There’s absolutely no doubting the fact that Trump’s immigration ban has caused immense trouble within the United States. It even elicited responses (and an amicus brief) from the country’s tech bigwigs, who not only opposed this decision but also came forward to help those in need of support. Legendary innovator and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, on the other hand, decided to keep his views restricted, until today.
While other high-seat holders at technology behemoths decided to protest against Trump’s executive order, either through words, donations or visiting protest marches themselves, Musk decided to stay mum (not completely) on the said political situation. Unlike Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, he didn’t quit from his position on the President’s advisory council. Instead, he decided to use his position on the same to air his views against the ban with support from other members.
But, Elon Musk seems to have dialed back on his stance — by mistake. Today, after tweeting some news piece about Tesla, the founder sent out three politically heavy (and sound) tweets in quick succession. But, they were immediately deleted from the social platform. It, however, doesn’t matter because we’ve all managed to screengrab the said tweets.
Taking a look at the same, the tweets called Trump’s executive order banning the entry of immigrants, refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-dominant countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen into the United States as “not right”. And this statement was reiterated by Elon Musk in two of his tweets, but he never called the executive order ‘wrong’ once. He most likely is of the opinion that the administration could’ve come up with a better solution that not allowing citizens from certain country’s entry into the U.S.
Also, the words put forth by SpaceX and Tesla founder are completely opposite to what is acceptable to the current administration. We can clearly see that he has referred to the executive order as “Muslim ban,” which is accurate, but the administration has voiced its concerns with it being called the same. They’ve said that this is just a ban that has been directed at Muslim-dominant countries, to fight terrorism in the U.S.
These strongly-worded tweets coming from Musk’s Twitter account seemed surprising at first. Our first thoughts were that either Musk was finally speaking his heart out about the situation or his account has been hacked by anti-Trump supporters. But, it seems the former might be the case as Musk confirmed that he did indeed write those tweets and they were earlier drafts. He further added that they’ve been accidentally published — possibly a butt tweet after the aforementioned Tesla one.
@Samcornwell they were earlier drafts that I accidentally published. I said the same thing a week already.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2017
Thus, one can say that these tweets from Elon Musk now clearly project his opinion or rather his opposition to the immigration ban. And it is subtly different from his previous views, where he disapproved the ban but never phrased his thoughts as he did today in these tweets. We now await a response from the U.S President, who might now be boiling with rage-filled anxiety.
