Elon Musk: Disney CEO should ‘fired immediately’ amid X ad boycott
File – Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, gestures during an event with Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London on Nov. 2, 2023. IBM has stopped advertising on X after a report said its ads were appearing alongside material praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, Pool, File)
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(NewsNation) — Elon Musk has called for Disney CEO Bob Iger to be fired after the entertainment company joined an advertising boycott of his X platform.
“He should be fired immediately,” Musk wrote about Iger in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company.”
Musk, who also owns Space X and Tesla, has embarked on a series of outbursts against companies who have stopped ad campaigns on the platform after he endorsed an antisemitic post last month.
Disney and other companies, including IBM and Apple, suspended their advertising spending at X, which brought in $44 billion in October 2022, The Guardian reports.
They pulled ads after Musk wrote, “You have said the actual truth” in response to a post accusing “Jewish communities“ of “pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
Musk denied the post was antisemitic but later apologized, saying it might have been the “worst and dumbest” thing he’s ever shared on social media.
However, during an interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit, Musk issued an attack on advertisers joining the boycott.
“If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f ‑ ‑ ‑ yourself. Go. F‑ ‑ ‑. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”
Musk singled out Iger by adding, “Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel.”
Musk has faced backlash from X users, the Anti-Defamation League and public figures for his comments. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz called on Musk to resign, not just from X but from all of his companies, which include Tesla and SpaceX. The White House also issued a statement condemning Musk’s words, calling them unacceptable and abhorrent.