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Elon Musk Booed Relentlessly During Cameo With Dave Chappelle (VIDEO)

Elon Musk Booed Relentlessly During Cameo With Dave Chappelle (VIDEO)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, whose early days as Twitter CEO can be described politely as controversial, got the shock of a lifetime Sunday night when his surprise appearance at Dave Chappelle’s comedy gig was met with a resounding chorus of boos.

“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle hollered to a crowd of 18,000 at San Francisco’s Chase Center, inviting Musk to join him onstage.

The self-proclaimed “Chief Twit,” whose latest antics garnered waves of support from the fringe right, got on stage with his arms raised, poised for a hero’s welcome when the vicious booing started.


In the discomfiting footage of the unwelcome cameo, Musk wandered around on stage red-faced, sometimes waving with a microphone in hand, visibly unsure of how to deal with the less-than-warm welcome.

Taken aback by the jeering, Chappelle — himself a merchant of controversial jokes about the transgender community — tried to defuse the situation, but the indefatigable detractors only grew louder.

“It sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience,” Chappelle joked to ease the tension.

Indeed, upon his 44-billion-dollar takeover of the San Francisco-based Twitter, Musk fired thousands of employees and demanded “long hours at high intensity” of those who remained after the mass layoffs.

“All these people that are booing, I’m just pointing out the obvious, they have terrible seats in the stadium,” the comedian added snarkily.

Chappelle’s jokes eventually won over the audience by tweaking his special guest, as a video posted to Twitter showed. “His whole business model is fuck Earth; I’m leaving anyway,” the comedian said to raucous laughter. “The first comedy club of Mars…” he added.

However, when Musk tried to speak over the din of laughter, the boos would increase in intensity, drowning out the cheers in seconds. “What do I say, Dave?” Musk asked, desperate and embarrassed.

“Don’t say nothing,” Chappelle quipped. “That’s the sound of pending civil unrest.”

The booing continued and grew louder with each passing minute, giving Musk — who has seemingly thrived in the right-wing echo chamber that Twitter is expeditiously morphing into — a stunning dose of offline reality about his current popularity.

“Booing is not the best thing you can do. I wish everybody in this auditorium the joy of feeling free, and may your pursuit of happiness set you free. Amen,” Chappelle reprimanded the audience as he ended the show, clearly exasperated at the "cringefest" Musk’s appearance had turned out to be.


Back in the safe confines of his Twitterverse, Musk tried to rewrite the reality of the incident in a now-deleted tweet on Monday, claiming that “90%” of the crowd had cheered him and the hecklers were “unhinged leftists.”

But some audience members confirmed to NBC News that Musk had mischaracterized the reception, which, in reality, had been almost all boos. “It was more boos than I’d ever heard,” an attendee told the outlet.

Writer James Yu, a netizen who was in the crowd on Sunday night, corroborated that version of events and added that Musk, shamed by the mass heckling, “absolutely turn[ed] into a corncob.”

The humiliation was perhaps a long time coming for Musk, who — with his obstinate and needless insistence to wade into culture wars — made unfounded accusations about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health and Infectious Diseases, mocked the use of pronouns, and peddled a fresh batch of QAnon-style conspiracy theories over the weekend.

On Monday, Musk, once a prominent voice in climate change activism and a fan of climate change activist Greta Thunberg, warned in a tweet of a threat he branded “the woke mind virus.”

When Chappelle Brings Musk Onstage, Massive Booing 'Withers' Mogul

When Chappelle Brings Musk Onstage, Massive Booing 'Withers' Mogul

Why Dave Chappelle thought it was a good idea to bring Elon Musk on stage Sunday night is anyone’s guess, but the audience was not having it. According to Gizmodo, the infamously anti-trans comedian invited the notoriously racist conspiracy theorist billionaire on at the end of his set, and the boos from around 18,000 present in the Chase Center stadium were brutal.

“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle said while Musk strutted back and forth, looking deeply uncomfortable.

Chappelle tried desperately to save the moment, but every time Musk opened his mouth, he was drowned by a cacophony of jeers.

