Ben Stiller hit back at Elon Musk after the world’s richest man called him a slur over his endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election.
The beef began in late November when the world’s richest man shared a post with the Daily Mail headline “Ben Stiller says woke America killed ‘edgier’ comedy,” alongside a comment that Stiller supported Harris.
“Damn he went full r—-d,” Musk wrote above a photo of Stiller, apparently in reference to a quote from one of his movies.
During Monday’s episode of Kara Swisher’s podcast On, Stiller told the veteran tech journalist he wasn’t sure what to make of the whole thing.
“I don’t know why he has so much time on his hands that he is retweeting something that was written about me,” Stiller said.
In November, Stiller told Collider he doubted his 2008 film Tropic Thunder—a satire about a group of actors shooting a Vietnam War movie and going to extreme lengths in hopes of winning awards—would get made today. Robert Downey Jr. plays a method actor who darkens his skin to play an African-American character in the movie within a movie.
In the Collider interview, Stiller said Downey Jr.’s character was already “incredibly dicey” at the time, and that he didn’t know if the filmmakers would have attempted it in 2024.
“In this environment, edgier comedy is just harder to do,” he said. “Definitely not at the scale we made it at, too, in terms of the economics of the business.”
But rather than calling out woke Hollywood, Stiller was saying the “opposite” of what the Daily Mail wrote, Stiller told Swisher. He was commenting on the business environment, not the state of the culture, he said.
As for Musk, “I know he really likes Tropic Thunder,” he said.
“Great. Good for him. But after the Nazi salute—the double Nazi salute—I’m not just into it. Never was into it,” he added.
Elon Musk did a gesture at President Donald Trump’s inauguration that many observers likened to a Nazi salute. / Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
During a speech at President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Musk—who had poured more than a quarter-billion dollars into Trump’s campaign—smacked his chest and shot out his right arm, then turned around and did it again. Many observers quickly noted the similarities to the Nazi salute, but Musk claimed the gesture was innocent—and then unleashed a string of Nazi puns on X.
He then spent the last week attempting to purge the civil service as the head of the “Department” of Government Efficiency—an advisory panel of regular citizens that has nevertheless seized control of the federal payments system.
“What he cares about—pop culture and all that stuff—who gives a s–t?” Stiller said. “But what’s happening in terms of him being so close to the president and all the questions that brings up in terms of conflicts of interest—all that stuff is really, really concerning.”
