Elon Musk has defended a gesture many critics called a ‘Nazi salute’ in the latest episode of this bizarre saga.

If you’re getting tired of seeing the Tesla and SpaceX CEO everywhere you look, I’ve got some bad news for you – he doesn’t look to be going anywhere.

According to the Trump Administration, the billionaire is ‘the face of the Department of Government Efficiency’, despite not being the administrator.

Musk even conducted a Q&A session with his son in the Oval Office next to the president, who stayed silent.

But now, the tech entrepreneur has tried to explain, as a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast, why he did this:

Musk carried out the odd-looking gesture after President Trump pledged that he would send American astronauts to Mars at the Capitol One Arena.

After thanking the crowd for the victory over Kamala Harris, he thumped his chest to cheers, before shooting his right arm up in an angular motion at the sky.

He then did the same thing again, facing towards the American flag.

The South African-born businessman responded to claims on X not long after, claiming that he has ‘voted Democrat’ in the past, but has described them as ‘the party of division & hate’ at the moment.

He added: “Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold…” which he followed up by later saying: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

But in the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, Musk spoke about the ‘salute’ among a range of other topics in a three-hour chat.

Musk was slammed for the gesture (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Musk has now insisted that his alleged ‘Nazi salute’ was actually ‘meant in the most positive spirit possible’.

When host Rogan highlighted: “You did it with a little enthusiasm that probably wouldn’t be recommended with hindsight,” Musk only doubled down.

The 53-year-old said of those that criticised the gesture: “It’s deliberate propaganda. They know it was obviously not meant in a negative way. I’d literally said my heart goes out to you and the entire speech was very positive.

“I was being very enthusiastic about the future in space. It was a great crowd.”

He went to call the allegations the gesture was a ‘Nazi salute’ ‘coordinated propaganda’ from ‘the legacy media’, adding: “Hundreds of people saying it simultaneously, they just got their instructions.”

Following the gesture, a change was made to his Wikipedia page, which read that ‘the gesture was compared to a Nazi salute or fascist salute’.

Furious, he took to X to write: “Since legacy media propaganda is considered a ‘valid’ source by Wikipedia, it naturally simply becomes an extension of legacy media propaganda!”

He later added: “Defund Wikipedia until balance is restored!”

Musk doubled down on the salute, insisting it didn’t mean anything negative (YouTube/PowerfulJRE)

Elon Musk’s daughter also posted a cryptic message following the incident, posting on social media: “I’m just gonna say let’s call a spade a f**king spade.

“Especially if there were two spades done in succession based on the reaction of the first spade.”

Quickly backtracking, she said she was ‘clearly only talking about card suits’, adding that she has ADHD and that it was ‘clearly’ an accident.

“For those who can read between the lines, do y’all understand how f**king easy this is to do? Plausible deniability honey. Just saying.”

Elon Musk has claimed it’s somewhere in the ‘Ukraine area’ that caused X to go down yesterday.

Thousands of users reported problems with the platform on 10 March as the tech boss said it has been hit by a ‘massive cyberattack’.

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk posted. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”

And ever ‘tracing’ where this attack came from, he’s now accused part of the war-torn country amid recent heated discussions with the US.

Although, he still admitted in the interview with Fox Business Network on Monday afternoon: “Well, we’re not sure exactly what happened.”

He then went on to say: “But there was a massive cyber-attack to try and bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.”

With relations between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy having soured somewhat lately, Musk has been pretty outspoken in criticising the Ukrainian government.

Over the weekend, the Tesla CEO claimed the eastern European country’s ‘entire front line’ would collapse if he turned off his Starlink satellite communications.

Elon Musk claims the cyberattack came from the ‘Ukraine area’ (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

And also yesterday, he called US Senator Mark Kelly a ‘traitor’ for going to Ukraine over the weekend – the Democrat said the visit ‘proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people’.

“Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do,” Senator Kelly replied on X.

Beside his accusation of the problem coming from the ‘Ukraine area’, an expert has backed up that yesterday’s outages on the platform could indeed be down to a cyberattack.

Alp Toker, director of Netblocks which monitors the connectivity of web services, told the BBC: “What we’ve been seeing is consistent with what we’ve seen in past denial of service attacks, rather than a configuration or coding error in the platform.”

Musk has been critical of Ukraine. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

He added that Netblocks had seen a number of major outages for over six hours yesterday with ‘each having global impact’.

