Elon Musk lashed out CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, calling the show’s staff the “biggest liars in the world” and saying they “deserve a long prison sentence.”
Musk’s comments came after 60 Minutes posted a tweet promoting its latest episode. The tweet included a clip from an interview with Andrew Natsios, a former USAID administrator, who criticized former President Trump’s claim that the agency was corrupt. Natsios defended USAID as being “the most accountable aid agency in the world,” which directly countered Musk’s previous statements that DOGE needed to shut down the agency to stop fraud and waste.
Musk responded by calling 60 Minutes “the biggest liars in the world” and accusing them of spreading lies to interfere with the last election. He also suggested that the show’s staff should be jailed, saying they “deserve a long prison sentence.”
In his post, Musk shared a clip from a past 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris during the election. President Trump had criticized the network for editing that interview, and even sued CBS. As a result, both CBS and the FCC released the full, unedited version of the interview. Multiple reporters reviewed all the released material and found that CBS had followed proper procedure in editing the interview and concluded that Trump’s claims were false and that CBS had done everything correctly.
The 60 Minutes episode also featured a segment about online insults under German law. In response, Vice President JD Vance shared his own thoughts on social media, arguing that criminalizing speech is a dangerous idea that could hurt US-European relations.
Vance later responded to comments from Mehdi Hasan about a dispute between the White House and the Associated Press. Vance explained that there’s a big difference between not letting a reporter into a press briefing and jailing people for speaking out.
Vance’s tweets, which pushed back against Musk’s suggestion that journalists should be jailed for content Musk disagrees with, caught the attention of many, including Senator Chris Murphy. Murphy shared the tweets side-by-side and commented, “Now do you guys.”
