Elon Musk said he wants to buy The Onion after his satirical startup shut down earlier this year

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool

Elon Musk.

• Elon Musk tweeted on Tuesday that he's interested in buying The Onion.
• The Daily Beast reported in 2018 that Musk considered buying The Onion in 2014 and hired several former staff members for a satirical startup, Thud, that folded in May after Musk stopped funding it.
• Musk sometimes tweets links to Onion articles and has emailed the publication's writers and editors about their work, according to The Daily Beast's report.
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Elon Musk tweeted on Tuesday that he's interested in buying The Onion.

"I'd love to," Musk said when asked if he was purchasing the publication.

G/O Media, which owns The Onion, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Daily Beast reported in 2018 that Musk considered buying The Onion in 2014 and hired several former staff members for a satirical startup, Thud, which folded in May after Musk stopped funding it. Rather than publish content on a single website, Thud created satirical projects in a variety of formats, including fake products and services.

Read more: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, and Marissa Mayer reportedly attended an elite private dinner with Jeffrey Epstein just 2 years after he served a prison sentence for soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl

But Musk became concerned about how Thud's projects might reflect on him after a tumultuous 2018 that featured a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange commission over tweets about taking Tesla private and an interview with Joe Rogan in which Musk was filmed smoking marijuana, The Verge reported in in March.

Musk sometimes tweets links to Onion articles and has emailed the publication's writers and editors about their work, according to The Daily Beast's report.

Are you a current or former Tesla employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com.

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