Elon Musk Calls Thai Cave Rescue Diver A 'Pedo' In Bizarre Outburst, Then Deletes Tweets
We weren’t expecting to kick off the week by reporting on a CEO of a major car company accusing someone of being a paedophile. Particularly a man considered by pretty much everyone else in the world to be a hero. But after an extraordinary Twitter outburst from Elon Musk on Sunday, here we are.
The bizarre story starts with the Tesla and Space X CEO’s attempts to help with the rescue of the 12 members of a junior football team and their coach from the Tham Luang cave complex in Thailand. Musk - who insists he was asked to help and initially declined - built a miniature submarine for the job, which was deemed impractical for the job by Thai authorities.
British diver Vern Unsworth - a key part of the successful rescue - was particularly critical of the device, saying in an interview that Musk “can stick his submarine where it hurts”. He added that it had “Absolutely no chance of working…He had no conception of what the cave passage was like…it wouldn’t have made the first 50 metres into the cave”. It was “just a PR stunt,” he concluded. A video of the interview was widely shared, after which Musk launched his shocking attack against Unsworth on Twitter.
Having initially made an insinuation about the diver - “This British expat who lives in Thailand (sus)” - Musk went one step further by dubbing him “pedo guy” while vowing to film a video of the mini-sub reaching the rescue point. Musk even responded to one Twitter’s objections to the Tweets by saying “Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true”. Amid an understandably angry online backlash last night, the Tweets were all deleted.
Speaking to The Guardian on Monday, Unsworth said that he was “astonished and very angry,” at Musk’s comments. “I have a lot of support from people around the world astonished by his unfounded comments,” the 63-year-old said.
Asked about the prospect of taking legal action against the billionaire, who Unsworth reckons has “lost the plot,” he replied: “Yes, it’s not finished.”
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Elon Muck
Well, his rep is going down the drain
Thought he was a good guy when he created the mini submarine thingy when he’s going bankrupt…………. Wait is he a good guy or a bad guy or split personality?
Split personality easily. He said a couple days ago he wanted to help the people in Flint, Michigan get better water
Narcissistic personality disorder. Builds submarine not to help the children, but to show off to the world that he’s a “good guy,” but can’t handle being criticized for it.
Still, they’re like my country’s national car, they still can’t get over the built quality issue
What urks me is that many call his tirade unwarranted, as if Unsworth or the general social media public didn’t do anything to instigate it. They could have left it at they didn’t think it would work and that would have been just fine, but they didn’t. They go further and make the unwarranted claim that “it’s just a PR stunt” and Unsworth’s shove it up his a$$ comment were completely and equally uncalled for and no one, I mean no one is calling them out on that.
It really isn’t that shocking, you be an a$$ to someone enough, effectually they will fight back
Truth is the submarine was probably not going to work but Elon still tried to push the project through, wasting everybody’s time in a situation where every minute matters. I think the diver has the right to be p*ssed when someone that doesn’t have a clue of the situation tries to tell him how to do his job.
I mean, yeah what musk said was bad, but Unsworth was quite rude to kick it off.
This car news because of Elon Musk? Wtf
He should spend time on improving Tesla’s aftermarket instead.
The possibility of Tesla falling to the same fate as AMC is slowly increasing
What does this have to do with motorized vehicles? Oh right, the circlejerk…