A crowd at a Dave Chappelle comedy event on Sunday night. The audience at the event booed and cheered tech entrepreneur Elon Musk in different measures.
The comic invited the Tesla CEO to the stage at a memorable Punchline Comedy Club performance at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
The audience can be seen jeering Musk in a video posted to Twitter. Elon Musk’s recent Twitter acquisition has drawn criticism owing to worries of mass layoffs and laxer content regulation.
“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle tells the audience. A number of audience members cheered — though there was also a loud chorus of boos, too.
“You weren’t expecting this, were you?” Musk tells Chappelle, following the boos. Chappelle responds: “It sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience.”
“All these people that are booing, I’m just pointing out the obvious — they have terrible seats in the stadium,” Chappelle says later in the video.
The Twitter account of the person who submitted the video appears to have been suspended or deleted, with the message: “This Tweet is from an account that no longer exists.”
When approached by CNBC, Twitter—which fired several communications professionals as part of its effort to reduce its headcount by about half—was not immediately available for comment.
James Yu, a Twitter user who claimed to have attended the Chappelle event, wrote on his account: “A good 80% of the stadium boos. 18k persons
Dave offered him many opportunities to talk, but all he did was put his hands in his pockets, Yu said. “I felt bad for him. I’m by no means an Elon fanboy, more of a centrist. I wanted to shake him: for the love of god, man, say something and pretend it’s a tweet!!”
Elon Musk received criticism for a tweet sent out on Sunday that targeted Anthony Fauci
Musk replied to the jeers on Monday in a tweet. “Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter). It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists… but nahhh.”
Democrats, LGBTQ activists, and others have taken offense at the conservative tycoon’s statements.
Musk received criticism for a tweet sent out on Sunday that targeted Anthony Fauci. The departing chief medical advisor for the United States and the face of the administration’s reaction to Covid-19. The remark fueled a firestorm of online harassment and conspiratorial ideas aimed at the seasoned immunologist. Musk has often criticized the use of lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Many Twitter users criticized the remark for its transphobic overtones. In addition, for making transphobic jokes in his Netflix stand-up special “The Closer,” Chappelle has come under fire himself.
