Musk threatens 'thermonuclear lawsuit' as advertisers flee X over endorsement of antisemitic post

Elon Musk is facing backslash after he endorsed an antisemitic post on his company X -- formerly known as Twitter. Now, a series of major corporations have now pulled ads from the platform.

Apple, IBM, Lionsgate, Paramount and ABC News' parent company Disney pulled ads from Musk-owned social media platform after he posted agreement with the false claim that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them."

"A lot of these brands took a look at this tweet and saw it as a step too far," said Ryan Mac, a technology reporter for the NY Times.

Musk appeared to backtrack, pinning a post to his account that says "Anyone advocating the genocide of *any* group will be suspended from this platform."

Later, amid accusations that he is antisemitic, Musk tweeted, "nothing could be further from the truth."

The advocacy group Media Matters said X has been placing ads for major brands next to pro-Nazi content.

"Twitter or X has never been the perfect platform with regards to hate speech or misinformation. But under Elon Musk, who has fired a lot of people at the company -- a lot of people who used to work on trust and safety and dealing with those issues -- we've seen rises in hate speech, we've seen rises in misinformation, antisemitism, and that is a major concern for advertisers that don't want their ads to be next to this type of content," Mac said.

In a blog post, X said the company does not intentionally place brands next to such content and said the report "completely misrepresented the real user experience... to undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers."

A spokesman for the company called the report "contrived" and said Media Matters deliberately followed pro-Nazi accounts to get advertising to appear.

Musk went further, threatening to file a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and "all those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company."

The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of this station