5 bizarre things Elon Musk said during his second appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast

At some point over the last few weeks, Elon Musk looked at the world and decided that we’re not suffering enough.

Which is why he’s returned to Joe Rogan’s recording studio (despite lockdown) to record another episode with the podcaster.

Quick refresher: the first time he was on The Joe Rogan Experience, Musk made a splash by smoking (and choking on)a large joint.

The incident quickly made Musk a meme (and Tesla stock tumble).

Now, fresh off a newly sired child with an unpronounceable name, Musk is back for round two.

And during the course of Musk’s rambling two-hour chat with Rogan (mostly making wild claims about neural implant technology with zero evidence to back them up), he says several things that could politely be classified as ‘bizarre’.

Or ridiculous.

Let’s dive into a choice sample to give people a taster of the weirdness.

1. Billionaires are persecuted

Musk recently announced he’s “getting rid” of most of his material possessions.

Why? It’s not because he wants to live as a monk, rather because he sees possessions as an “attack vector”.

Basically, Musk thinks if you’re rich, people will use that as a stick to beat you with.

“In recent years, billionaire has become a pejorative,” he tells Rogan. Musk says the frowning upon the hoarding of wealth “doesn’t make a lot of sense” (even though the world’s richest 1 per cent own 44 per cent of the world’s wealth). As he sees it, wealth “arises if you organise people in a better way. That gives you the right to allocate more capital”.

Sure, Jan.

2. He can’t say his kid’s name

Elon Musk doesn’t know how to pronounce his child’s name.

He also blames the entire thing on his partner, Grimes. Lame behaviour!

3. Covid-19 isn’t as deadly as stats claim

Musk – who is an outspoken critic of coronavirus lockdown measures, calling them “fascist” and has been accused of spreading misinformation regarding Covid-19 – said he doesn’t believe data attributing deaths to the virus is accurate.

“I think the mortality rate is much less than what WHO say it is. Much much less,” he said, arguing that people are actually dying of a range of issues and just happen to test positive for Covid-19 as well. Musk even seems to imply that Covid-19’s impact isn’t devastating because it’s not killed vast swathes of “young healthy people”. He calls the pandemic a “practice run”:

"At some point there probably will be a pandemic with a high mortality rate, something that’s killing a lot of 20 year olds, let’s say. This is kind of like a practice run for something that might in the future might have a really high mortality rate."

At the time of writing, Covis-19 has killed more than 76,000 people in the US alone, and 270,000 people globally.

4. People are over-egging the impact of coronavirus

“It’s almost like people really wanted a panic,” said Musk. “It’s quite crazy”.

Over one million Americans have now been infected with Covid-19. Crazy indeed.

5. Lockdowns are violating American human rights

With Rogan encouraging him, Musk says that the lockdowns happening across America are “fundamentally a violation of the constitution” and an “infringement of our civil liberties”. He added:

A lot of people fought and died for freedom and democracy and that “we should treasure that and not give up our liberties too easily. I think we probably did that.

Seemingly Musk (and Rogan) forget that a lot of people have also died from Covid-19 and that demographics particularly at risk from the virus may also have a constitutional right – the right not to be exposed to entitled idiots.

Please don’t make us come back for a third helping of this nonsense.