Elon Musk considers suing Tim Walz over Nazi salute accusation

Elon Musk did a Nazi salute. I’m Tim Walz.
- Elon Musk did a Nazi Salute twice. I’m not Tim Walz just a regular person with eyes.
- Liar, you’re just some guy
  
  Tim Walz is just some guy.
  
  Well, you've got me there…

Since he's now officially part of the government this is actually censorship.
- You don't lose the right, as an individual, to file lawsuits just because you're working for the government. That's not using the government's authority; it's something that's available to any individual. Musk can sue without running into First Amendment restrictions on government action.
  However, he might have a harder time winning such a lawsuit insofar as he might be more of a public figure due to serving in the government. The bar for defamation is higher for public figures in the US.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation
  A series of court rulings led by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) established that for a public official (or other legitimate public figure) to win a libel case in an American court, the statement must have been published knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard to its truth (i.e. actual malice).
  
  Hard to argue he's not a public figure already.
  Gertz v Welsh: He probably is an individual who has "...assumed roles of especial prominence in the affairs of society. Some occupy positions of such persuasive power and influence that they are deemed public figures for all purposes. More commonly, those classed as public figures have thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved. In either event, they invite attention and comment."
  Not gonna check if that's still good law. Westlaw, you are dead to me.

He never denied it.
Would love if it would go to trial (he will make sure it won't) and court deciding that it indeed a Nazi salute.
There's nothing even remotely similar, because in the past 80 years we were trying to make sure no one confused us accidentally with Nazis.
- Yea, which is the damning part! The whole “misunderstanding” can be wrapped up by by a single sentence: Sorry guys, that wasn’t that and I hope nazis gonna get pegged by living electric poles!
  
  He thinks, "can't we all get beyond this Nazi stuff?" like he said in Germany, while promoting Nazis, is going to make it all go away.
  
  He probably didn't click on the "with this one simple trick" link
- I think it's safe to say that nobody will confuse Elon with a Nazi.
  
  Hard to confuse an apple with an apple
- Yes one defense against a libel suit is to prove that what you said was the truth. Would be hilarious to see this play out in court.

Elon Musk, the Nazi?
- Correct. Elon Musk, the Nazi who does Nazi salutes because Elon Musk is a Nazi.
- The same Nazi whose Nazi dad even said Elon was a Nazi.
- Weird!

It is so obvious Mush knew what he was doing. He was positively bursting with that fifth grade "I'm going disrupt the whole class with this outburst" energy.
And then you get to the grossness of the billionaires grinning and cheering in the background while he did it.
- The reason he did it (besides being off his rocker on K) was that he expected the crowd to reciprocate. The crowd cheered, but he hoped they would return the salute. It was a litmus test of how far they'd gotten in terms of total mental control of their drones.
  
  I don't think he thought that far ahead. I think he likes being the edgiest of edgy boys. He's also a gigantic loser, a living repudiation of the idea of a meritocracy, and a Nazi. BUT he is also the guy who unironically called himself "Dark, gothic MAGA" and did stupid little jumps to try and do some pseudo ymca bullshit by making an X with his body.
  Dudes a cringe lord like before anything else, imo.

He's a lot like trump. When you have that much money, it's basically infinite, you get anything you want, anything. So you just do stuff, whatever pops into your head, because there are no consequences. When there are no consequences, nothing matters. You're the main character, everything revolves around you. What does that do to a person's mind? We see the answer before us in Musk and Trump.
It must get so boring, when you're surrounded by people who are nothing more than background characters in your movie, servants at your beck and call, sycophants flattering you. So you have to do outrageous things to get people to react. Do a nazi salute. Threaten to invade Greenland or Panama. Get them to say something against you, so you can punish them, to feel your power. Sue them, destroy them, squash them like a bug because you need to prove to yourself over and over that you're not the pathetic loser your father always said you were.
- no one (e.g. musk) should ever have this much money - and therefore this much unfettered power. billionaires should not exist. the fact that they do is an existential global danger.
  his "fuck you in particular" money threatens every. single. person... simultaneously.
  
  no one (e.g. musk) should ever have this much money - and therefore this much unfettered power.
  Well, yes. It's pretty obvious how bad that is for society.
  But the problem is that he does have that much money. And that much power that is derived from it.
  So what practical things can we do about it?
  
