Elon Musk has indicated that he may be interested in buying the liberal cable news network MSNBC.
Donald Trump Jr. shared a post on X following news that the network’s parent company Comcast is spinning off cable TV channels into a separate company.
“Hey @elonmusk I have the funniest idea ever!!!” Trump Jr. wrote.
“How much does it cost?” the world’s richest man asked.
“The most entertaining outcome, especially if ironic, is most likely,” Musk added, along with a laughing emoji.
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO may have been joking, but he made a similar comment regarding what was then Twitter years before purchasing the social media platform now known as X in 2022.
Musk shared his “love” for Twitter, with a user replying: “You should buy it then.”
“How much is it?” Musk asked at the time in December 2017. Years later, he spent $44 billion to buy the platform. He returned to that post in April 2022, adding an upside-down smiley.
There are already concerns about the possible purchase, however serious Musk may be about the prospect.
The social media landscape was forever changed by Musk’s purchase of X. One of his first acts was to reverse a ban on former President Donald Trump, whose account was locked after he failed to stop a mob of his supporters that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Bluesky, an alternative to X, has seen a growth in new users who are leaving the Musk-owned platform after Trump appointed him to a role in the president-elect’s administration.
MSNBC and other channels are already targets for the president-elect, who has threatened to push the Federal Communications Commission to revoke broadcast licenses for networks he has deemed, while calling on lawmakers to vote agaginst legislation to protect press freedoms. Musk is also proposing slashing federal dollars to publicly funded news outlets, and Trump’s pick to lead the FCC has signaled a readiness to punish networks.
Trump is also suing CBS for $10 billion, arguing that its 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris was deceptively edited, amounting to election interference — allegations the company has adamantly rejected.
Trump has also accused MSNBC of election interference, once referring to it as a “24-hour-hit job.”
The former president sued as many as 20 news organizations last year for supposedly overestimating the losses he made on his Truth Social platform.
Comcast revealed plans earlier this week to spin off a number of its channels, including MSNBC and CNBC, into a separate company.
Boston University social sciences professor Thomas Whalen told The Telegraph that the notion of Musk buying MSNBC was “a bombshell on the broadcasting landscape.”
“I think how Vladimir Putin and oligarchs have been buying the free media in Russia,” he added. “MSNBC is still a network which is providing real criticism of Trump and his policies. CNN is now playing both sides against the middle. Musk’s move seems like a hostile takeover and it bodes badly for the media moving forward.”
Craig Moffett of media analysts MoffettNathanson told CNN: “There are only two media entities that Donald Trump dislikes more than CNN. One is MSNBC and the other is NBC.”
