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Elon Musk defends free speech, anti-DEI position in combative Don Lemon interview

Published

2 years ago

9 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Claire Chretien

Elon Musk and Don Lemon sparred over DEI, illegal immigration, and free speech in a new interview.

In an interview that aired on X, Elon Musk calmly explained to a seemingly befuddled Don Lemon the principle of free speech. Musk also spoke about the dangers of lowering standards in medical schools in the name of DEI, recently eating breakfast with former President Donald Trump, and the “woke mind virus.”

Musk was a guest on episode 1 of The Don Lemon Show, which aired on X (formerly Twitter). Around 30 minutes into the interview, Lemon pressed Musk on whether he has a responsibility to moderate “hate speech” on the platform. After a back-and-forth, Musk ultimately got to the heart of the matter when he articulated: “Freedom of speech only is relevant when people you don’t like say things you don’t like. Otherwise it has no meaning.”

Later in the interview, Musk emphasized that he “acquired X in order to preserve freedom of speech in America, the First Amendment. I’m gonna stick to that. And if that means making less money [from advertisers], so be it.”

‘Moderation is a propaganda word for censorship’

During their free speech exchange, Lemon showed Musk screenshots of several anti-semitic and racist tweets, saying, “These have been up there for a while.”

“Are they illegal?” Musk asked.

“They’re not illegal, but they’re hateful and they can lead to violence. As I just read to you, the shooters in all of these mass shootings attributed social media to radicalizing them,” Lemon retorted.

“So Don, you love censorship, is what you’re saying,” smirked Musk.

He went on to say, “Moderation is a propaganda word for censorship… Look, if something’s illegal, we’re going to take it down. If it’s not illegal, then we’re putting our thumb on the scale and we’re being censors” if X removes it.

Musk also emphasized that if something is on the platform, that doesn’t necessarily mean that X is promoting it or that anyone is seeing it, and said that since he’s taken over the company, the reach of content deemed “hateful” is actually down.

DEI and the ‘woke mind virus’

An antagonistic Lemon also brought up diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Musk had recently replied to a thread on X from the Daily Wire‘s Ben Shapiro about top medical schools abandoning “all sort[s] of metrics” for surgeons in the name of DEI.

“If the standards for passing medical exams and becoming a doctor, or especially something like a surgeon – if the standards are lowered, then the probability that the surgeon will make a mistake is higher. [If] they’re making mistakes in their exam, they may make mistakes with people and that may result in people dying,” Musk articulated.

“Okay, I understand that. But that’s a hypothetical. That doesn’t mean it’s happening,” said Lemon, to which Musk replied, “I didn’t say it was happening.”

Lemon brought up medicine’s historical mistreatment of minorities, and asked, “Most doctors now are white, and there are lots of mistakes in medicine, so you’re saying that – white doctors have – bad medical care? I’m trying to understand your logic here when it comes to DEI because there’s no actual evidence of what you’re saying.”

Concerning DEI in the airline industry, Lemon went on to ask Musk if he believes women and minority pilots are inherently less intelligent and skilled, to which the billionaire replied, “No, I’m just saying that we should not lower the standards for them.”

The exchange continued:

Lemon: “Why would they be lowering the standards?”

Musk: “I don’t know, why are they lowering the standards?”

Lemon: “Just so you know, five percent of pilots are female. Four percent are black. So you’re talking about this widespread takeover of minorities and women when that’s not actually true.”

Musk: “I’m not saying there’s a widespread takeover.”

Lemon: “Well you’re saying that the standards are being lowered because of certain people.”

Lemon, sounding incredulous, also asked Musk, “Do you not believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion?”

“I think we should be – treat people according to their skills and their integrity, and that’s it,” he responded.

He later elaborated, “Woke mind virus is when you stop caring about people’s skills and their integrity and you start focusing instead on gender and race and other things that are different from that… the woke mind virus is fundamentally racist, fundamentally sexist, and fundamentally evil.”

“Don Lemon versus Elon Musk is like watching a lightweight in the ring against Mike Tyson—and I mean Tyson in his prime. The lightweight is flat on his back, and what’s more, he’s so comatose he doesn’t even know he’s been knocked out,” conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza wrote on X.

Musk may endorse a candidate for president ‘in the final stretch,’ and if he does, ‘will explain exactly why’

Earlier during the interview, Musk shared that he’d recently been at a friend’s house for breakfast and Donald Trump came by.

“Let’s just say he did most of the talking,” said Musk, but Trump didn’t say anything “groundbreaking or new.”