  There are a lot of Teslas near where I live. A lot.
  But today I found myself behind a Nissan Leaf. I got to thinking, "So many people praise Tesla's electric system and say they still prefer it over hybrids due to its environmental impact. But giving money to Musk means enabling untold damage to society, and his alliance with right-wingers guarantees that his presence will make this environment worse." I mean, if he spent his time in Trump's inner circle convincing them that electric cars are better, that would be fantastic. But no. We all know that's not going to happen. He definitely has the power to make a positive impact on the world, but he won't.
- Damn, that hurt and it wasn't even directed at me.
- There's a growing body of research from behavioral neuroscience which indicate that power and privilege have a deleterious effect on the brain. People with high-socioeconomic status often:
  Have reduced empathy and compassion.
  Have a diminished ability to see from someone else's perspective.
  Are more impulsive.
  Have a dangerously high tolerance for risk.When you don't need other people to survive, they become irrelevant to you. When you're in charge, you can behave very badly and people will still be polite and respectful toward you. Instead of reciprocity, it's a formalized double standard. When you have status, you're given excessive credibility, and rarely hear the very ordinary push-back from others most of us are accustomed to, instead you receive flattery and praise and your ideas are taken seriously by default.Some sources:
  Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years
  (Abstract) or (Full Text)
  Does power corrupt? An fMRI study on the effect of power and social value orientation on inequity aversion.
  (Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)
  Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention
  (Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)
  The Psychology of Entrenched Privilege: High Socioeconomic Status Individuals From Affluent Backgrounds Are Uniquely High in Entitlement
  (Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)

Sorry this is from the dude that called someone rescuing people in a cave "pedo guy" because he didn't get the chance to look like the hero?
- Unfortunately he won that defamation case, probably mostly because the diver made the mistake of hiring future Trump side character Lin Wood.
- musk got confused because he wanted his tor pedo to reduce the kids. Presumably to give them to his partner, long time friend of Epstein, rapist, and self-admitted lover of little girls donald trump.
  
  Holy fuck. You think it was an Epstein thing? Like he said to Elon, “Get those kids out. Send a couple to the island and we can say they died.”
  [9]

If you have a case, you don't "threaten" to sue, you just do it
- I would, because actually suing someone sounds like a ton of effort and expense. But I'm not the richest asshole in the planet and don't have an army of lawyers on retainer.

If it wasn't a Nazi salute then do it again. Do it in broad daylight in a public place where you don't have security. You know what you did and any sane person knows what you did. And still, to this day, you haven't even denied it.
- Go do it in Germany

Discovery demands all Elon’s private messages that could be antisemitic.
- As a Minnesotan, I'm cool with spending my money to air the Nazi's dirty laundry.
- And all IP addresses of all Twitter users to find all his sock puppets he uses to be even more antisemitic with.
  
  This is the real tea tbh. We all know what his main account is doing. Show us the alts he uses when he doesn’t feel comfortable being fashy on main.
- Private messages from a person who owns the website...

Ok but.. It's not an accusation. He did do that.
- Twice.
  ...and then he made holocaust jokes
  ...and then he attended a German Nazi rally
  ...and then the administration he works with announced a concentration camp for undesirable immigrants
  
  You’re misinterpreting a long and consistent pattern of behaviour. And now Elon is going to sue you because that’s what tough non-snowflake people do.
- In any decent country, this would go to court and Musk would be a laughing stock. In America though? That idiot might win.
  
  America is not a country, it's a corp

According to the article, Walz said on MSNBC
“We spent three days debating, or trying to debate that ‘President Musk’ gave a Nazi salute. Of course he did”
Then one of Musk's Xitter followers said “I hope Elon sues [Walz] for all he’s worth.” to which Musk replied "I think I will".
So, Musk was just talking out his ass, and it's doubtful he'll actually file suit.
This has all got me thinking, how else can Musk be manipulated? Exacerbating cat fights in the administration and surrounding MAGAsphere seems like one of the most promising ways to prevent them from doing too much damage.

Public figure "freeze peach" absolutist Elon Musk thinks the first amendment is his little bitch.
"Let's essentially tell trans people to kill themselves but when I do two full-throated heils at inauguration live, how dare you call them what they are."
I hope he free speech's his way to a bullet.

