'We should have got to him early on': Elon Musk called out for 'feat of deception'

As Elon Musk continues to spark outrage over his intrusion into UK politics – what with calling for Sir Keir Starmer to call another general election, safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to be imprisoned and Nigel Farage to be replaced as Reform UK leader – one journalist has been praised for his perspective on the Twitter/X owner’s interventions.

Ian Hislop, editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye, appeared on Andrew Marr’s LBC show on Wednesday and decried the age of reporters having to “spend half the time pointing out stories that aren’t true”.

He said: “So when you get Musk pretending to be a champion of women and young girls, and then he calls Jess Phillips an ‘evil witch’, I mean, how is that on a scale of medieval misogyny?

“He’s riddled with contradictions, and at some point – I am hoping – that even his followers will begin to notice that from sentence to sentence, he makes no sense.”

Case in point, previous comments from Musk about the UK Government’s approach to tackling child sexual exploitation and refusal to carry out a national inquiry into grooming gangs has seen him call for King Charles to unilaterally dissolve parliament (he won’t) and for Phillips to be “thrown out” of office over her letter to Oldham Council (she won’t).

Hislop also commented: “It’s impossible to avoid, and he has enormous power because of a) his money and b) his reach, to people who have been persuaded over the past five years or so that the mainstream media hasn’t covered any stories and that the only people who have noticed anything happening in the world are people sitting in their bedrooms and sending messages to each other.

“It’s an amazing feat of deception.”

Hislop then went on to add that people “should have got on to him early on” when Musk called British diver Vernon Unsworth - who aided in the rescue of a Thai soccer team and their coach from a cave system in 2018 – a paedophile (more specifically, Musk branded Unsworth a “pedo guy”).

“I think he thought from then on, ‘I can say anything I like, it doesn’t have to be true – it’s better if it’s not true – and no one will stop me’, and that’s what’s happened,” Hislop said.

The Have I Got News For You panellist’s “takedown” has since been branded “a thing of beauty”:

Another wrote that he is “as always, the voice of reason”:

And a third praised Hislop’s “excellent point” and questioned exactly what Musk has “done for women and girls”:

Well, Musk has previously been accused by his estranged daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson of being a “serial adulterer” and spreading “heinous incel nonsense”, and criticised for a tweet directed at singer Taylor Swift in which he said he will “give you a child and guard your cats with my life”.

Not the best reputation you could have on that front, if you ask us…

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