Elon Musk defied a chorus of international criticism and jumped into Germany’s election with both boots, telling an online audience that far-right leader Alice Weidel was “the leading candidate” to run Europe’s biggest economy.
Unfortunately, he also got her name wrong.
“Welcome to the conversation with Alice Weidel, who is currently the leading candidate to run Germany, I think,” Musk declared, pronouncing it incorrectly as “Veedle.”
The early exchanges in the live audio discussion on Musk’s X social media platform were eclectic, ranging from solar power to the vagaries of Germany business red tape. The pair laughed together, when Weidel asked if Musk understood how burdensome German business rules could be.
“As a matter of fact I do,” he replied, describing how one of his own applications stretched to 25,000 pages and had to be printed multiple times.
Weidel was clearly delighted by the opportunity to put her case to the public without, as she argued, being interrupted or falsely castigated as leader of an “extremist” party. She turned her fire on Germany’s “woke” education system.
“We have this insane, wokeish, socialist, leftist agenda in our educational system. So, the young people, they don’t learn anything in school, university,” she said. “They just learn about gender studies.”
Musk replied: “It sounds like the woke mind virus has infected Germany quite badly.”
Weidel is co-chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, a far-right political group currently in second place in opinion polls ahead of national elections being held on Feb. 23. Senior German officials have objected to Musk’s endorsement of Weidel and EU officials will be monitoring the interview to see whether it breaks the bloc’s digital rules.
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