“This is amongst the longest X/Twitter outages we’ve tracked in terms of duration, and the pattern is consistent with a denial of service attack targeting X’s infrastructure at scale,” he added.

When a user responded to Musk’s post about there being cyberattacks yesterday, they wrote: “They want to silence you and this platform.”

To which the billionaire boss replied: “Yes.”

It’s hard to tell, but I think Donald Trump is very fond of Sunita Williams’ hair.

The NASA astronaut – along with colleague Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore – has been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June 2024.

They were only supposed to be there for eight days, but were forced to extend their stay due to technical issues with the spacecraft, as well as Joe Biden’s alleged reluctance to bring them home, says Wilmore.

President Trump on the other hand promised on Thursday (7 March) to use his sidekick and SpaceX boss Elon Musk to work on their return to Earth.

Watch below as the 78-year-old takes time out to compliment Williams’ zero gravity hair-do:

“Biden left them up there,” Trump said to the reporters in the Oval Office.

“We have two astronauts that are stuck in space. I have asked Elon (Musk), I said, ‘Do me a favour. Can you get them out?’ He said, ‘Yes.’

“He is preparing to go up, I think in two weeks.”

He claims that the world’s richest man is ‘right now preparing a ship to go up’ and get them.

“And I see the woman with the wild hair, good, solid head of hair she’s got. There’s no kidding, there’s no games with her hair,” Trump added.

Donald Trump is a fan of Sunita Williams’ hair (NASA)

Addressing the two astronauts, he said: “We love you, and we’re coming up to get you. And you shouldn’t have been up there so long.”

Things then got a little weirder, as the POTUS added: “We’re going to get them out. We’re coming up to get you.

“They’ve been left up there. I hope they like each other, but they’ve been… maybe they’ll love each other, I don’t know, but they’ve been left up there. Think of it.

“There’s a danger up there too. It can have some failures up there. That would be very bad. You got to get them out.”

With Musk’s SpaceX being tasked with bringing the crew back to Earth, Wilmore and Williams are expected to return no earlier than 19 March.

The US President spoke to reporters from the Oval Office today (C-SPAN)

The pair were asked in a press conference on Tuesday (4 March) if the Biden administration declined Musk’s offer to bring them back earlier.

“I can only say that Mr Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual,” Wilmore claimed.

“So I believe him. I don’t know all those details, and I don’t think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.”

Musk added on X: “The astronauts were only supposed to be up there for eight days and now have been there for eight months.

“SpaceX could have sent up another Dragon and brought them home six months ago, but the Biden-Harris White House (not NASA) refused to allow it.

“President Trump asked to bring them back as soon as possible and we are doing so.”

Elon Musk could be spotted making a very bizarre gesture after Donald Trump confirmed his pledge to send US astronauts to Mars during his inaugural address.

We are once again in the era of a Donald Trump presidency, which means that things are once again about to get very interesting.

The past few months have seen Trump forge a close friendship with tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with the 53-year-old even earning the role of government efficiency tsar.

We’re still none the wiser on what the Department of Government Efficiency (which of course has the acronym DOGE) will actually do, but Musk’s influence can already be seen as Trump promised to send astronauts to Mars during his inaugural address.

Elon Musk at the inauguration (CHIP SOMODEVILLA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

“We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” Trump told attendees at the US Capitol.

Before we even begin to speculate over the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ about sending astronauts to space, let’s first dissect Musk’s reaction to the announcement.

The cameraman did an astounding job of panning over to Musk once Mars was mentioned, given that it’s his lifelong obsession, and managed to catch his very goofy real-time response.

Watch the moment below:

In the clip, Musk can be seen grinning from ear-to-ear and mouthing something to the camera, before giving a final thumbs up. Just in case his first two reactions didn’t signify his pleasure with the announcement.

Of course the reaction of a man who (despite being very famous) still has no idea how to act on camera has garnered plenty of reactions online.

“Elon immediately looking for the memes,” one person responded to the clip, while a second added: “Elon Musk’s reaction when Trump says we will plant an American flag on Mars is pure gold.”

It would appear that Barron Trump doesn’t share Elon’s fascination with Mars (X)

Meanwhile others were quick to point out that while Musk looked excited at the prospect of humans reaching Mars, Trump’s 18-year-old son Barron was much less enthusiastic.

“Barron’s mind is still in the trenches,” one user joked, as a second commented: “Barron tired of hearing about Mars.”

“Barron Trump is not going to Mars, that’s for sure,” a third added.

