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Barry Diller suggested that Elon Musk supported Donald Trump because of “rejection” by the Biden administration.
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He also told Michael Wolff’s podcast that Musk was motivated by “a form of delusions of grandeur.”
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The chairman of the IAC and Expedia criticized Musk for alienating X users.
Barry Diller thinks Elon Musk is supporting Donald Trump because he is bitter about the Democrats’ rejection, the billionaire told the “Fire and Fury” podcast.
Musk officially endorsed Trump after the former president was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania in July. He also created a super PAC, the America PAC, which spent more than $80 million on the elections.
“Why he went this way, I think, comes from a strange bitterness and rejection by the current administration,” Diller told hosts Michael Wolff and James Truman.
Musk was once a supporter of Joe Biden, but the pair often have verbally spared since Biden took office in 2021.
In July, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX said he once considered Democrats the favorite meritocracy, ‘personal freedom’ and ‘freedom of expression’”, but now thought that Republicans were “oddly” more aligned with those values.
Diller also said he thought Musk, the richest person in the world, was not motivated by wealth but by “a form of delusions of grandeur.”
Diller, who co-founded the Fox TV network with Rupert Murdoch and once led Paramount, is a major donor to the Democratic Party.
On the podcast, the chairman of the IAC and Expedia also spoke about his admiration for Musk, highlighting his intelligence and management abilities.
However, Diller added that Musk had a “broad but often confused mind” – with his politicized statements hurting revenues at X, formerly Twitter.
“He took over Twitter and alienated at least half the public for no reason other than his own talk,” Diller said. “What hurt Twitter was its anti-advertising policies and statements that hurt Twitter’s economy.”
Companies like Disney and Apple have pulled ads from the platform after Musk agreed to an anti-Semitic post last November. At The New York Times’ DealBook Summit the same month, Musk told departing advertisers to “fuck yourself.”
In August, X filed lawsuits against several major advertisers, claiming a boycott violated antitrust laws.
Musk paid $44 billion to take control of Twitter in October 2022. It is now worth less than $10 billion, depending on the value Fidelity placed on its stake in the company, CNN reported last month.
Shortly after the takeover, Diller said Musk had “bought a toy,” adding, “How long he’ll use it, like a toy, we don’t really know, but he won’t run away, I don’t think.”
According to Forbes, Diller is worth approximately $4.6 billion.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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