Budget Airline Exec Calls Out Trump Enabler Elon Musk

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A simple business decision by Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary escalated into an online shouting match with Tesla CEO Elon Musk last week, culminating in a live interview in which O’Leary reminded everyone of Musk’s well-known support for US President Donald Trump. O’Leary also called Musk an “idiot,” and, well, maybe he’s got something there.

Really, Is Musk An Idiot?

How can someone be financially successful, politically powerful, and an idiot all at once? It depends on what you mean by “idiot.” For example, you may think that someone who leverages their online platform to amplify far-fight rhetoric is an idiot.

As another example, if you were a public health official during the COVID outbreak in 2020, you might think that “idiot” applies to a high profile automaker CEO who publicly breaks ranks with a safety-forward return to work plan.

More recently, you may think an idiot is an EV-producing CEO who prevailed against a powerful wall of right wing, anti-EV propaganda only to undercut his own EV sales by weighing in on foreign policy and promoting, you guessed it, right wing propaganda.

An Idiot And A Trump Enabler, Too

More broadly, “idiot” could apply to tens of millions of eligible US voters who propelled President Trump into office for a second time, either by voting for him, voting for a third-party candidate, failing to vote at all, supporting him on their media platforms, or pumping millions of dollars into his campaign coffers.

Michael O’Leary apparently falls into the camp that thinks the above activities qualify someone to be an idiot. As widely reported, the feud between Musk and O’Leary erupted earlier this month when Musk failed to convince the budget airline Ryanair to install Musk’s Starlink WiFi in its planes. While taking care to praise Starlink’s service, O’Leary cited the cost of installation and increased fuel costs as the reason for the thumbs-down.

Disregarding O’Leary’s olive branch, Musk took the issue up with his followers on X (formerly Twitter) on January 14, putting his familiar ease with smart-sounding patter to use. “I doubt they [Ryanair] can even measure the difference in fuel use accurately, especially for a one hour flight, where the incremental drag is basically zero during the ascent phase due to high angle of attack,” Musk wrote.

On January 16, the Irish program NewsTalk posted a link to an interview with O’Leary on X, and that’s where O’Leary indicated how he knows an idiot when he sees one (also reported here and here, among other places).

“And I frankly wouldn’t pay any attention to anything Elon Musk puts out in that cesspit of his called X,” O’Leary says during the interview. “He was the guy who advocated to getting Donald Trump elected. I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk.”

“He’s an idiot. Very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot,” O’Leary added.

Budget Airline Turns The Tables On Tesla CEO

Musk fired back on the same day, calling O’Leary not just an idiot, but an “utter idiot.” So there!

After reconsidering the matter, perhaps Musk sensed that falling back on the schoolyard I’m-like-rubber-you’re-like-glue chant is a show of weakness, not strength. On January 19, Musk turned up the heat, calling O’Leary a “retarded twat” on X. No shocker there, since “retarded” has a place in Musk’s regular rotation of insults that no sensible person would care to return in kind.

Of course, O’Leary has not responded in kind. Instead, he has responded by leveraging the entire exchange for  publicity. On January 21, Ryanair announced a “Ryanair’s Big ‘Idiot’ Seat Sale” alongside a cartoon that shows O’Leary cutting in front of Musk to display an “I *heart* Ryanair” sign, with the following disclaimer (in all caps, of course):

“ONLY AVAILABLE FOR ELON MUSK AND ANY OTHER ‘IDIOTS’ ON X!! BOOK ONE TODAY BEFORE MUSK GETS ONE!”

What’s Next For Elon

The flash sale has since expired, but it was all good fun for O’Leary and Ryanair while it lasted. Meanwhile, O’Leary’s publicity win is not the only sign Elon’s slip is showing. Although investors don’t seem to mind the goings-on at Tesla, the long term decline in the company’s EV sales shows no signs of reversal, and the company’s CEO has been drawing bad publicity to himself practically by the day, much of it involving to his other ventures:

January 11: Elon’s xAI is losing staggering amounts of money

January 15: Elon Musk’s xAI datacenter is generating extra electricity illegally, regulator rules

January 16: WTF is happening at xAI (a podcast featuring Sulaiman Ghori, an engineer who reportedly left xAI or was fired days after the podcast aired)

January 21: Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus 2 is nowhere near 1 gigawatt capacity, satellite imagery suggests — despite claims, site only has 350 megawatts of cooling capacity

January 22: Yes, “DOGE” did put our Social Security data at risk

January 23: China shuts down Elon Musk’s claim that Tesla FSD will be approved next month

Oh, wait, I missed something. Earlier this month people began noticing that Musk’s “Grok” chatbot was gleefully enabling X users to post non-consensual, sexualized AI-generated images on command at the click of a button, mainly females (no shock there), with many apparently underage. In response to an upswell of global outcry, Musk limited the hijinks to paid subscribers.

So, what are those paid subscribers up to? Who knows! The damage has already been done. The organization Center for Countering Digital Hate estimates that Grok AI produced 3 million of these images, of which 23,000 “appear to depict children.”

“After introducing a one-click editing feature, Elon Musk’s AI tool produced an estimated 190 sexualized, user-generated images per minute over an 11-day period,” CCDH noted in an analysis posted on January 22. CCDH listed the following examples:

• • Numerous images depicting people wearing transparent bikinis or micro-bikinis.
  • A uniformed healthcare worker with white fluids visible between her spread legs.
  • Women wearing only dental floss, saran wrap, or transparent tape.
  • The Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden wearing a bikini with white fluid on her head.

Nice try selling more EVs to women, Elon.

As for the thousands of images reportedly depicting children, that calls to mind the Ford Motor Company employee who called out “pedophile protector” when US President Donald Trump visited his workplace in Detroit earlier this month. The epithet could just as easily apply to Republican office-holders in Washington, DC, who have blocked release of the Epstein files, along with their Republican-affiliated allies in positions of influence.

In other news related to Trump and his enablers, a second person has been shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis today, January 24, just days after the Republican-controlled House (with a handful of Democrats) passed a spending bill that funds ICE’s parent agency, DHS, through September. Republicans also hold the majority of seats in the Senate, which is set to vote on the bill later this week after the oncoming snowstorm passes.

If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread. Better yet, find your representatives in Congress and let them know what you think.

Image: The budget airline Ryanair has turned the tables on Tesla CEO Elon Musk, leveraging an online feud over Musk’s Skylink service for free publicity (screenshot, courtesy of Ryanair).