a half-hour segment during the Oct. 18 episode of his popular HBO show, Oliver mocked Musk for his rightward political turn as well as his penchant to post controversial items on social media.
“Elon has made news all year, from test launching the most powerful rocket ever built to just this week having to recall 2 million cars due to safety concerns,” Oliver noted during his HBO show.
Oliver torched Musk for posting an item that was widely regarded as antisemitic and then telling companies who ceased advertising on X to “go f–k yourself.”
It is rather tragic to see an otherwise capable comedian like @iamjohnoliver become weak sauce.
The reason he is not very funny these days is because he is too keen to pander to wokeness, which is fundamentally a lie, whereas great humor requires revealed truth.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2024He noted that Musk’s stewardship of the company formerly known as Twitter “has been one fiasco after another, with the most recent coming when he tweeted his agreement with this antisemitic post calling the great replacement theory ‘the actual truth’.”
“That caused many big advertisers to flee,” Oliver noted, adding: “And then in the midst of denying any antisemitic content, Elon decided to taunt the sponsors who had left.”
Oliver continued to skewer Musk, saying: “Wow it is hard to say what’s most embarrassing there: the fact that the world’s richest man is playing the ‘you’re not breaking up with me. I’m breaking up with you’ card. Or that he’s doing it … while wearing a jacket from Ralph Lauren’s midlife crisis collection.”
The HBO star likened Musk to other “titans of business who were sh—y or broken people” including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Steve Jobs, adding that “the difference is…they didn’t open up their brain to let the whole world have a constant look inside.”
“And the glimpses we get can be terrifying,” Oliver said.
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