Elon Musk Calls a Diver That Rescued Thai Soccer Team a 'Pedo' on Twitter
Elon Musk is causing controversy on Twitter again.
This time, the Tesla CEO and billionaire attacked one of the divers who played an instrumental role in rescuing the Thai soccer team that was stuck in a cave last week. On Sunday, Musk called him a “pedo” on the social network.
Musk’s derogatory tweet appears to be a response to comments made by British diver Vern Unsworth, who helped extract the boys and their coach from the Tham Luang cave complex. In an interview with CNN on Friday, Unsworth, a cave explorer, said that the mini-submarine Musk sent to aid the rescue mission was just “a PR stunt.”
The diver didn’t stop there, however. He said Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts,” and that it had “absolutely no chance of working.” Unsworth said the mini-sub was too long and rigid for the cave conditions and that Musk had “no conception” of what the cave passages were like. He also said that Musk was asked to leave the cave, saying that he shouldn’t have been there.
Musk fired back on Twitter over the weekend, taking his reply a step too far in calling Unsworth a pedophile, causing many on the social media platform to ask Musk to delete the tweet, which he later did.
Elon Musk deletes tweet accusing diver in Thai rescue of being a pedophile. For those who missed it, here it is again pic.twitter.com/xQ0q22ee31
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 15, 2018
Instead, the Silicon Valley mogul stuck to his original comment, tweeting “Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true” to someone who called him out for the remark, while also saying he never saw Unsworth when he was at the cave.
Musk did call the other cave divers and rescuers “unsung heroes” in a different tweet. He also defended himself, tweeting out emails between himself and another one of the divers, Richard Stanton, as proof that his plan to use the mini-sub to help the boys was in fact a viable solution.
The former Thai provincial governor (described inaccurately as “rescue chief”) is not the subject matter expert. That would be Dick Stanton, who co-led the dive rescue team. This is our direct correspondence: pic.twitter.com/dmC9l3jiZR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2018
The tech billionaire also took heat on Twitter after a Federal Election Commission filing released this week showed he was large donor to the GOP, giving $38,900 to the PAC Protect The House. Despite the report being publicly available, Musk tweeted that the idea he is a top GOP donor is “categorically false,” as well as tweeting that he is “not a conservative. Am registered independent & politically moderate.”
Reports that I am a top donor to GOP are categorically false. I am not a top donor to any political party.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2018
Thanks Jack. To be clear, I am not a conservative. Am registered independent & politically moderate. Doesn’t mean I’m moderate about all issues. Humanitarian issues are extremely important to me & I don’t understand why they are not important to everyone.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2018
Musk caused more waves on Twitter in late May when he attacked the press for writing articles about Tesla that did not paint the company in an especially favorable light, saying he was going to create a website to rate journalists.