Elon Musk Muses About Buying MSNBC: “How Much Does It Cost?”

Elon Musk, the billionaire who heads up SpaceX, Tesla, and X, is considering—according to a slew of memes shared on his social media platform this weekend—adding another company to that portfolio: MSNBC.

“Hey @elonmusk I have the funniest idea ever!!!” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X Friday, atop a post that said the news network MSNBC was for sale. “How much does it cost?” Musk replied, adding minutes later, “The most entertaining outcome, especially if ironic, is most likely,” with a laughing emoji.

Their posts come after the news on Wednesday that MSNBC’s parent company, Comcast, is looking to spin the network off into a new entity that would house MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen, E!, Syfy, and the Golf Channel. While it’s unclear what the future of MSNBC could look like under Comcast’s new strategy, that didn’t stop Musk and those in his orbit from running with the idea that the billionaire would acquire the left-leaning network.

The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles replied to Trump Jr.’s post, “If you guys need a replacement for Rachel Maddow, I know a guy.” Podcaster Joe Rogan chimed in, also offering to take the place of Maddow, MSNBC’s leading anchor who has been a journalist for two decades. “If you buy MSNBC I would like Rachael Maddow’s job. I will wear the same outfit and glasses, and I will tell the same lies.”

“How amazing would this be?” Musk answered with a star-eyed emoji. “Deal,” Musk replied again a couple hours later. Fire emoji. Rocket emoji. Laughing emoji.

Musk, who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, spent the next day or so sharing memes about the potential acquisition, including multiple about Maddow individually.

“The years really fly by,” Musk captioned a meme entitled “The Evolution of Rachel Maddow.” It features images of the anchor from 1990 to 2020, and the 2024 photo is of businessman Mark Cuban.

Then there’s the one where he responded to a headline from conservative Christian news satire website The Babylon Bee reading, “Musk Announces Plan To Buy MSNBC And Turn It Into A News Network,” saying, “Crazy idea, but it just might work!”

Another account posted that MSNBC’s new owners could be Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, Rogan, and Musk—to which the X owner replied with a singular laughing emoji.

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Musk also shared the image of himself, Trump, Donald Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the former president’s plane from last week—except this time, it was edited to look like they were on the set of MSNBC.

With the election of Trump, Musk—the richest person in the world with a net worth of $334.3 billion—is set to gain even more power.

During the final months of the 2024 campaign, Musk reportedly poured over $118 million into the political action committee he set up to get Trump back to the White House. In October, he even rolled out a stunt to dole out a million dollars a day leading up to the election to a swing state voter who pledged to support the First and Second Amendments.

And his efforts, as seen on Election Day, have seemingly paid off.

The day after the election, according to CNN, “investors were already betting that Trump’s win will also be a win for Musk’s major public holding, Tesla (TSLA), sending shares of his electric vehicle maker up an immediate 13% at the market open, and closing regular trading up nearly 15%. That lifted the value of the 411 million shares of Tesla that Musk owns outright by more than $15 billion.”

CNN’s Chris Isidore noted that “works out to a 12,761% return on the $119 million he donated to Trump.”

Musk’s musings about MSNBC this weekend were joined by a long string of other posts, including, in part, an image of him as some kind of warrior, multiple references to the movie The Matrix, some anti-immigrant content, a “ginormous, demented laughing emoji,” a bemoaning of the “woke mind parasite,” him with a gun, Michelle Monaghan in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang with a gun, “Actual footage” of Musk “after @realDonaldTrump won,” and stuff about going to Mars.

“In about 40 min, it would be 9 am in the U.S., Elon will wake up and start shitposting like yesterday again,” one account wrote early Sunday morning. Musk quoted it with both a bullseye and a laughing emoji.