Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee claimed Elon Musk should be “prosecuted” and have restrictions on his free speech because of his strategic defense work with the government.
On MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” McNamee of Elevation Partners said the Tesla and SpaceX boss is “undermining” the federal government he does business with by sharing his opinions on his X platform.
“You have someone running a strategic defense and aerospace project for the federal government who is actively undermining the government that’s paying him. And somewhere in that is a legal issue that needs to be prosecuted,” McNamee said in Saturday’s show.
McNamee was responding to a report by a hate speech watchdog that found Musk guilty of spreading “false or misleading claims about the US election” through his X posts, which had garnered “nearly 1.2 billion views.”
McNamee argued that Musk’s free speech rights should be limited because SpaceX has government contracts for defense.
SpaceX has been a major partner for the US government in launching military satellites. Documents reviewed by Wall Street Journal in February revealed that SpaceX entered into a massive classified $1.8 billion contract with the US in 2021.
“The critical element in thinking about Elon Musk is that, like every American, he has a right to his opinion and he has a right to express his opinion,” McNamee said.
“However, this right is not unlimited. He is under certain special restrictions that would not apply to normal people because his company, specifically Starlink and SpaceX are government contractors and, as such, he has obligations to the government that, for any normal person and should for him, would ask him. to moderate his speech in the interest of national security”, he concluded.
Musk filed a lawsuit last year against hate speech watchdog the Center for Digital Hate, arguing that the claims in the report were “misleading.” They claimed the nonprofit’s “scare campaign” cost the social media platform millions when advertisers walked away.
A US judge dismissed Musk’s lawsuit, saying it was “clear” that Musk’s X sued CCDH because it didn’t like its criticism and thought its research would damage X’s image and scare away advertisers.
In a recent appearance on CNN, the watchdog’s CEO Imran Ahmed defended his firm’s report.
“The truth is that [Musk’s] has been throwing around a reason to blame us for his failures as CEO, because we all know that when he took office, he signaled to racists, misogynists, homophobes, anti-Semites, saying that Twitter is now a platform of free speech. He welcomed them back,” Ahmed said on CNN last year.
Former President Trump announced last week that he will nominate Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if elected in November.
“I will create a government efficiency commission charged with conducting a full financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” he said at the Economic Club of New York last Thursday.
“I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises,” Musk wrote on X in response. “No payment, no title, no need for recognition.”
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