'I find it worrying': European leaders fire back after Elon Musk's hostile X posts

LONDON ? He's the world's richest person. He's extremely, doggedly active on social media. He'll have a cost-cutting role in Donald Trump's administration when the president-elect is sworn in later this month.

And he's frequently bashing international governments whose politics he dislikes and praising far-right figures.

Technology mogul Elon Musk has been using his X social media platform in recent weeks to unleash a torrent of criticisms and accusations aimed at political figures in Britain, Germany and Canada.

Though he did not mention him by name, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a news conference on Monday in response to a reporter's question that Musk and others like him who disseminate false information online had gone too far. Starmer pushed back on them for "spreading lies" that amounted to the "poison of the far right." He said those doing so "were not interested in victims."

Musk has been appointed by Trump along with Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk was a major donor to Trump's presidential campaign. The two have been spending a lot of time together including at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach, Fla. residence.

What's Elon Musk been saying?

In Britain, Musk has called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a far-right extremist who was jailed for 18 months in October for repeating a libelous claim about a Syrian refugee schoolboy attacking girls.

Musk has said "America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government." He's accused Starmer of failing to bring to justice "rape gangs" connected to a series of cases from a decade ago when groups of men in towns in northern England, most from Pakistani backgrounds, were tried for grooming and abusing dozens of girls. Some men received lengthy jail sentences in connection with their crimes. Britain's previous Conservative government held an inquiry to establish how the episodes were allowed to happen, but many of its 2022 recommendations have yet to be implemented.

In Germany, Musk has said that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is openly critical of Islam, has been accused of Holocaust minimization and opposes mass immigration, is the only one that can "save" the country. He's said Germany is "on the brink of economic and cultural collapse" and that many Germans feel their concerns are "ignored by the establishment."

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In Canada, Musk has called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced his intention to resign on Monday, an "insufferable fool" after he characterized Kamala Harris’ U.S. presidential loss to Trump as a setback for women’s progress. He's praised Canadian political firebrand Pierre Poilievre, a Trump-inspired populist who's railed against government bureaucracy and inefficiencies and claimed that a climate change-related carbon tax in Canada would lead to "mass hunger and malnutrition."

What is Musk trying to achieve?

Musk's supporters say he's doing what others, particularly in the media, are failing to do.

He's "highlighting the truth, asking who was responsible for this grotesque failure, and asking why politicians are not doing more," Matt Goodwin, a right-wing British political commentator who researches populist political movements, wrote in an email newsletter Sunday, referring to the grooming cases in northern England from a decade ago.

Goodwin's newsletter was titled, "Elon Musk isn't the problem; legacy media is the problem."

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Musk's detractors say he appears to be doing what he did in the U.S. when he used his influence to help elect Trump: promoting extreme political figures like Robinson and wading into controversial spaces where he may not have a grasp of the detail or sense of the bigger picture. An independent, damming report published in 2022 in Britain found that local police and officials missed numerous opportunities to prevent abuse in the grooming cases stretching back to 2005.

"Elon Musk is an American citizen and perhaps ought to focus on issues on the other side of the Atlantic,” Andrew Gwynne, a health minister in Starmer's Labour Party government said during a Friday in a British radio interview.

“Had Elon Musk really paid attention to what’s been going on in this country, he might have recognized that there’ve already been inquiries,” Gwynne noted.

In recent days, Musk has also appeared to change his mind about Nigel Farage, saying the leader of the right-wing Reform UK "doesn't have what it takes" to lead the political party. Farage is a close Trump ally. Musk appears have soured on Farage because the latter does not back Musk's support for Robinson, the jailed far-right activist.

What's next for Musk on the world stage?

Musk is poised to hold a live X discussion with Alice Weidel, who is running to be chancellor in Germany's snap election on Feb. 23. That conversation could happen as early as this week.

Weidel is the chair of the AfD party, which is being monitored by German authorities for being a suspected extremist organization. Its leaders have been accused of xenophobia, antisemitism and the party campaigns on an aggressive anti-immigration platform. AfD is polling at about 20% nationally, in second place behind the Christian Democratic Union party, at 30%. The CDU is a center-right, conservative party.

Musk did something similar ? an interview on X ? with Trump last year on the campaign trail when a series of questionable and false claims about global warming, immigration and inflation went largely unchallenged. In the interview, which was beset by technical glitches, Trump denounced criminal cases and lawsuits against him without any skepticism from Musk, who at one point attacked "abuse of the legal system."

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France's President Emmanuel Macron and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store added their voices to the growing chorus of European leaders who appeared troubled by Musk's X posts.

"Ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner of one of the world’s largest social networks would be supporting a new international reactionary movement and intervening directly in elections, including in Germany," Macron on Monday. “I find it worrying that a man with enormous access to social media and huge economic resources involves himself so directly in the internal affairs of other countries,” said Store.

Musk did not respond to a question posed to him on his X platform about the pushback to his comments he has been receiving from European political figures.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: European leaders fire back after Elon Musk's hostile X posts