Kathy Griffin has compared Elon Musk to British broadcaster Piers Morgan while criticising the Tesla boss’ recent Twitter acquisition.
“Think of the damage [Mark] Zuckerberg has done,” the 61-year-old award-winning American comedian said on Monday (25 April), referring to the Meta co-founder.
“Musk is a Piers Morgan-level media thirsty, vindictive, white supremacist who is looking to convince you he is an innovative disruptor,” she added.
On Monday, Twitter’s board agreed to sell Twitter to Musk for $44bn (£34.5bn), with the tech mogul paying around $54 per share for the San Francisco-based company.
Musk has previously said his interest in the micro-blogging website stems from the realisation that “having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization”.
Describing himself as a “free speech absolutist”, Musk has also said he believes that Twitter should only be regulated by the laws of the country it operates in.
However, this would make room for much more hate speech, as well as scams, if implemented.
Morgan, who presented the first episode of his new TalkTV show Piers Morgan Uncensored on Monday night (25 April), responded to Griffin’s comparison: “I don’t think Elon Musk should take vindictive lectures from someone who gleefully posed with a mocked-up model of a US President’s severed head, then played the pitiful victim card to get herself out of any accountability for such a vile stunt.”
In 2017, Griffin was fired as the long-time co-host of CNN’s annual New Year’s program, with Anderson Cooper, after she posted a picture in which she was holding up a severed head bearing likeness to former US president Donald Trump.
At the time, Griffin “begged for forgiveness”, admitting that she had gone “too far” with Tyler Shields’ provocative photograph of herself.
