Controversial Twitter owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined trolls earlier this week bashing actor Alyssa Milano after she tweeted that she’s dumping her Tesla.
“I gave back my Tesla,” Milano informed her followers. She instead purchased a Volkswagen electric vehicle.
“I’m not sure how advertisers can buy space on Twitter,” she added. “Publicly traded company’s products being pushed in alignment with hate and white supremacy doesn’t seem to be a winning business model.”
The “Hodgetwins,” Keith and Kevin Hodge, who tout themselves as “conservatives and comedians” in their Twitter profile, slammed Milano, as did other right-wingers because the once-state-owned Volkswagen company was founded under the Nazi Party. That was 85 years ago, and it shut down two years later. It was reconstituted into a global brand by a British Army officer when the Allies occupied Germany.
Milano retweeted that history. But the facts didn’t affect the continued Nazi attacks by trolls, including Musk, who responded to the Hodgetwins tweet with a “laughing until he cried” emoji and a “100″ superlative ranking.
Screen Shot/Twitter/Hodgetwins/Elon Musk
It was an unusual move for the new head of a social media company to use it to cudgel a consumer because she refused to buy a product from another of his companies.
It’s also surprising Musk has the time to respond to Twitter comments, given that his company is hemorrhaging advertisers and revenue — and he has slashed half of his staff.
Many of the attacks against Milano on Twitter were misogynistic, with zooming shots of Milano’s breasts and derisive comments about her vagina, which would likely have been blocked by Twitter pre-Musk.
Even Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) got in on the bashing and offered a truncated history lesson about Volkswagen. That sparked schooling by critics: