Reuters / Rebecca Cook
- Elon Musk is welcoming the criticism of Steve Bannon, who called the Tesla CEO "an immature man child" in an interview with CNN.
- "Can Steve Bannon please insult me some more? Best PR I've had in a while," Musk quipped on Thursday night.
- Bannon, a one-time strategist for President Donald Trump who was ousted from the White House last summer, has been rebuking Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook, echoing Trump's unsubstantiated claims that the companies are biased against political conservatives.
- Bannon accused Musk of lying during a weeks-long tarry over a proposal to take Tesla private and called the company "out of control."
Elon Musk would like Steve Bannon to criticize him some more.
Responding to a CNN interview in which the one-time strategist to President Donald Trump rebuked the Tesla CEO and other Silicon Valley giants and called them "man childs," Musk quipped, "Can Steve Bannon insult me some more?"
"Best PR I've had in a while," Musk said Thursday night.
Bannon, who was ousted from the White House in August 2017, has been lashing out at tech companies, echoing Trump's unsubstantiated claims that places like Google and Facebook are politically biased against conservatives.
Trump leaned in on that claim Wednesday afternoon, sharing a video on his personal Twitter account that urged Google to "stop the bias." Google summarily dismantled Trump's argument.
It is not entirely clear why Musk welcomed Bannon's insults. He is not known to take kindly to anything he interprets as a personal slight, as demonstrated by his responses to an avalanche of negative press earlier this summer.
Currently, Musk faces the threat of a libel lawsuit stemming from taunts he lobbed at a British diver involved in the dramatic Thai cave rescue in July.
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