After President Trump’s election victory in 2024, the American mainstream media came to a crossroads. After all, for the third consecutive time, they managed to significantly underestimate Donald Trump’s chances in a presidential election. Famously, they gave him no chance in the 2016 election. In 2020, while they were more cautious in their coverage, mainstream polling and political analysts still gave Joe Biden a hefty lead in the popular vote and in the Electoral College as well. Calling that election ended up taking five days…
In 2024, the mainstream press braced for one of the closest presidential elections in American history. The popular vote was one of the closer results, although by far not the closest (Donald Trump won by 1.48 points). Meanwhile, the electoral vote, which decides the outcome, was won by President Trump by a comfortable margin, 312–226. Accordingly, even though the newsrooms of American networks were prepping for another tense, multi-day vote count, they were forced to call the race for Trump by the early morning on Wednesday.
There are multiple ‘cringe compilations’ on YouTube, amassing millions of news, of the election night coverage by mainstream television, such as NBC, PBS, CNN, or MSNBC. One thing that stands out in them all: their odd obsession with President Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on 27 October. More specifically, a joke told by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he called the US overseas territory Puerto Rico ‘a floating pile of garbage’. And suddenly, the mainstream media travelled back in time to 2016, and started incessantly complaining about a joke and explaining how Latino voters had turned against Trump because of his alleged racism. Lo and behold, Donald Trump ended up winning the county with the highest Puerto Rican population, Osceola County in Florida.
Fast forward to the day of President Trump’s second inauguration (because, you know, he won…), when, at one of the after-event galas, billionaire Elon Musk tapped on his heart, then gestured towards the audience as if he was giving them his heart. He even said seconds after ‘My heart goes out to you’.
So, this is where the mainstream media gets to the crossroads we mentioned at the beginning of this piece.
Will they try to go back in time to 2016 again, and try to draw vague connections between fascism and the Republican Party? Remember, they tried the same just a week before the 2024 election, when they broke the story of former White House Chief of Staff and Marine General John Kelly claiming that President Trump had praised Hitler to him, and it did not have the desired effect.
Well, they did give it ample coverage, although most major outlets were more restrained in their reporting, referring to it as a ‘straight-arm salute,’ and ‘resembling a Nazi salute’. It was actually European publications, such as POLITICO.eu, The Guardian, and Euronews, who were more unhinged in their coverage. Also, the users of the social media site Reddit, where over 50 subreddits even banned links to the Musk-owned X (Twitter) in protest.
‘Will the mainstream media go back in time to 2016 again, and try to draw vague connections between fascism and the Republican Party?’
Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League, which is an antisemitism watchdog group, has come out and stated that they believe that Musk’s gesture was not a Nazi salute. By the way, they had a lot more work monitoring the pro-Palestinian far-left crowd recently than with any supposed Neo-Nazi group on the right…
This incident is very reminiscent of that of Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who accidentally made a similar gesture at the 2016 Republican National Convention while waving to the audience. That is the thing, as many users on X have pointed out,it is quite easy to snap a picture like that of any major public figure, be it Democrat or Republican.
It is also quite natural to extend one’s arm every now and then while gesturing. Taking it out of context and attributing sympathies to the Third Reich to the person making such a gesture is disingenuous. However, it is also so lazy and sloppy that it takes all the bite out of it, and it becomes nothing but an amusing meme.
So, in short: no, mainstream media, Elon Musk is not a Nazi, just like Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke did not cost Donald Trump the election. But keep doing what you are doing, if you feel like it.
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