Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, is facing an advertising crisis. Major players such as Disney, IBM, and Apple hit the pause button on advertising following Musk’s assertion that a dangerous anti-Semitic conspiracy theory was the “absolute truth.” As the company loses a potential $75 million in revenue this quarter, Musk served a clear message to the advertisers who have pulled back.
“If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go FUCK yourself,” Musk said onstage Wednesday at the New York Times Dealbook summit. He then called out Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger, whose company was one of the first big brands to boycott X. “Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience,” Musk said, waving his hand.
Musk made the comments in an extraordinary interview with the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin, in which the owner of the platform unleashed a stream of invective and defiance in response to questions about the advertising situation and his role in it. “Let the chips fall where they may,” Musk declared at one point, after urging any marketers who don’t like what he has to stop advertising on X. “Don’t advertise,” he repeatedly taunted.
In the audience was also X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who has been the proverbial pain sponge for the company. While Musk’s disruptive approach wreaks havoc and drives advertisers away like a bull in a china shop, Yaccarino has been left to pick up the pieces. With her two decades of experience in advertising (much of which was at NBCUniversal, an advertiser that also paused spending on X), the responsibility of wooing back advertisers seemingly falls on her shoulders. And there on stage, the 52-year-old Musk, in a brown leather bomber jacket and black jeans, was openly berating the advertisers.
“What this advertising boycott is going to do is, it’s going to kill the company,” Musk said. “The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we’ll document it in great detail.”
Musk’s appearance comes a week after X Corp moved to sue the media watchdog group Media Matters following its report on antisemitic content on the platform. Yaccarino spoke to staff as the lawsuit dropped in a hastily assembled all-hands, reported exclusively by Fortune, where she urged employees to find new sources of revenue. Musk called the Media Matters report “fraudulent,” and Yaccarino told staff that it was “a contrived experience that could be curated…on any platform today.” This hasn’t seemed to jell with advertisers, though.
Following the widespread criticism and advertiser pullback regarding the anti-Semitic content on X, Musk embarked on what some critics have dubbed an “apology tour” to Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Notably, on Monday, Musk tentatively agreed that his Starlink satellites, responsible for broadband internet communications, could be utilized in the Gaza Strip with approval from the Israeli government. Musk said on the Dealbook Summit stage that his trip to Israel was “not an apology tour,” and that he has “no problem being hated” in response to a question about his endorsement of the antisemitic conspiracy theory. He said he was not anti-Semitic, and cited his post saying as much shortly after the controversy began.
While Musk seemed defensive and a bit chaotic coming onstage, he admitted that his “actual truth” tweet was “perhaps one of the most foolish—if not the most foolish thing—I’ve ever done on the platform.”
“It might be literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done,” Musk said.
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