Back when Elon Musk purchased Twitter for a whopping $44 billion in 2022, he was forthright about the reason for the acquisition—he was under no illusion that it was “an easy way to make money.” Rather, he believed passionately in the defense of free speech.
“Overall, my concern with Twitter is that it is somewhat of a digital town square, and it's important that there be both the reality and perception of trust for a wide range of viewpoints,” Musk told Bill Maher in an interview. “And there was a lot of censorship going on. And we sort of uncovered a lot of that with the Twitter Files, including a lot of government-driven censorship.”
“That’s really why I did the acquisition,” Musk added. “I really can’t emphasize this enough. We must protect free speech. And free speech is only relevant when it’s someone you don't like saying something you don’t like. The thing about censorship is that, for those who would advocate it, just remember, at some point, that will be turned on you.”
Thus, you may not be surprised to hear that Musk is willing to go to prison to defend free speech should the government attempt to censor X during the 2024 election.
During a conversation on Spaces, Human Events’ Jack Posobiec wondered what Musk would do if a federal agency reached out to censor “legal content” on the site. He said he’d fight it in court and would be as transparent as possible. When Posobiec pressed how transparent he’d be, Musk explained:
“If I think a government agency is breaking the law and there are demands on the platform, I would be prepared to go to prison personally if I think they are the ones breaking the law," Musk said.
.@JackPosobiec: "Elon Musk gave me that answer right there, exclusively, that he would be willing to personally go to prison rather than take down legal content in the middle of a contentious election." pic.twitter.com/1rAPyQCEHF
— Human Events (@HumanEvents) December 11, 2023
Elon Musk in response to a question from @JackPosobiec about government requests to censor users on 𝕏: “Frankly, I think if a government agency is breaking the law in their demands of the platform, I would be prepared to go to prison personally”
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 10, 2023
pic.twitter.com/WhxzNJiHMR
BREAKING: Elon Musk says he is prepared to go to prison if the FBI comes to him in 2024 and tells him to illegally censor information similarly to what they did with the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 10, 2023
This is why Elon Musk is the perfect person to own X 🔥
The comment came… pic.twitter.com/7DUHHw3tfR
