Elon Musk says Disney boss should be ‘fired immediately’ amid X ad boycott
Elon Musk has said the Disney chief executive, Bob Iger, should be “fired immediately” after the world’s biggest entertainment company joined an advertising boycott of his X platform.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has embarked on a series of outbursts against companies halting their ad campaigns on the site, formerly known as Twitter, after he endorsed an antisemitic tweet last month.
“Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company,” Musk said in a series of tweets. “He should be fired immediately.”
Advertisers including Disney, IBM and Apple have “paused” their ad spend on X, which Musk bought for $44bn in October last year, since the billionaire shared his support for a tweet accusing Jewish people of “hatred against whites”, describing it as “the actual truth”.
Last week, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive issued a profanity-laden attack on advertisers joining the boycott in a widely shared interview at the New York Times DealBook summit.
“Don’t advertise,” Musk said. “If someone’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.”
He has denied his controversial tweet was antisemitic but has apologised, saying it might have been the “dumbest” thing he had ever shared on social media.
“I mean, look, I’m sorry for that … post,” he said. “It was foolish of me. Of the 30,000 it might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done. And I’ve tried my best to clarify six ways from Sunday, but you know at least I think it’ll be obvious that, in fact, far from being antisemitic, I’m in fact philosemitic.”
The X owner subsequently visited Israel and met the prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, although they did not discuss the post or antisemitism.
Musk, who announced in July that ad revenue at X had halved, said in the interview that it had been a “hell of a year” and admitted he sometimes says “the wrong thing”.
Last month, he said he intended to launch a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters accusing it of a “fraudulent attack” on X after the US media watchdog said it found ads run by major brands being placed alongside antisemitic content, including content praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
Musk has also filed a civil law suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), accusing the antihate-speech group of breaching X’s terms of service by scraping the site for data subsequently used as evidence in the nonprofit’s research. The CCDH has filed its own motion to dismiss the suit, claiming it is an attempt at censorship that is “riddled with legal deficiencies”.
In November 2022, Iger made a shock return as chief executive of Disney after his hand-picked replacement was ousted after a disastrous tenure that lasted less than three years. The 72-year-old had only officially retired as executive chair at the end of 2021.
During Iger’s initial 15-year tenure, Disney made a series of big acquisitions, including the Marvel film franchise, the Pixar animation studio and the Star Wars film franchise. He retired as chief executive in 2020, having delayed his exit several times to guide the company through the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
The company enjoyed a fivefold increase in market value under his leadership but after the appointment of Bob Chapek, who previously ran the theme park division, Disney’s share price plummeted and its battle to take on Netflix sent streaming losses soaring into the billions.
Disney suffered a rare setback at the box office recently, with the family film Wish and its latest Marvel offering bombing with audiences.
Musk, who tweeted that Iger “drops more bombs than a B-52”, also accused Disney of advertising on other social media platforms that hosted controversial content.
Disney declined to comment.