Elon Musk slams lockdown orders as ‘fascist’
Eccentric entrepreneur Elon Musk, the chief of electric carmaker Tesla, on Wednesday issued repeated calls for reopening the US economy quickly.
During a conference call after Tesla reported a surprise first quarter profit, Musk issued an expletive-laden diatribe on lockdown orders, which have restricted people to their homes in an attempt to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
“Frankly, I would call it forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights,” Musk said. “It will cause great harm not just to Tesla but to many companies.”
“This is fascist. This is not democratic,” he added.
Public health officials across the country have said the stay at home orders are essential to blunting the outbreak and praise the measures for helping to lessen the coronavirus death toll, which has topped 60,000 people in the US.
Earlier on Wednesday Musk used his large social media platform to call for reopening the US economy quickly.
“FREE AMERICA NOW,” Musk tweeted, in echoes of President Donald Trump’s social media posting earlier this month calling to “LIBERATE” US states. Musk’s tweet got over 47,000 retweets.
Musk, who also heads up Space X, has more than 33 million followers on Twitter.
He is still facing legal problems, stemming from him issuing a tweet saying he would take Tesla private and that funding was secured, in a bizarre event that led to regulators launching investigations.
He recently filed court papers to reach a settlement on contempt charges, after he tweeted information regulators viewed as violating a deal, in which he pledged not to post material information about his company.
Musk in March took to Twitter to push the idea that anti-malarial drugs might help treat Covid-19.
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The idea was aggressively touted by Trump for weeks, until evidence emerged that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were likely not effective and even dangerous, potentially causing heart problems.
The US Food and Drug Administration has since warned against using the two drugs outside of clinical trials or hospital settings. (dpa)
