Government contract oligarch Elon Musk came up with a new story yesterday on why he left Ukrainians high and dry in the middle of a covert operation against legitimate military targets in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. It’s Biden’s fault. (Daily Beast)
Speaking at the All-In Summit on Tuesday, Musk said he would have needed direct approval from the Biden administration to enable Starlink satellite communications for the sneak attack.
“At the time this happened, the [satellite network in the] region around Crimea, um, was actually turned off. Now the reason it was turned off… actually originally it was because the United States had sanctions against Crimea, and we were not allowed to actually turn on connectivity, without explicit government approval,” he said. “So, um, basically Ukraine didn’t give us any advanced warning or heads up or anything, we just got the sort of urgent calls from the Ukrainian government saying we needed to turn on Crimea.”
He went on to say that while he is not President Joe Biden’s “biggest fan,” he would’ve turned the system on “if I had received a presidential directive” to do so.
“The Ukrainian government is not in charge of U.S. people or companies. That’s not how it works,” he said to raucous applause from the audience of the tech conference, before going on to blast the “absurd accusations” that his decision may have been motivated by a cozy relationship with the Russian government.
“They were really asking us to proactively take part in a major act of war,” he said of Ukrainian leadership.
I don’t know anything about this conference except that attendees responded with “raucous applause” when Musk said Ukraine isn’t the boss of him. But that douchebag reaction suggests it’s unlikely anyone asked Musk follow-up questions, such as, “Did you tell the Ukrainians you needed a personal ‘pretty please’ from Joe Biden?” or “As the beneficiary of many U.S. government contracts, did you alert your contacts in the government about what Ukraine was requesting?”
Musk’s latest talking points sound like they were inspired by the now-cancelled Tucker Carlson show on Fox News. As far as I know, Carlson is still trying to resurrect his crappy show on Musk’s shitty platform, so maybe that’s the source. In either case, the space between Musk’s talking points and Carlson/Kremlin messaging is infinitely smaller than the gaps between panels on the average Tesla.
Open thread.
PS: In my experience, when someone says “actually” more than once in a single paragraph, there’s a 100% chance they are lying and/or being defensive.