Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, is fond of replica guns. That is one of the takeaways from a photo of his bedside table that the SpaceX and Tesla magnate posted on Monday, which also featured an ancient Hindu weapon and several cans of caffeine-free Diet Coke, but not a coaster in sight.
The picture, shared early in the morning, shows several mystery items scattered about Musk’s nightstand. One is an 18th-century-style pistol in a wooden display box, with Emmanuel Letze’s famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” on the inside of the lid. Another is a replica revolver from the video game ‘Deus Ex’.
Off to the side is a vajra, a traditional Hindu weapon. Several opened cans of the carbonated beverage, and the corresponding circle marks on the table’s surface, complete the picture.
Whatever the purpose of the tableau, it drew half a million likes and over 50,000 responses. Musk himself followed up by apologizing for the lack of coasters.
“I’m Musket, Elon Musket,” he tweeted around noon, referring to the muzzle-loading pistol.
Around 6 am, Musk also posted a Pepe the Frog meme, showing the cartoon amphibian wearing sunglasses and lighting a cigar, captioned “I don’t care about this particular psyop, honestly.” It was unclear what this was referring to.
The attention-grabbing photos come just a month since Musk took ownership of Twitter, in a reported $44 billion leveraged buyout. He has since restored a number of banned accounts, including that of former US president Donald Trump.
Last week, he asked the user base to vote on a general amnesty for banned accounts, “provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” Over 72% of the three million respondents voted in favor.
While un-censoring Twitter has been Musk’s publicly stated objective for buying the company, the prospect of it actually happening has fueled outrage from corporate journalists and Democrat activists. Former actress Alyssa Milano, who used to be a Musk fan just a few years back, accused him of racism on Saturday and tweeted she had traded in her prized Tesla for another electric car.
“I gave back my Tesla. I bought the VW EV. I love it,” Milano said, adding she doesn’t understand how any advertiser can support a company being “in alignment with hate and white supremacy.”
Legions of Twitter users quickly reminded Milano that VW stands for Volkswagen, a German conglomerate founded in 1937 by none other than Adolf Hitler.
Claims of Twitter’s alleged platforming of “hate” came from liberal activist groups, even after the company did everything it could to appease them, Musk revealed in early November. Sign-ups on the platform are at an all-time high, and the number of monthly users could exceed a billion within 18 months, he said on Sunday.