Billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has escalated his feud with secretary of transport and interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy — by using a homophobic slur.
On Monday, Duffy appeared on Fox News to announce that he’s “in the process of opening” the space agency’s contract with SpaceX to deliver the first astronauts to the lunar surface in over half a century up to Musk’s competitors as its timeline continues to slip.
“I think we’ll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others,” Duffy said, referring to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The Amazon cofounder happens to be one of Musk’s most reviled nemeses.
“We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually get us back to the Moon first,” Duffy said, saying that SpaceX is “behind schedule” and that NASA won’t “wait for one company.”
Not one to sit out a feud, Musk didn’t take Duffy’s comments lying down.
“Also, one question,” Musk wrote, affixing it with a GIF of a viral clip of a Ugandan TV host infamously asking trans activist Pepe Julian Onziema in 2012 the question: “Why are you gay?” (Uganda has since introduced a law that punishes same-sex intimacy with life in prison or the death penalty.)
Duffy married his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, in 1999, roughly a year after meeting her during the filming of the reality TV show “Real World: Boston.”
Musk’s latest missive is the kind of childish and bigoted outburst we’ve come to expect from the richest man in the world. Musk has used his enormous social following for discriminatory commentary for many years now, from shockingly sexist tweets to furthering outlandish antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The news comes after Musk accused Duffy — who he called “Sean Dummy” — of “trying to kill NASA” and having a “two-digit IQ.”
Musk’s personal pick for NASA administrator, SpaceX space tourist and fellow billionaire Jared Isaacman, was unceremoniously thrown under the bus by the Trump administration earlier this year, around the time Musk’s feud with president Donald Trump escalated into a public flame war.
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