Elon Musk isn’t just the richest man in the world, the biggest donor to President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and arguably the most successful crony capitalist of all time. He’s also an avid conspiracy theorist and a purveyor of misinformation. And when it comes to the way he censors critics and elevates his preferred political ideologies on X, he’s a massive hypocrite.

Additionally, over the past few weeks, Musk has yet again demonstrated a soft spot for racists, a keen interest in bullying institutions he can’t control into submission and, like Trump, incoherent political principles he’ll jettison the moment they run counter to his feelings.

When it comes to the way he censors critics and elevates his preferred political ideologies on X, he’s a flaming hypocrite.

Days after Musk praised the extreme-right, Nazi-sympathizing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as “the only hope for Germany,” Mediaite reported that Musk is a paid subscriber to an openly racist, pro-apartheid South African X account. (Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

But just this week, Musk and his DOGE co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy have been mired in a MAGA civil war — aired out on his fetid cesspool of toxic discourse, X — in which they were on the less racist side.

At issue are the DOGE tycoons’ support for H-1B visas to lure the best international tech workers to America — which the xenophobic MAGA faithful considers a betrayal of the anti-immigration platform they’ve so long expected from Trump. After Ramaswamy slammed American culture for supposedly “venerat[ing] mediocrity over excellence,” a predictable wave of racism and antisemitism from high-profile MAGA accounts followed. (One such prominent account tweeted, “Indians are the foot soldiers for the jews.”)

Pretty disgusting and horrific stuff! And yet, it’s hardly out of character for Musk’s X.

And while Musk reportedly said he bought the site formerly known as Twitter because he was worried about the “future of civilization” and wanted to end what he and his allies incorrectly asserted was the deliberate suppression of conservative accounts — some verified MAGA accounts have complained that they’ve been summarily demonetized and stripped of their blue checkmarks. (Musk didn’t comment on these complaints directly, but he did post on Thursday that “any accounts found to be engaged in coordinated attacks to spam target accounts with mute/blocks will themselves be categorized — correctly — as spam.”)

Also this week, Musk re-upped his attacks on Wikipedia, exhorting his followers on Tuesday to “Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority.” Musk, who claimed he offered to buy the online community-edited encyclopedia for a billion dollars if it rebranded as “Dickipedia,” amplified a troll account that shared a misleading graphic that falsely indicated Wikipedia spends almost a third of its budget on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts.

This is the Musk playbook: prioritizing his feelings over facts, and self-interest over altruism.

Writing in Arc DigitalNicholas Grossman explained that Wikipedia is quite transparent with its budgets, and “most of the ‘equity’ spending funds Wikipedia contributors in less covered countries and non-Western languages, while the spending marked ‘safety and inclusion’ helps various contributors deal with disinformation, persecution, and complicated or repressive laws. The result is that, for example, an entry on Uganda is written by credentialed experts on Uganda and actual Ugandans, rather than, say, a brigade of racist Elon Musk fans from North America … Whatever you think of DEI training seminars, that’s not what this is.”

Grossman added that “Musk has been going after Wikipedia for a while because its entry for Elon Musk doesn’t go along with his self-promotional myth-making, and other entries prioritize the truth over his preferred distortions.”

This is the Musk playbook: prioritizing his feelings over facts, and self-interest over altruism.

Endorse a virulently racist, anti-immigration political party in Germany — then endorse an increase in visas so that your preferred immigrants can come work at your American tech companies.

Regularly declare yourself a free speech absolutist and decry Twitter’s previous owners as censorious partisans with opaque moderation policies — then severely throttle X accounts under the vague pretense of fighting “spam.”

Obsess over supposed media “bias” and “lies” — then share false information about a largely trustworthy and self-correcting website that even your obscene wealth can’t bend to your will.

For the world’s richest man, it’s not about honesty and principles, it’s about ego and vibes.

Anthony L. Fisher

Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and writer for BLN Daily. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday urged the Supreme Court to pause a law that could ban TikTok nationwide starting Jan. 19 if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell the popular social media app to an American company.

