He doth protest too much?
Deny Everything
Elon Musk keeps denying that he gave a Chechen warlord a machine gun-equipped Cybertruck — even though the warlord in question was the one to originate the claim.
As CNN notes, Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Russia-annexed Chechen Republic who acts as Vladimir Putin's footsoldier in the region, suggested in a Telegram post over the weekend that Musk had given him the makeshift Cyber-tank.
"We received a Tesla Cybertruck from the respected Elon Musk," Kadyrov wrote, per CNN's translation. "I was happy to test the new equipment and personally saw that there’s a reason that it is called the 'Cyberbeast."
Responding to a critic on X-formerly-Twitter, Musk insisted that the claim was false, and used a slur against disabled people to drive the point home.
"Are you seriously so r*tarded that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?" the multi-hyphenate billionaire wrote. "That’s amazing."
Such eloquence from one of the world's richest men!
Fool Me Twice
After that initial denial, Kadyrov's claim continued to spread like wildfire on social media. In response, Musk doubled down on his denial, this time piggybacking off another user's post.
"I seriously doubt that Elon Musk is giving free Cybertrucks to Russian officials," the user wrote alongside a screenshot of an article repeating Kadyrov's claim. "Perhaps the guy got [it] from someone who sold it to him. But I can’t see Elon Musk giving Cybertrucks to Russia."
In response, the South African-Canadian tycoon suggested that the Chechen leader, who encouraged and led the country's infamous gay purges in 2017, was probably just joking.
"This is completely false," Musk wrote. "He is trolling."
At the end of the day, the serial entrepreneur is probably telling the truth — but given his weirdly pro-Russian stance amid Putin's lengthy invasion of Ukraine, it makes sense why people would believe the Chechen warlord here.
More on Musk: Elon Musk May Have to Sell Tesla Stock to Prop Up Dying Twitter.
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