While many on social media are calling out Elon Musk for his controversial salute, Jon Stewart took a more generous approach. During Donald Trump’s second inauguration on Monday, the tech billionaire behind Tesla, X and SpaceX gave a speech that was punctuated by Musk raising his arm in what can only be described as a Nazi salute.
“OK. Charitably, I’m going to say that was just an awkward ‘My heart goes out to you’ gesture,” a shocked Stewart said Monday night after watching footage of the offending gesture. “Listen, it’s a f–king nerve-wracking day. You’re not normally a public speaker. It’s a one-off gesture. Please try not to use it again.”
You know where this is going. The “Daily Show” then immediately played a clip of Musk saluting the people behind him seconds later.
“Son of a b—h!” Stewart yelled. “I’m going to be generous here and say that was Elon’s attempt at dabbing on the haters. By the way, do people still dab on haters?”
“I think it’s important in these troubled times to continue to dab,” the late night host later added.
Though Stewart was certainly disturbed by Musk’s gesture, he was also upset by just how many billionaires from the tech industry attended Trump’s second inauguration. Meta’s Mark Zukerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Musk were all in attendance, occupying seats that are typically reserved for key Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Stewart referred to the six as guys who control “maybe 20% of the world’s wealth and 100% of your news.”
“Populism, ladies and gentlemen. Shouldn’t this gathering be happening in a volcano layer near Zurich? Or are we just open source Illuminati now?” Stewart continued.
The “Daily Show” host went on to say that there’s not a “useful” app for communication that isn’t controlled by one of those six men. “You may not be concerned that they all ponied up a million dollars to be sitting there and are kissing the ass of a president who openly threatens non-ass-kissers. But trust me, s–t’s gonna get weird.” Watch the full video above.
