It sure has been interesting watching how tech billionaire-turned-culture warrior Elon Musk has responded to reactions over his troubling, Nazi-reminiscent gesture from the stage of President Donald Trump’s inaugural parade. When other folks—for example, then-Oakland A’s bench coach Ryan Christenson—have accidentally made a gesture similar to the one you see in the photo above, they have acknowledged the gaffe with an explanation and apology and have moved on. But not Elon Musk, a man who apparently has time to pull the president’s strings, run multiple companies, and tweet with the intensity of a neighborhood crank who’s lost both their Citizen and Nextdoor.com passwords. If you’re that guy, you bring Taylor Swift into the mix, suggesting that she is somehow like you.
As you likely recall (in part because Musk keeps reminding you), the Tesla founder made the problematic gesture while behind the podium at Monday’s post-inauguration rally at Washington, DC’s Capital One Arena. The billionaire Trump intimate thanked supporters of the freshly-sworn-in president, then extended his arm forward, his palm downturned, in a gesture the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes as “the most common white supremacist hand sign in the world.” He then repeated the gesture to the crowd sitting behind him on stage.
The ADL, for their part, characterized the move as “an awkward gesture,” but others, such as American University extremism expert Kurt Braddock, were less forgiving. “People shouldn’t doubt what they saw,” Braddock told The Independent. “I know what I saw, I know what the response to it was among elements of the extreme right, including neo-Nazis.”
According to the Associated Press, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and other alt-right fringe groups celebrated Musk’s gesture, believing it to be a message to their organizations that their agendas were moving forward. And as opposed to roundly shutting those claims down, Musk responded by first claiming that criticism of the gesture was “sooo tired,” followed by the sleeping emoji. Then he tweeted a number of Nazi-themed puns, followed by the laughing-with-tears emoji.
That was apparently a bridge too far for the ADL, who said via statement—but without mentioning Musk—that “Making inappropriate and highly offensive jokes that trivialize the Holocaust only serve to minimize the evil and inhumanity of Nazi crimes, denigrate the suffering of both victims and survivors and insult the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah.”
When he wasn’t making light of the Holocaust, Musk was busy sharing salute-defending commentary from other X users, because that is the best and smartest way to ensure that everyone knows you’re a secure person who can rise above criticism. Among those defenses were two still images of Taylor Swift with an outstretched arm, which per the SF Chronicle, “had been digitally altered.”
This isn’t the first time the newly anointed head of the Department of Government Efficiency has tried to lump himself in with Swift. After the singer endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024, the father of 12 (that we know of) tweeted, “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”
Neither Swift nor her representatives have publicly responded to Musk’s jibes, which probably doesn’t bother him at all. Nope, not even a little bit.
