James Corden poked fun at Elon Musk’s feud with Apple and mass staff layoffs at Twitter during his monologue on Tuesday’s “The Late Late Show.”
“Musk says Apple is threatening to remove the Twitter app from the App Store,” he said, “which is terrible for the six people who still work at Twitter.”
Since buying the social media platform in late October, Musk has cut roughly 50% of its workforce, including employees who have publicly or privately criticized him. He reportedly fired dozens more staffers the evening before Thanksgiving, despite previously saying that he was finished with layoffs.
Corden also took aim at Musk’s grave follow-up tweets calling the potential removal “a battle for the future of civilization. If free Speech [sic] is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”
“If the battle for the future of civilization depends on Twitter being in the App Store, I think we’ve already lost,” Corden joked.
He compared the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to “your friend at a bar who gets too drunk” and raises a “huge issue” when he gets kicked out: “‘What do you mean I got pee on a jukebox?’” he quipped in character. “‘I thought this was America.’”
The supposed “battle for the future” represented by the App Store feud barely qualifies as “a battle for the future of cat memes,” Corden scoffed.
On Twitter, Musk has asked whether Apple “hate[s] free speech in America” after noting that the tech giant has pulled most of its advertising from the site. He also openly accused the company of censorship, going so far as to post a poll stating that “Apple should publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers.” Nearly 85% of respondents answered “Yes.”
Watch the full video above. Corden’s segment about Musk and Apple begins around the 6:45 minute mark.
