Goaded by a tweet from writer Drew Olanoff, Tesla CEO Elon Musk again insinuated that the cave diver who mocked him during the Thailand cave rescue operation is a pedophile.
The context: Musk had insisted that, contrary to the newspaper’s reporting, he had not shed tears during a recent interview with the New York Times about his business troubles and bad habits. Olanoff, who uses the name @yoda on Twitter, responded that his new “dedication to truth and facts would have been wonderful if applied to that time you called someone a pedo.”
“You don’t think it’s strange he hasn’t sued me?” Musk shot back. “He was offered free legal services. And yet you call yourself @yoda …”
“I think a lot of things are strange, Elon,” Olanoff replied. “What I think is especially strange here is that you’re wondering why he hasn’t sued you while the rest of us are wondering why you did something so egregious that he could sue you for in the first place.”
The imbroglio dates to the rescue, earlier this summer, of 12 Thai schoolboys and an adult coach trapped in a flooded cave system. Musk devised and promoted a submarine to fetch them, but was ignored by the international team of divers who recovered all the boys alive. One, Vern Unsworth, was publicly criticial of Musk’s efforts to involve himself; Musk claimed, without evidence, that Unsworth was a pedophile.
He apologized shortly thereafter, but observers questioned his sincerity; now we know.
Tesla is reportedly “in turmoil” due to Musk’s behavior of late. Matters came to a head when a bizarre late-night remark exposed a plan to take the company private placed Musk under regulators’ scrutiny and led quickly to the plan’s collapse.
And then there was this…