In a 25-page amicus brief filed with the court, Trump asked the justices to stay the Jan. 19 deadline — which is one day before Inauguration Day — so his administration could “pursue a negotiated resolution” that would “obviate the need” for the justices to rule on the case.

“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” the brief stated.

TikTok and its parent company, China-based ByteDance, appealed to the Supreme Court last week after lower courts rejected its challenge to the law. The justices agreed to hear the challenge and set oral arguments in the case for Jan. 10.

The law at the center of the case — called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — stems from bipartisan concerns that the Chinese government could access data about American users.

TikTok arguesthe law violates free speech rights under the First Amendment for its roughly 170 million American users.

In his brief on Friday, Trump said he takes “no position on the merits of the dispute.” Instead, he suggested he intends to personally negotiate a resolution that focuses on “preserving the First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Americans, while also addressing the government’s national security concerns.”

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew met with Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last week, NBC News reportedciting a source familiar with the plans.

During a press conference earlier that day, Trump said he has a “warm spot” for TikTok and said his team would “take a look” at the app and the possible ban it faces.

TikTok and the Justice Department also filed briefs in the case on Friday, reiterating their respective arguments on the matter.

Hayley Miller

Hayley Miller is the senior blog editor for BLN. Previously, she was a senior reporter on HuffPost’s breaking news team. Before she was a reporter, she was a senior editor on HuffPost’s blog team.

The spread of the bird flu among humans and other mammals in the United States has sparked some concern among public health experts in recent weeks, though U.S. officials say the risk it currently poses to the public is low.

Since the first reported outbreak among dairy cattle in March, this particular bird flu virus, H5N1, has spread across hundreds of herds in more than a dozen states. More recently, authorities have reported at least two severe human cases in North America and issued recalls of pet and human foods due to bird flu contamination.

Here’s what to know about the outbreak.

How does bird flu spread?

Avian flu, commonly known as bird flu, has been around for decades, but a recent increase in cases among wild birds likely led to an outbreak among dairy cows in Texas earlier this year, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Since then, bird flu has been detected in other animals; last week, an animal sanctuary in Washington state announced that 20 of its big cats had died of confirmed cases of bird flu.

Bird flu may be transmitted through exposure to infected animalssuch as consuming undercooked or raw meat from infected animals or directly handling such animals. An Oregon-based company issued a voluntary recall of raw and frozen pet food this week after a house cat died of bird flu. Oregon officials said the cat caught an infection from the company’s pet food.

Earlier this month, the California Department of Public Health suspended the distribution of Raw Farm raw milk products after milk samples tested positive for bird flu virus. No illnesses were reported in connection with the contaminated raw milk.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said poultry and eggs, if properly handled and cooked, are safe from viruses and bacteria, including bird flu.

How many human cases in the U.S.?

There have been 65 recorded human cases of bird flu in the U.S. this year, a vast majority of which was due to exposure associated with dairy cow and poultry operations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In November, a child in California was determined to have been infected with bird flu, the CDC said.

There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and infections in humans have largely been mild. But authorities have not been able to locate a source of infection in several human cases, and two severe cases among people — one in British Columbia and one in Louisiana — have alarmed experts.

In November, a previously healthy teenager in British Columbia, Canada, contracted a severe case of bird flu. Local authorities said this week that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission from the patient, though they could not locate the source of the teenager’s infection. The patient is still in critical condition.

The U.S. similarly recorded its first severe case of bird flu in a person in Louisiana last week, after suspected contact with an infected backyard flock. The patient was hospitalized in critical condition. A genetic analysis of samples from the patient revealed that the virus may have mutated in the patient to become more transmittable among humans, the CDC said Thursday, but there is no evidence thus far that it has passed along.

The Louisiana patient was infected with “a strain of the virus different from the one affecting dairy cows and causing sporadic cases in farmworkers in the U.S.,” NBC News reported.

How dangerous is it?

For now, public health authorities say the overall risk of bird flu to the public is low, given that it has not developed a proven ability to transmit from human to human. However, some experts fear the virus could further mutate to do so. They point to the urgent need to eliminate the virus — or at least slow its spread before it turns into a full-blown pandemic.

Clarissa-Jan Lim

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.