President-elect Donald Trump’s close relationship with Elon Musk puts an “unelected defense contractor” in the White House and poses the “most direct and sustained threat” to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press imaginable, according to The Verge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel.
The Verge’s boss made his comment to Oliver Darcy’s Status website on Sunday, while also calling Musk a drug-user who twists the “algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber.”
Patel, in his interview with Status, didn’t share much of an explanation on how the Musk-Trump alliance poses a huge threat to freedom of speech in the U.S. The biggest issue, Patel pointed out, was Trump picking Brendan Carr as his FCC chairman, which the president-elect did on Monday. Carr has previously criticized Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which acts as the broad legal shield that blocks platforms like X and Facebook from being sued for what users post.
Here was the key section of Patel’s answer to Status:
“To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience. If you’re a media executive or editorial leader and you haven’t met with your legal team to understand the current landscape of First Amendment threats, let alone the ones to come, you’re already behind. Get on it.”
Two years ago, when Musk bought the platform then known as Twitter, Patel warned him that “everyone crying about ‘free speech’ conveniently ignores that the biggest threat to free speech in America is the f—— government, which seems completely bored of the First Amendment.” Patel added Trump and President Joe Biden have “identical policy positions” on Section 230, and that they were both interested in curtailing the ability for platforms to censor content as they see fit.
Another interesting slice of Patel’s interview on Musk: he told Status the U.S. “now has an unelected defense contractor sitting in the White House doing ketamine and twiddling the algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber while fulminating against traditional standards-based journalism.”
Patel also called for journalists to get off of X — a move that many have pulled in recent weeks, following the election.
“Why is anyone working for Elon Musk for free? Get off that s—, it’s all fake anyway and he’s getting more out of it than you are,” Patel said. “Building a real audience is the media skill; figure that out and you’ll have a career. We might even get to have an industry.”
Patel hasn’t been active much on X lately; his last post is a repost of a story from The Verge in July. The Verge, on the other hand, is still active on X — the tech-focused outlet has posted five times on Monday.
