‘Go F**k Yourself’: Elon Musk Calls Out Corporate Brands for Pulling Ads from X

Elon Musk, the owner of X, called out corporate brands for pulling advertising from the rebranded social-media platform in response to his purportedly antisemitic comments in recent weeks.

When asked by Andrew Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook Summit to clarify why he doesn’t want the boycotting companies to advertise on X in the future, Musk said he considers their pauses in spending to be “blackmail.” He followed up the remark with an expletive.

“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f**k yourself.” Sorkin interjects, “But…?” Musk replies, “Go! F**k! Yourself! Is that clear? I hope it is,” he said Wednesday. Musk added, “Hey Bob,” referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger, whose multibillion-dollar company was one of many to leave the platform.

Musk’s comments come two weeks after Media Matters published a story, claiming that “X was placing ads alongside white nationalist and pro-Nazi content” and that the billionaire endorsed an antisemitic post amid the ongoing Israel–Hamas war. In response to the allegations, several corporations including IBM, Apple, Lionsgate Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony, and Disney pulled money from X.

“What this advertising boycott is going to do is, it is going to kill the company,” Musk continued in the interview. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company.”

Times columnist Sorkin posited that the advertisers will instead blame Musk for killing X, to which Musk responded: “Let’s see how Earth responds to that.”

Shortly after the Media Matters article led to a mass boycott, Musk filed a lawsuit against the liberal media watchdog for intentionally “harming X and its business” with advertisers. On the same day that the litigation was filed, Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton launched an investigation into Media Matters for “potential fraudulent activity” over the same issue.