Worth noting that he has not, at any point, denied it was a Nazi salute. Closest thing to a denial he's done so far is reply, "Thank you," to an ADL tweet defending him, and he immediately followed that up with a bunch of Nazi puns. Feels like that's gonna hurt his case.

He'll pull the old Pedo Guy defence and say that's just a friendly wave in South Africa.
Elon Musk is a Pedo Guy.
- "I can't be prejudiced. I'm a white billionaire from old money in South Africa."

Hey Felon Musk, if you don't want people accusing you of being a Nazi, then don't do Nazi shit. It's not a hard concept to understand once you pull your head out of your ass.
- But he does want it.
  
  Agreed, anything to get attention.

It was a nazi salute done by a nazi to a nazi in a room full of nazis.. I am not sure what else you would call it.
- nobody thinks it wasn’t a nazi salute, but some people will argue that it wasn’t as a form of trolling… get you to spend energy arguing pointlessly instead of doing things that change things

I hope the Nazi does, so he has to describe how elon's Nazi salute and the Nazis doing the Nazi salute are different.

Why ? He made the salute.

Is he going to sue everyone else with eyes too? It's not an accusation. You did it, stand by it.

It isn't libel or slander to say he did a nazi salute when he did do it. Now calling him a nazi could be libel or slander, but most rationale people will put two and two together.
But an entertaining headline from a so called free speech absolutist, ofc anyone with half a brain cell also knew that whole thing was a lie.
- Now calling him a nazi could be libel or slander
  Noting his recent sucking-up to AfD would be a strong defense for that accusation.
  
  Definitely, and his revisionist take that the nazi party were communists or whatever BS him and AdD tried to peddle the other week

Please. Let a court rule on whether a Nazi salute was made on US soil by a foreign actor in the current administration. Put it to the question. Then tell us if the court thinks that's a problem.
- A great deal of the courts are already compromised, however...

I am Tim Walz. Musk is a Nazi and did multiple Nazi salutes. Not only that he supports Nazi’s in Germany. Musk is also a peace of human shit.

Make it class action, then, you nazi dork.
- That's like the opposite of a class action, which really doesn't exist - closest is like a RICO case

Being a Nazi is as American as apple pie. Should I not accuse people of eating pie? Are Nazi salutes not ok? What if you salute them in the pussy? I'd imagine this case would be thrown out because being a Nazi isn't a blemish on your character in the US.
- Especially American billionaire entrepreneurs being/sympathizing Nazis.
  Ford would be delighted.

Pedo guy Elon Musk, the pedo, wants to sue for libel?
- I mean, if someone is calling you a Nazi that seems like a reason to want to do it, even if you are a nazi. Gotta protect your ego and identity and try to squash it from continuing.
  But calling it a nazi salute, is pretty factual. I don't know if Tim out right called him a nazi or just said it was a nazi salute, but there's zero grounds for a case if it was just the action.
  And in the single universe in the entire multiverse where Elon truly believes it wasn't a nazi salute and the intentions were pure, it was still a nazi salute.

Welp, as predicted. The reason that many news outlets are hesitant to call out Elon is because they know he will precisely do this. There are instances, of course, where news outlets have inherent bias and downplay some far-right activities (The New York Times in the 1920s claimed Hitler had been reformed after prison), but I think on this occasion news outlets have their fears founded. I'm not saying it's right but that's just how the world works.

Another what if article...
Nothing has been done here.

Josh Johnson has a good take on this https://youtube.com/watch?v=0-FWOKzWpXU (19 minutes in)
- I've never heard Josh Johnson give a bad take.
- That was good, thank you

This would actually be incredible if a court legally determined it to be a nazi salute.

I can’t wait for a court to rule that he did in fact do a Nazi salute.
But then again, the Texas 5th Circuit Court won’t rule that way and we all know it.

Lmao I hope he does it and a jury finds that he did in fact perform the salute in question.

What a bitch

When you SLAPP with a stiff arm, it's not very effective.

Terrorism by lawsuit?

But then he'd have to disappoint his supporters.

It wasnt a Nazi salute. He was not saluting Hutler and the third reich.
It was an American salute in the spirit of Nazi Germany.
- It seems some don't hear the sarcasm there.