Right-Wingers Go Wild Over Elon Musk: Could He Really Buy MSNBC?

The X owner and right-hand man to Donald Trump spread a fake video of network host Rachel Maddow crying over the prospect

Elon Musk on Nov. 16, 2024 in New York City.Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images

In the two years since Elon Musk bought Twitter, he managed to kill its value, hemorrhage huge swaths of revenue, alienated its advertisers, and triggered a user exodus to alternative platforms. Today, users on X — the artist formerly known as Twitter — can expect to encounter a right-wing sinkhole of artificially boosted content, gratuitous AI slop, and something akin to the experience of a foie gras goose being force fed Musk’s cringiest memes at the top of their feeds.

Elon slapped a new name on his acquisition, delivered a sloppy product, and called himself a hero. The notion of doing it again excites him.

The billionaire spent most of the weekend glued to his phone, lobbing out nearly 300 X posts on Sunday alone, many of them dealing with the idea that he could buy left-leaning cable news network MSNBC and turn it red.

Last week, telecommunications giant Comcast announced that it would be splitting off several of its properties, including MSNBC and CNBC, into a separate public company. An imminent sale has not been announced, but Musk’s conservative pals on X wasted no time planting the idea that he should purchase the network that has long been a target of the right’s vitriol and mockery, and — as he did with X — reshape it as a megaphone for the right.

“Hey @elonmusk I have the funniest idea ever!!!” Donald Trump Jr. wrote in response to a post Friday claiming MSNBC would be put up for sale.

“How much does it cost?” Musk replied.

Musk later posted a meme of a monk attempting to resist the temptation of a semi nude woman with the MSNBC logo superimposed over her derrière. “And lead us not into temptation …” Musk captioned the post.

The billionaire also promoted a digitally manipulated video claiming to show longtime MSNBC host Rachel Maddow crying over the prospect of the sale, and the risqué meme he’d posted about it. The fake video garnered over 5.5 million impressions, and was shared by several influential conservatives, including former Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Podcaster Joe Roganresponded to the speculation: “If you buy MSNBC I would like Rachael Maddow’s job. I will wear the same outfit and glasses, and I will tell the same lies.” Musk liked the idea. “Deal,” he shot back. Trump Jr. added that he would “mimic Lawrence O’Donnell… minus the castration of course. That’s a bridge too far.”

While Musk fantasizes about the prospect of adding another media company to his portfolio, the company he currently owns is in pretty dire straits. In the aftermath of November’s election, droves of X users completely abandoned the platform. Millions flocked to Bluesky, the burgeoning microblogging platform founded by Twitter’s OG creator Jack Dorsey.

The exodus is likely related to the clear attachment Musk has formed with President-elect Donald Trump, and the political project he is carrying out through X, with Musk paying flowery lip service to the principles of free speech and open dialogue while simultaneously imposing a content structure that appears artificially preferential to right-wing accounts and influencers.

On Sunday, Musk all but explicitly confirmed that X is throttling engagement on posts that contain links to external websites. Responding to a post from Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham — who called the “deprioritization of tweets with links” the platform’s “biggest flaw” — Musk suggested simply posting the link in the replies to the original post if he wanted to avoid suppression.

“Just write a description in the main post and put the link in the reply. This just stops lazy linking,” Musk wrote.

Musk later promoted a post from another account advising users to: “Avoid posting links to external sites, as they limit your potential reach. Instead, prefer to upload your content directly to this platform. If you still need to include a link, add it in the reply section to ensure your post’s reach isn’t affected.”

Disaffection among users is virtually nothing compared to the desert of remaining prestige advertisers on X — once one of the core streams of revenue for the platform. Last year, Musk infamously told advertisers weary of the growth of extremist content on the platform to go “fuck themselves.” Musk seemed surprised they took their money with them, and in August filed a lawsuit accusing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), of conducting an “illegal boycott” against him. This week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Musk ally, opened an investigation into WFA, accusing them of conspiring to boycott advertising on “certain social media platforms”

It’s a big reason why Bluesky is gaining more than a million new users a day, growing so fast its employees are scrambling to find enough servers to house the flood of digital refugees fleeing Musk’s wasteland.