Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and one of the founders of Tesla, essentially called CNN irrelevant in response to an article that called him out for apparently not keeping his promise to California to provide the state with ventilators.
“What I find most surprising is that CNN still exists,” he tweeted in response to the article titled, “Elon Musk’s promised ventilators never delivered to California hospitals, governor’s office says.”
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The report said that Gov. Gavin Newsom originally called Musk’s promise to deliver more than 1,000 ventilators “heroic.”
But three weeks later Newsom’s office said none were delivered. CNN said it reached out to Tesla, but the company did not respond.
The Daily Caller reported that Musk then tweeted out to Newsom to “fix this misunderstanding,” and posted receipts that he claimed showed they were delivered.
Social media users called out CNN over the report and used Musk’s public admonishment as further evidence that the anti-Trump network suffers unless it is criticizing the president.
“At this point, is there anyone left on the planet who hasn’t called out CNN as a clown show?” Wayne Dupree, a blogger, tweeted. Red State tweeted, “Elon Musk Absolutely Wrecks CNN for Spreading False Claims About His Donations During the Pandemic.”
CNN has had a difficult week. The network was criticized over a report that critics claimed was essentially Chinese propaganda that focused on the strength of the People’s Liberation Army Navy compared to the coronavirus-stricken U.S. Navy.
A spokesman from CNN told the Daily Caller that the report was a “single update from our international site’s 24-7 Live Story. He said that the story explicitly stated that the sourcing was based on a ‘state-run tabloid.”
The Washington Examiner pointed out that his “explanation contrasts sharply with the fact that CNN has made significant edits to its report following online criticism—almost as if someone realized just how bad it looks for a supposedly serious and free new organization to repeat Chinese Communist propaganda nearly verbatim.”
Jackie Wattles, a business reporter at the network, defended the Musk story and said that reporters there “(including me) have reached out to Tesla multiple times to ask about the ventilators over the past several weeks, and we never got a response.”