“I may in the final stretch endorse a candidate… if I do decide to endorse a candidate, I will explain exactly why,” Musk told Lemon, noting he’s “leaning away from Biden” but “I’ve made no secret of that.”

Lemon’s new show was originally slated to be an X production, but Musk ultimately canceled the deal, although the show is still posted on the platform. Lemon had asked for “a free Tesla Cybertruck, a $5 million upfront payment on top of an $8 million salary, an equity stake in the multibillion-dollar company, and the right to approve any changes in X policy as it relates to news content,” the New York Post reported.

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US Supreme Court Has Chance To End Climate Lawfare

Published on December 10, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

All eyes will be on the Supreme Court later this week when the justices conference on Friday to decide whether to grant a petition for writ of certiorari on a high-stakes climate lawsuit out of Colorado. The case is a part of the long-running lawfare campaign seeking to extract billions of dollars in jury awards from oil companies on claims of nebulous damages caused by carbon emissions.

In Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc., et al. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, major American energy companies are asking the Supreme Court to decide whether federal law precludes state law nuisance claims targeting interstate and global emissions. This comes as the City and County of Boulder, Colo. sued a long list of energy companies under Colorado state nuisance law for alleged impacts from global climate change.

The Colorado Supreme Court allowed a lower state trial court decision to go through, improbably finding that federal law did not preempt state law claims. The central question hangs on whether the federal Clean Air Act (CAA) preempts state common law public nuisance claims related to the regulation of carbon emissions. In this case, as in at least 10 other cases that have been decided in favor of the defendant companies, the CAA clearly does preempt Colorado law. It seems inevitable that the Supreme Court, if it grants the cert petition, would make the same ruling.

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Such a finding by the Supreme Court would reinforce a 2021 ruling by the Second Circuit Appeals Court that also upheld this longstanding principle of federal law. In City of New York v. Chevron Corp. (2021), the Second Circuit ruled that municipalities may not use state tort law to hold multinational companies liable for climate damages, since global warming is a uniquely international concern that touches upon issues of federalism and foreign policy. Consequently, the court called for the explicit application of federal common law, with the CAA granting the Environmental Protection Agency – not federal courts – the authority to regulate domestic greenhouse gas emissions. This Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, should weigh in here and find in the same way.

Boulder-associated attorneys have become increasingly open to acknowledging the judicial lawfare inherent in their case, as they try to supplant federal regulatory jurisdiction with litigation meant to force higher energy prices rise for consumers. David Bookbinder, an environmental lawyer associated with the Boulder legal team, said the quiet part out loud in a recent Federalist Society webinar titled “Can State Courts Set Global Climate Policy. “Tort liability is an indirect carbon tax,” Bookbinder stated plainly. “You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable. The oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products … The people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products.”

Oh.

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Because the climate alarm lobby hasn’t been able to force its long-sought national carbon tax through the legislative process, sympathetic activists and plaintiff firms now pursue this backdoor effort in the nation’s courts. But their problem is that the law on this is crystal clear, and it is long past time for the Supreme Court to step in and put a stop to this serial abuse of the system.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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Crime

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Published on December 10, 2025

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According to a U.S. official familiar with the operation, the seizure was executed by the Coast Guard with support from the U.S. Navy after a federal judge green-lit the warrant roughly two weeks ago. Another official told the New York Times the ship — identified as the Skipper — had been sailing under a falsified flag and has a documented history of trafficking illicit Iranian oil. The vessel, although carrying Venezuelan crude at the time, was seized because of those Iranian smuggling ties, not because of any direct connection to Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

Vanguard, a UK-based maritime risk firm, confirmed Wednesday that the Skipper fits the profile of a tanker previously sanctioned by the United States for operating under the alias Adisa while moving banned Iranian oil. A source speaking to Politico said the ship was on its way to Cuba, where state-run Cubametales intended to flip the cargo to Asian brokers — an increasingly common workaround as U.S. sanctions isolate both Havana and Caracas from traditional buyers. With most Venezuelan product now flowing to China under the sanctions regime, oil traders began recalibrating almost immediately after the news broke. Prices ticked upward modestly as markets waited to learn whether any Venezuelan crude was on board and how much would be effectively taken off the table.

Maduro, for his part, avoided directly mentioning the seizure during a speech later Wednesday, instead railing against the United States and claiming Venezuela’s military stands ready “to break the teeth of the North American empire, if necessary.” His bluster did little to obscure the reality: the Trump administration just disrupted yet another shadowy oil operation linking Caracas, Havana, and Tehran — and sent a clear signal that these networks will be confronted, tanker by tanker.

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