Elon Musk hasn’t been handling the latest batch of Epstein files well.
After the newly released emails from the Department of Justice revealed that Musk communicated extensively with the deceased sex criminal, the world’s richest man made a bizarre series of desperate-sounding posts on his website X attempting to convince his millions of fans of his innocence.
First, Musk acted like nothing happened. He questionably reshared an AI-generated video of an anime-style child, posted political memes, and spoke of his chatbot Grok’s ability to probe the Universe itself. It was only in an after-midnight tweet that he finally addressed the elephant in the room.
“No one pushed harder than me to have the Epstein files released and I’m glad that has finally happened,” Musk wrote. “I had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island or fly on his ‘Lolita Express’, but was well aware that some email correspondence with him could be misinterpreted and used by detractors to smear my name.”
It’s true that Musk did push for the release of the Epstein files, and even fell out with president Donald Trump over the issue. But the emails clearly show that Musk was, at least at some point, in regular correspondence with Epstein. And not only did he accept Epstein’s invitations on numerous occasions, but sometimes even asked to be invited. He also asked about parties. “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Musk emailed Epstein in 2012.
The desperation only got more palpable as the posts went on. Musk responded to a screenshot of news headlines about his newly revealed ties to Epstein — none of which were all that sensationalized — with his favorite refrain that “Legacy media lies relentlessly.”
But as his replies continued to fill up with screenshots of the emails, Musk tried a new defense: that he was so good with “young women” that he had no reason to solicit the services of the billionaire child sex offender.
“If I actually wanted to spend my time partying with young women, it would be trivial for me to do so without the help of a creepy loser like Epstein,” Musk fumed, before boasting about his incredible mental capacity. “And I would still have 99% of my mind available to think about other things. But I don’t.” (X users pointed out a tweet Musk made in 2022 lamenting that he hadn’t “had sex in ages (sigh).”)
The post, puzzlingly, was made in reply to Grok. Musk was arguing not with his own critics, but his AI chatbot that’s notorious for being closely aligned with his personal views.
He has also tried to draw attention to other tech figures who were in the Epstein files to distract from himself.
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