Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, has faced criticism from some groups for his outspoken stance on free speech. They expect his post to increase the volume of misinformation and hate speech on the platform. His tweet on Monday represented the first time the head of a major social media platform has explicitly endorsed a US political party. Musk addressed his message on Twitter to what he called “independent voters,” writing, “Shared power limits the worst excesses of both parties, so I recommend voting for a Republican Congress given that the presidency is Democratic.” President Joe Biden’s Democrats face an uphill battle to retain control of Congress in Tuesday’s vote. Nonpartisan election forecasters and polls suggest Republicans have a very strong chance of winning a majority in the House of Representatives, with control of the Senate likely to be more closely contested.
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“Hard-line Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!” Musk added on Twitter, which he bought late last month. In April, Musk said that “for Twitter to be worthy of public trust, it must be politically neutral, which essentially means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” For Twitter to be worthy of public trust, it must be politically neutral, which essentially means disrupting the far right and the far left alike —@elonmusk
Political commentary
Unlike Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Musk frequently comments on US politics. This year, he responded to a Twitter user who said he was leaning toward endorsing Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis for president in 2024 and that former President Donald Trump was too old to serve as president again. Musk has previously said he would vote Republican, but says he supports moderates on both sides of the aisle. But he has often expressed agreement with several posts by far-right activist Tom Fitton, who, according to the House committee looking into the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack, advised White House aides that Trump should declare the victory on election night 2020 before all the votes were counted. Also, in the wake of the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at the couple’s San Francisco home, Musk tweeted a link to a conspiracy theory about the incident, deleting it hours later. Musk, who was born in South Africa and spent time growing up in Canada, became a US citizen in 2002.