Although Barron appears to have very little interest in visiting the Red Planet, making it to Mars is somewhat of a lifelong goal for Musk, who once told SXSW crowds in 2013: “I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact.”

Everything Trump has pledged to do as 47th US President

Delaying the TikTok ban

After TikTok went dark on January 19 in the US, it was bought back after mere hours with a message reading: “Welcome back! Thank you for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the US!”

Trump will reportedly sign an executive order to delay the ban saying he wants to ‘make a deal to protect our national security’.

Immigration

In a statement during a rally at Madison Square Garden during his presidential race, he said: “On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.

“I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, then kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”

Planning over 100 executive orders

It’s been reported by AP that Trump plans on preparing over 100 executive orders on his first day in the White House. Trump’s allies have reportedly spent time preparing documents that Trump can sign quickly, on issues such as deportation, school gender policies and vaccine mandates, without input from congress.

“There will be a substantial number,” said Senator John Hoeven, R-N.D.

Making hidden government files public

Including the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr., Trump promised at his recent rally in Washington D.C that, in a bid to increase government transparency, he will be making these disclosures in ‘the coming days’.

“And in the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

‘Make Greenland Great Again Act’

In a bid that has not gone down well with Greenlanders, taking to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said: “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.

“Greenland is an incredible place. The people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation. We will protect it, cherish it, from a very vicious outside World. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”

January 6 pardons

Trump’s loss in the 2020 election led to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in turn resulting in the arrests of a number of Trump supporters.

In an interview with TIME, Trump said that looking into the cases of the rioters’ will take place in ‘the first nine minutes’ of his time in office.

In a post shared on his social media channel, Trump said: “I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.”

Getting rid of birthright citizenship

Exactly as it sounds, Trump once declared he wanted to get rid of birthright citizenship, which immediately gives citizenship to anyone born in US. Noting that this may not be possible as it’s written into the constitution, he said he wants to achieve this by executive order – bypassing congress again – ‘if we can’.

Cut federal funding for schools educating on ‘inappropriate’ topics

Speaking early last year, Trump addressed a crowd in Iowa and made plans to ‘save [the] country from destruction’.

“On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity,” he said, per NPR.

Trump also said he would target schools pushing ‘any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children’.

Making the US the ‘crypto capital’

Back in 2021, Trump called crypto a ‘scam against the dollar.’ But four years on, he’s pulled a u-turn as he vowed to make the US the ‘crypto capital of the planet’.

On social media, Trump claimed crypto would be ‘mined, minted and made in the US’.

Both he and wife Melania released their own memecoins ahead of the inauguration, while experts previously predicted Bitcoin could reach up to $250,000 this year.

Be a ‘dictator’

In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity last year, he referred to himself as a ‘dictator’ when asked if he was promising to ‘never abuse power as retribution against anybody’.

In response, Trump said: “Except for Day 1. I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”

End Green Deals

Trump has spoken previously about his plan to ‘terminate the Green New Deal’, which he dubbed the ‘Green New Scam’.

The Green New Deal was pitched by Democrats Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, but it was never signed into law.

Addressing the policies in a speech in September, Trump said: “To further defeat inflation, my plan will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam. Greatest scam in history, probably.

“We [will] rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act. I’m going to write it out in an executive order. It’s going to end on Day 1.”

Arrange green cards for college graduates

Despite making his stance on migration clear, Trump has advocated for non-US citizens to receive green cards to stay in the country if they graduate from college.

During an episode of the ‘All In’ podcast recorded this year, Trump said: “Anybody graduates from a college, you go in there for two years or four years, if you graduate, or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country […]

“Somebody graduates at the top of the class, they can’t even make a deal with the company because they don’t think they’re going to be able to stay in the country. That is going to end on Day 1.”

Scrap ‘electric vehicle mandates’

Trump plans to scrap Biden administration’s so-called electric vehicle mandate, referring to new pollution standards that incentivize auto manufacturers to increase production of electric and lower-emission vehicles.

Despite vowing to get rid of the policy on his first day, Trump told podcaster Joe Rogan the move could take ‘maybe two days, because it’s a little bit busy’.

Fire the man who indicted him

Trump faced two federal cases in relation to the 2020 election result from special counsel Jack Smith, and the future POTUS has no plans to work with him again.

Speaking on October 24, Trump told the Hugh Hewitt show he would fire Smith ‘within two seconds’: “He’ll be one of the first things addressed.”