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X Corp Chairman Elon Musk announced that he will file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters for America and other conspirators, claiming the liberal watchdog group attempted to “mislead advertisers” into believing the social media platform had been promoting racism and antisemitism.
Media Matters claimed this week that “X is placing ads” for businesses next to “pro-Hitler” and “Holocaust denier accounts,” an accusation that the tech billionaire has vehemently denied.
In a statement to X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, Musk wrote that the “split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.”
Media Matters published a story earlier this week claiming that as Musk “continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” X had been “placing ads” for IBM, Apple, Oracle, and Xfinity alongside content that had praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
The liberal media group claimed that X “reinstated numerous accounts of bigots and far-right extremists” as part of their ad revenue, causing corporate advertisements to appear on “pro-Hitler, Holocaust denial, white nationalist, pro-violence, and neo-Nazi accounts.”
This report led to numerous companies suspending advertisements on the platform over the past few days, per Reuters, including IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global.
Axios reported that Apple, the largest market cap company in the world, would also halt their advertisements.
In Musk’s message from X Corp, the statement reads that “Media Matters posted a story that completely misrepresented the real user experience on X,” calling it “another attempt to undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers.”
“Above everything, including profit, X works to protect the public’s right to free speech,” wrote Musk. “But for speech to truly be free, we must also have the freedom to see or hear things that some people may consider objectionable.”
He continued, “We believe that everyone has the right to make up their own minds about what to read, watch, or listen to—because that’s the power of freedom of speech.”
The statement also read that “Media Matters and legacy media outlets” seek to attack platforms such as X because they perceive freedom of speech “as a threat to their ideological narrative.”
“These groups try to use their influence to attack our revenue streams by deceiving advertisers on X,” the message read.
Musk also claimed that Media Matters “created an alternate account” and “curated the posts and advertising” appearing on the account’s timeline to “misinform readers about the placement of their posts.”
Once they rigged the feed, Media Matters “repeatedly refreshed their timelines” to force scenarios to find rare instances of ads serving next to the content the liberal group chose to follow, according to Musk.
In his statement, Musk vowed that X “will protect the public’s right to free expression” and will not allow “agenda-driven activists, or even our own profits, to deter our vision.”
“As we’ve seen in some parts of the world, when free expression is taken away, it is very dangerous and hard to get back—that’s why the people who came before us fought so hard to protect,” Musk wrote in the platform’s statement.
Musk continued, “Without freedom of speech we lose our checks and balances critical to a thriving democracy. We must defend our individual rights as if our lives, and flourishing society, depend on it.”
Media Matters CEO Angelo Carusone, who calls himself a “#DumpTrump organizer” in his account biography, responded to the suit in a post to X on Saturday.
The liberal activist said Musk “is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate.”
“If he does sue us, we will win,” wrote Carusone.
