Elon Musk did not get a hero’s welcome when he joined Dave Chappelle on a San Francisco arena stage on Sunday night.
“Cheers and boos, I see,” Chappelle said in response to the crowd’s reception of the billionaire businessman and controversial Twitter owner after he asked the audience to “make some noise for the richest man in the world.” After the introduction, Musk walked across the Chase Center stage with his arms raised in the air, seemingly expecting a tidal wave of positive attention.
But after an initial round of applause, the response quickly turned to jeers and boos that only seemed to grow louder as time went on. According to various reports on Twitter, the boos lasted more than five minutes. Early on, Musk said to Chappelle, “Weren’t expecting this, were you?” Chappelle then said, “It sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience.”
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The controversial Tesla and Space X chief took over Twitter in October in a $44 billion deal. Since then, he gutted the staff and made a slew of changes to the social media platform. He’s also seemingly been more active than ever, routinely posting eyebrow-raising takes to his 121 million followers on the social media platform. Hours before joining Chappelle on the stand-up stage, Musk took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci for how he’s dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic.
But about the booing, Musk responded to the moment, after clips of it went viral on Twitter, on Monday morning, despite the fact that cellphones are prohibited during Chappelle’s current tour with Chris Rock. “Technically, it was 90 percent cheers & 10 percent boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter). It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh,” Musk posted on Twitter.
Another attendee at the show, Twitter user James Yu, posted his reaction to being in the Chase Center and countered Musk’s take. “A good 80 percent of the stadium boos. 18k people. and he withers. Like absolutely turns into a corncob,” Yu explained. “I can’t believe he came on and did that. No value at all. ‘And here is the worlds richest man’ Dave introduced him. Totally came off entitled. Dave gave him so many chances to speak but he just put his hands in his pockets.”
