SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell defended SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday from sexual misconduct allegations.
Business Insider recently reported that a flight attendant who worked as a contractor for SpaceX’s corporate jet fleet accused Musk of exposing himself to her several years ago, touching her, and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage. According to a company-wide email obtained by CNBC, Shotwell does not buy into the allegations.
“Personally, I believe the allegations to be false; not because I work for Elon, but because I have worked closely with him for 20 years and never seen nor heard anything resembling these allegations,” Shotwell wrote.
The misconduct allegations came shortly after Musk warned on Twitter that “political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months” in response to him buying Twitter. “Watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold,” Musk added.
The flight attendant told her friend that Musk — the wealthiest man in the world — asked her to come to his room during the flight “for a full body massage” and that when she arrived, he was naked. The flight attendant reportedly did not engage in any sexual acts and claims that work began to dry up after the alleged incident. The flight attendant told her friend that she felt she was being “pushed out and punished for refusing to prostitute herself.”
Musk also recently revealed that he will begin voting for Republicans in the next election cycle.
“I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, historically,” Musk, a registered independent voter, said at a technology summit in Florida. “Like I’m not sure, I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear. Now this election I will.”
Weeks earlier, Musk posted a meme outlining his ideological shift toward the Right. The meme’s 2012 timeline shows a “fellow liberal” on the Left running toward the extreme far-Left, in effect leaving another stick-figure drawing labeled “me” moved toward the center. By the 2021 timeline, a “woke ‘progressive’” is now all the way on the far-Left, calling the stick-figure labeled “me,” or Musk, in this case, a “bigot.” Musk has stayed in the same spot in the meme but is now considered to be on the Right.
In response to Musk’s ideological change of heart, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez invited the multibillionaire to move Twitter’s headquarters to his city.
“So the pitch is you want to move to the city with the lowest taxes, lowest crime rate, best quality of life that embraces success,” Suarez said during an interview with Fox News. “We believe that the American dream is one where people can do whatever it is that they want to do and be successful. That’s not something you should be ashamed of, it’s not something you should, you know, you should run from or hide from. And so I think that’s one of the things that’s made Miami so unique.”
Musk’s $44 billion deal with Twitter caused celebration among advocates for freedom of speech. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said he wanted to take Twitter — where he has over 90 million followers — private so he could ensure it operates as a free speech forum for all.