Elon Musk has defended himself against accusations of echoing Kremlin propaganda, saying he is too expensive to be an asset of Putin’s.
The world’s richest man made a surprise appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday, drawing huge cheers from the crowd as a picture of his face was projected onto a giant screen behind the main stage.
“People say I’m a bought asset of Putin,” Mr Musk said, “I’m like, ‘he can’t afford me.’”
“Think about it,” said the Space X and Tesla owner, to a storm of applause.
Ahead of Mr Musk’s speech, Javier Milei appeared on stage with one of his trademark chainsaws – a gift to help with Doge’s campaign to slash back federal spending.
The Argentinian president, who has cut government spending by 30 per cent within a year of taking office, handed the silver-plated chainsaw to Mr Musk before retreating back-stage.
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!,” exclaimed Mr Musk as he waved the giant tool over his head.
Javier Milei just gifted Elon Musk a CHAINSAW and Elon said, “THIS IS THE CHAINSAW FOR BUREAUCRACY!”pic.twitter.com/89QsHrbHcX
— Bo (@dittletv) February 20, 2025
Mr Musk, wearing reflective sunglasses, a heavy gold chain and a black Maga hat, opened his remarks by saying he wanted to “get good things done, but also you know have a good time doing it.”
The billionaire has come under intense media scrutiny, with reports that Doge’s blitzkrieg against government waste has seen flight safety officials dismissed alongside civil servants monitoring the spread of bird flu.
Some 300 members of the Department of Energy’s department for maintaining nuclear weapons were dismissed last Thursday. The National Nuclear Security Administration attempted to rehire many the next day, but struggled to reach staff as it did not have their personal email addresses.
Asked what his plans were for social security, Medicare and Medicaid, which took up 41 per cent of all government spending in 2024, Mr Musk said he was committed to rooting out waste – not dismantling the welfare programmes.
“If I can steal some social security I can finally buy nice things,” Mr Musk joked when questioned about his access to sensitive government data.
On criticism of his stance on the Ukraine war, Mr Musk said: “we should have empathy” for those on the front lines of the war.
“How many more years is this supposed to go on?… What exactly are they dying for?”.
“I’ll tell you what for”, he continues, “the biggest graft machine in my entire life”.
Earlier on Thursday, Mr Musk had responded to a post on X claiming that US intelligence agencies had estimated support for Volodymyr Zelensky to be as low as 4 per cent.
In a post responding to the story, Mr Musk said: “It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!! If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election. “
“In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election,” he said.
“President Trump is right to ignore him and solve for peace independent of the disgusting, massive graft machine feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.”
Potential rivals of Mr Zelensky’s have rallied around the president following Mr Trump’s description of him as a “dictator”, including former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who leads the mildly oppositional Motherland party.
At the end of a half-hour long question and answer session, Mr Musk fielded questions about what it was like inside his mind. “Not easy,” he said, before adding that his “morality was informed by American comic books”.
