THE NEW YORK TIMES: In a barrage of posts rife with misinformation, he revived questions about a child sex abuse scandal, vilified the prime minister and defended a jailed far-right agitator.
He demanded the release of a convicted criminal and far-right agitator. He falsely accused the prime minister, Keir Starmer, of failing to go after child rapists when he was head of public prosecutions. He endorsed a post calling on King Charles III to dissolve Parliament and call elections to remove Britain’s seven-month-old Labour government, a constitutional impossibility.
Elon Musk has once again set his sights on Britain, putting the country in the bull’s-eye in the capricious world of his online obsessions. In a fusillade of posts that began before the new year, Mr. Musk moved on from his enthusiastic boosting of a far-right party in Germany to targeting Britain on multiple politically sensitive fronts.
After mostly ignoring Mr. Musk’s trolling, which has been going on for months, the British government on Friday snapped back, though in characteristically polite fashion.
“Elon Musk is an American citizen and perhaps ought to focus on issues on the other side of the Atlantic,” the government’s health minister, Andrew Gwynne, said in an interview with LBC radio. Mr. Gwynne’s boss, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, told reporters, “Some of the criticisms Elon Musk has made, I think, are misjudged and certainly misinformed.” » | Mark Landler, Reporting from London | Friday, January 3, 2025
