Deny everything
Elon Musk continues to deny giving a Chechen warlord a Cybertruck with a machine gun, even though the warlord in question was the one who made the claim.
If CNN Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Russian-annexed Chechen Republic who serves as Vladimir Putin’s foot soldier in the region, suggested in a Telegram message over the weekend that Musk had given him the makeshift Cyber Tank.
“We have received a Tesla Cybertruck from the respected Elon Musk,” Kadyrov wrote, per CNN‘s translation. “I was happy to test the new equipment and personally saw that there is a reason it is called ‘Cyberbeast’.”
Musk responded to a critic on X (formerly Twitter), insisting the claim was false. To emphasize his point, he used an insulting comment about people with disabilities.
“Are you really that deranged that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?” the multi-hyphenate billionaire wrote. “That’s astonishing.”
What eloquence from one of the richest men in the world!
Deceive me twice
After that initial denial, Kadyrov’s claim continued to spread like wildfire on social media. In response, Musk doubled down on his denial, this time piggybacking on another user’s post.
“I highly doubt Elon Musk is giving away free Cybertrucks to Russian officials,” the user wrote alongside a screenshot of an article repeating Kadyrov’s claim. “Maybe the guy [it] from someone who sold it to him. But I can’t imagine Elon Musk giving Cybertrucks to Russia.”
In response, the South African-Canadian magnate suggested that the Chechen leader, who encouraged and led the country’s infamous 2017 purge of homosexuals, was probably just joking.
“This is completely false,” Musk wrote. “He’s trolling.”
Ultimately, the serial entrepreneur is probably telling the truth, but given his strangely pro-Russian stance during Putin’s lengthy invasion of Ukraine, it makes sense that people would believe the Chechen warlord here.
More about Musk: Elon Musk may have to sell Tesla shares to keep dying Twitter afloat.
