Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty
Elon Musk is a painfully unfunny edgelord who recently became a vocal Donald Trump supporter. So naturally, when Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris shortly after Tuesday night’s debate, the billionaire X owner searched for the creepiest response possible. He found it, replying to Swift’s identification of herself as a “childless cat lady” (a dig at Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance) by offering, or perhaps threatening, to impregnate her.
Understandably, people are very focused on the “I will give you a child” part of this post. There’s a lot going on here. Musk is openly sexually harassing Swift on X for expressing a political opinion; he has previously been accused of sexual misconduct (which he denies). And the remark ties in with other weird and unsettling things the billionaire has said. Musk — who has fathered at least 12 children with three women — is obsessed with low birth rates, which has led to him spreading the “great replacement theory,” a white-supremacist conspiracy theory (though he says he doesn’t “subscribe to that”).
What you may be missing is that there’s also a racist angle to Musk’s response to Swift. On first read, the “guard your cats with my life” bit could be interpreted as Musk teasing Swift with some version of “I know you want a strong man to protect you and your beloved cats” in response to Swift’s “childless cat lady” quip and the appearance of one of her cats in her endorsement post.
But Musk was actually saying, “Taylor, I’ll protect your beloved cats from the migrants trying to eat them.” We know that Musk believes the baseless claim that Haitian immigrants are kidnapping and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. On Sunday, he did his part to spread the right’s new favorite conspiracy theory:
And during the debate, he retweeted this post complaining that the moderators fact-checked Trump for shouting, “They’re eating the dogs!”
On the other hand, Musk seemed to endorse the idea that Swift post was just a joke:
So I guess we all need to lighten up about one of the most powerful men in the world saying disgusting things about women and minorities!