“It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience,” Chappelle jabbed as Musk chuckled. “All these people who are booing, and I’m just pointing out the obvious, you have terrible seats,” Chappelle said, taking cheap shots at those in the audience who couldn’t afford more expensive tickets.

And it hasn’t simply been communications staffers, engineers, and executives Musk has discarded like trash since he purchased Twitter; it has also been employees such as Julio Alvarado, a 10-year employee at Twitter on the cleaning staff. Alvarado told the BBC, “I can only tell you, I don’t have money to pay the rent. I'm not going to have medical insurance. I don't know what I'm going to do."

Peppering his jokes with the N-word ironically, even calling Musk “this N-word,” Chappelle was obviously oblivious to the unleashed racism on Twitter following Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the platform.

“One analysis [found] the use of a racial slur spiking nearly 500 percent in the 12 hours after his deal was finalized, which is pretty shocking,” John Oliver said during his show, Last Week Tonight, in mid-November. “Even for a website where a regular trending topic is sometimes just ‘The Jews.’ That happens constantly. You’ll log in and see 30,000 people tweeting about ‘The Jews’ on a Tuesday afternoon, and you do not want to click to find out why.”

Chappelle tried everything he could think of Sunday night to save the failure of bringing Musk on stage and giving him a microphone, but all of his praise of Musk’s money and success couldn’t salvage the moment.

“Dave, what should I say?” Musk said, looking humiliated.

“Don’t say nothing. It’ll only spoil the moment,” Chappelle said. “Do you hear that sound, Elon? That’s the sound of pending civil unrest. I can’t wait to see what store you decimate next, motherfucker,” he added. Then he told a booing audience member to “shut the fuck up.”

Chappelle ended his set with, “I wish everyone in this auditorium peace and the joy of feeling free… And your pursuit of happiness. Amen.”

Elon Musk gets booed by the crowd at Dave Chappelle's San Francisco show (Part 1 of 4)youtu.be

Elon Musk gets booed by the crowd at Dave Chappelle's San Francisco show (Part 2 of 4)youtu.be

Just prior to his pathetic appearance with Chappelle, Musk spent his weekend cozying up to far-right conspiracists, attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, and taking a cheap shot at those who’ve asked their pronoun choices to be respected.

As Daily Kos’ Hunter writes, “Musk has dabbled in COVID-19 denialism from the beginning of the pandemic, but the notion of prosecuting public health officials for doing their damn jobs even when pandemic deniers would rather they didn't is, again, something scraped up from the deepest bowels of the fascist far-right.”

And as Hunter writes, Musk neglects to say anything about why Fauci should be prosecuted but then blows the racist Republican whistle about being “woke.”

Musk is a loathsome rich boy, the South African child of an apartheid-era emerald mine owner, clueless about real work, and he’s friends with folks like billionaire Republican MAGA donor, Peter Thiel. So, in some ways, it only makes sense that Chappelle, who in recent years has become as clueless about his biases as Musk has always been about his own.

There’s a point in celebrity when a person becomes so out of touch with reality that they really don’t see racism or homophobia or anti-trans prejudice, they only see wealth. That’s where Chappelle is today—indifferent and oblivious.

Why did Democrats do so surprisingly well in the midterms? It turns out they ran really good campaigns, as strategist Josh Wolf tells us on this week's episode of The Downballot. That means they defined their opponents aggressively, spent efficiently, and stayed the course despite endless second-guessing in the press. Wolf gives us an inside picture of how exactly these factors played out in the Arizona governor's race, one of the most important Democratic wins of the year. He also shines a light on an unsexy but crucial aspect of every campaign: how to manage a multi-million budget for an enterprise designed to spend down to zero by Election Day.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

#EndorseThis: Dave Chappelle Amends ‘Give Trump A Chance’ Plea

#EndorseThis: Dave Chappelle Amends ‘Give Trump A Chance’ Plea

In his monologue as host of Saturday Night Live in November, Dave Chappelle controversially encouraged Americans to “give [Trump] a chance.” Now, almost nine months into Trump’s presidency, the former Chappelle Show host is amending his plea.

Asked whether he thought Trump had been productive with the chances he’s been given, Chappelle told Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Wednesday, “It’s not like I wanted to give him a chance that night.”