AOC Joins Jon Stewart to Unload on Elon Musk’s ‘Nazi Salute’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jon Stewart tore into Elon Musk for making a “Nazi salute” following Monday’s inauguration of Donald Trump on Stewart’s The Weekly Show podcast, with the Democratic congresswoman asking anyone trying to explain it away, “What are you people doing?”
Ocasio-Cortez opined legacy media’s coverage of Musk’s arm gesture on the episode taped Tuesday. “You have Elon doing a Nazi salute yesterday, and they’re like, ‘Hmm, he did this curious, controversial…flagellation,’” Ocasio-Cortez said of the legacy media’s coverage, pointing out that billionaires “have the newspapers too.”
“What are you people doing? What utility do you have right now?” she asked, referring not only to Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Los Angeles Times but also The New York Times, which headlined its initial story, “Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture.”
Stewart agreed, saying later on in the show, “You have to admit, even if it’s [Musk’s] awkwardness and neurodivergence or a thing that always occurred, you have to admit it is worthy of people going like, what the f--- was that?”
Musk himself has danced around an outright denial and has since taken to making Nazi jokes online amid the backlash.
Frankly, they need better dirty tricks.
The “everyone is Hitler” attack is sooo tired 😴 https://t.co/9fIqS5mWA0— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2025
“Especially coupled with ideological turns that you’ve very clearly taken on your platform,” Stewart continued, “This all does fit together. It’s not like it comes out of nowhere.” Instead of raising alarms about the hateful gesture, Stewart said, “Everybody’s like, wow, that looked like he was doing his own air trombone.”
Ocasio-Cortez indicated the media’s complicity in that narrative. “This is actually where I think the collapse of journalism, which again, Bezos runs the [Washington] Post, right? L.A. Times is a billionaire publication. Washington Post is a billionaire publication. New York Times is like taking L’s left and right,” she said, explaining how Trump’s been able to “lie through his teeth” throughout election season about his policy plans for migrants or enacting the far-right Project 2025 plan. “This was a very different Trump that was on the campaign trail.”
But she also laid blame on Democrats for “valuing order over valuing justice,” in rolling out the carpet for Trump’s regaining power post-election interference. “I think there is this really strong attachment to order and business as usual” in the party she said, “as opposed to calling it like it is.”
Ocasio-Cortez did just that when she announced she would skipping Trump’s second inauguration on Monday by posting on Instagram: “Let me make myself clear: I don’t celebrate rapists.” Or, as she put it to Stewart, “I kept my a-- at home.”
The congresswoman told Stewart she did watch some of the event on Monday, though the part that stood out to her was not policy-related.
“I watched his speech and I watched them not be able to turn on the music for Carrie Underwood,” she said, referencing the technical problems the singer experienced during her performance.
“I felt so bad for her. She’s just standing there,” Stewart chimed in, mocking Trump’s promise to the the “administration of competence.”
“Yeah, I was like, we are off to a great start here,” Ocasio-Cortez replied with a laugh.