Pop culture and fashion magazine Vanity Fair raised eyebrows with a Tuesday headline comparing Twitter owner Elon Musk with former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke – all in an effort to undermine Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis ahead of his 2024 presidential bid.
“Report: Ron DeSantis Will Formally Announce His 2024 Bid With Elon Musk, Because Apparently David Duke Wasn’t Available,” the inflammatory headline splashed across the page in bold type read, followed by the subhead, “Launching with the Twitter owner is certainly a choice.”
The article, written by Bess Levin, continued in that same vein right from the beginning: “He is said to be planning to formally jump into the 2024 race during a conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk, because apparently other neo-Nazi sympathizers weren’t available.”
Levin went on to further attack Musk, alleging that his attempts to make Twitter a haven for “free speech” have given cover to a rise in white supremacy instead. Referencing ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s plan to reinvent his own show on the platform – despite Musk’s statement that he had not made any deal with Carlson – she asserted that Musk was actively giving a home to “hate speech.”
She then pivoted to DeSantis, suggesting that Musk’s alleged alignment with the “far right” might be attractive to the Florida governor – and lest her audience misses the implied message throughout, she concluded with the outright statement: “Anyway, just as a reminder, a DeSantis presidency is as terrible a prospect as a Trump one.”
Musk’s friend David Sacks, who is set to moderate the discussion between the billionaire entrepreneur and imminent presidential candidate, shared a screenshot of the headline along with the comment, “The media has lost its mind.”
The media has lost its mind. pic.twitter.com/j9awsApaY2
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) May 24, 2023
Former National Security Council staffer Joshua Steinman noted that the left-leaning media coverage of DeSantis was no less dishonest when attacking DeSantis than it had been in attacking former President Donald Trump.
“This was what it was like for four years working for President Trump. No good deed went un-spun by the Washington Press Corps. No matter what we did. We could have brought peace to the Middle East* and they would have called us traitors**,” he said, adding, “*We did this, **And they did this.”
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And while a number of others responded to the headline in the same way, others pointed out the fact that the more unhinged the left-leaning media became, the more average Americans would gravitate toward messages that reflected sanity.
“DeSantis and his team very, very much appreciate these headlines and would like as many more as you are capable of offering during the primary, MSM,” one noted.
“Elon Musk is a 70-30 or an 80-20 issue in America. He might be really unpopular among the handful of people who are just now signing up for Mastodon accounts, but for the rest of the country he’s still the guy who builds rockets and futuristic cars and has fun with Joe Rogan,” another added.