OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
What appears to be a smear campaign has been launched against Elon Musk as he took over social media giant Twitter on Thursday.
Shortly after the takeover, Musk reportedly fired several top executives, including the now-former CEO, Parag Agrawal, and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The outlet added:
It wasn’t immediately clear who would step into those top positions. CNBC previously reported the firings. Mr. Musk also fired Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top legal and policy executive, and Sean Edgett, general counsel.
Now, Business Insider is reporting on a photo of Musk and Ghislaine Maxwell, recently sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of sex-trafficking girls for Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly had one conversation in 2014.
“The photo was taken in 2014 at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in California, but it didn’t make a splash on social media until 2020 when Musk took to Twitter to say he didn’t know Maxwell ‘at all.’ The staffer, who chose to remain anonymous due to potential repercussions, said the pair also discussed aliens and Musk brought up his theory that reality could be a simulation. The photo of the billionaire alongside Maxwell, a known associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was widely shared on Twitter earlier this year as well after the billionaire initially offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April,” BI reported.
What if everybody tweeted this picture of Elon Musk with Ghislaine Maxwell & tagged him? @elonmusk https://t.co/YxNNdJfQUc
— 🧛♀️☠️ The Terror Of Dublin 🎃👻 (@taradublinrocks) October 28, 2022
Not surprisingly, the photo once again appeared on Twitter this week.
“She photo-bombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago,” he tweeted in July 2020. “Real question is why VF invited her in the first place.”
The photos are being tagged with a new “context” note as part of Twitter’s new feature Birdwatch, which aims to curb misinformation on the platform.
“The photo of Musk and Maxwell was captured at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in 2014. It’s the only picture of the pair. There’s no photo evidence that suggests they conversed. Musk later responded about the picture and said he didn’t know Maxwell, and that she ‘photobombed’ him.”
A Vanity Fair staffer who was close to Maxwell and Musk at the party said that the two had engaged in some rather strange conversation, with Maxwell asking Musk whether it was possible to remove oneself from the internet, and urging Musk to destroy it.https://t.co/MiDZG2Wbv3
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 11, 2022
There is no evidence to suggest that Musk was a ‘client’ of Maxwell’s. That said, Musk went viral a few months ago when he fired a warning shot at friends and associates of Epstein:
What about Jeffrey Epstein’s clients and friends. We know he hung out with high-powered wealthy men like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates.
Those two and others like Wall Street titan Leon Black are all saying they had no idea what Jeffrey Epstein was doing and regret giving him the credibility that came with meeting them.
But is that believable?
As far as the platform goes, one of the first moves Musk is making is getting rid of all of the lifetime bans of Twitter users who were banned for speech infractions, which would presumably include former President Donald Trump, Bloomberg News reported.
Others who have had their accounts banned include Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laura Loomer, Project Veritas Founder James O’Keefe, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos.
“The person with knowledge of Musk’s account reinstatement intentions said it’s unclear whether Trump will be allowed to return to Twitter,” Bloomberg said.
Musk has said previously that Twitter should not have banned the former president and that he should be reinstated.
“It was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” he said in May. “I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
“He’s now going to be on Truth Social, as will a large part of the right in the United States. So, I think this could end up being, frankly, worse than having a single forum where everyone can debate,” he said.
“I would reverse the Twitter ban. Obviously, I don’t own Twitter yet, so this is not a thing that will definitely happen,” he said.
Earlier this week, the SpaceX and Tesla founder gave off a huge clue that the deal was proceeding, and he did so in the most Musk of ways.
He posted a video clip of himself walking into Twitter headquarters in San Francisco carrying a sink, adding: “Entering Twitter HQ – Let that sink in!”
Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022
