John Oliver’s Most Vicious Roasts of Elon Musk, 2023 Holiday Edition

Running Down the Varieties of Musk Villainy

“There’s ‘Why no, Mr. Bond, I and my child bride expect you to die.’

“There's ‘I just bought your media company and I’m about to strip you for parts.’ 

“There’s ‘Space’s First Racist Sheriff.’ 

“And finally ‘The less fuckable reimagining of Billy Zane’s character in Titanic.’

“Truly, the man has range.” 

The Mark Zuckerberg Fight to the Finish

“(Musk) even challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight, to which Zuckerberg replied, ‘Send me location.’ And may I suggest to both of them: Interior, volcano.” 

“It is hard to say what's most embarrassing — the fact that the world's richest man is playing the ‘You’re not breaking up with me, I’m breaking up with you’ card or that he’s doing it to confused silence while wearing a jacket from Ralph Lauren's Midlife Crisis Collection. He’s clearly going for ‘bad boy’ there but ended up looking more like red-pilled Chip from Rescue Rangers.”

The Roller-Coaster Stock Prices of His Companies

“He can claim the twin distinctions of being both the richest person in the world and the first person ever to lose $200 billion, which is hard to even wrap your head around. It's like hearing someone won a marathon after accidentally running 200 miles in the wrong direction.”

His Place in Genius History

“History is littered with titans of business who were shitty or broken people, from Thomas Edison through Henry Ford through Steve Jobs. The difference is, by and large, they didn't open up their brain to let the whole world have a constant look inside. The glimpses we get can be terrifying and that brings us back to Twitter. Musk has been a heavy user for years, putting out classic tweets like, ‘I put the art in fart,’ ‘69 days after 420 again haha’ and ‘Technically alcohol is a solution.’” 

The Twitter/X Debacle

“I don't have time to run through every bad decision that (Musk) has made at Twitter, although real quick:

• He cut about 80% of the staff 
• Dissolved the Trust and Safety Council 
• Blew up the verification system 
• Exercised the same censorship he claimed to be against 
• Reactivated the accounts of various White supremacists 
• Released the Twitter files in which he basically mistook the emails of various feckless, left-leaning tech weenies struggling with the impossible job of content moderation for a vast elite conspiracy to silence right-wing dipshits
• Changed its name to X 
• Put a gigantic X on the building which he then took down 
• And just this week, reversed his earlier decision and let Alex Jones back onto the site — a decision that's being met with resounding praise from Big Loud Fucks Quarterly.” 

Musk’s Oversized Influence

“One Pentagon spokesman said that he’d let a reporter interview an official only if Musk gave permission, saying ‘We'll talk to you if Elon wants us to.’ Which isn't great. ‘You know, before I respond on behalf of the mightiest military on Earth, let me just run this up the chain and make sure it's cool with Admiral Dank Memes 420.’”