Did Elon Musk Endorse RFK Jr?
Highlighting the generational divide in media consumption
By Liam Sturgess, The Kennedy Beacon
Early this morning, FOX News published an article, in part titled “Elon Musk goes viral for endorsing RFK Jr. speech hitting baby boomers, praising Joe Rogan,” in which Kennedy criticized how boomers consume the news. Musk’s response was just two words: “He’s right.”
The headline may lead some to conclude Musk has formally endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent run for president. He has not. However, he has aligned himself with a core Kennedy belief that the candidate has repeated numerous times on the campaign trail: boomers by and large watch legacy media, whereas younger voters listen to a wide range of voices on podcasts and numerous independent platforms.
The speech in question was published by Chief Nerd to X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) this past Saturday, January 27, taken from a recent campaign event. “The one cohort I’m doing poorly with is Baby Boomers,” Kennedy admitted, despite the fact that this generation grew up in the era of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. “[Baby Boomers] have a disability, which is they only get their news from ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times. And if I were living in that information ecosystem, I’d have a low opinion of myself as well.”
On the other hand, Kennedy added, people in younger generations “are getting their information from long-form interviews, from podcasts… they’re doing critical thinking and they’re not locked into these orthodoxies.”
Kennedy has focused much of his campaign on engaging these new, and often independent, media platforms. He famously appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience in June 2023, where the 3+ hour conversation ranged from environmental issues to vaccine safety, free of the censorship that degrades the mainstream media environment where older generations remain transfixed.
“If you’re young, and you have parents, you need to lock them up somewhere and make them listen to a Joe Rogan podcast,” Kennedy advised, earning laughter from the crowd.
However, it appears that the legacy media twisted Elon Musk’s response to Chief Nerd’s video clip in order to get more play from the story. According to outlets such as FOX News and Newsweek, “He’s right” constituted an endorsement from Musk. But the legacy media failed to focus on the heart of the matter. Rather than explore their own roles in the misleading media environment Kennedy described, the notoriously partisan FOX and Newsweek chose to make the story about a “retweet” from Musk, and the praise he and Kennedy offered Joe Rogan.
Still, Musk’s reply on X and the subsequent social media barrage has served to bring further attention to the need to heal the generational divide over how we consume our media, no matter one’s political affiliation.
Liam Sturgess is an investigative reporter for The Kennedy Beacon. He is also a writer for the Canadian Covid Care Alliance and founder of Sturgess Prime Productions. He was the founding co-host and producer of the Rounding the Earth podcast, and publishes a Substack series called Microjourneys.
Clear unbiased information. What a concept. I think I see it catching on.
This boomer is really offended by this assumption. I've all but completely abandoned legacy media myself. I listen to Joe Rogan and Jimmy Dore and Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and more. And I'm not the only one. What, you don't want our votes?
I am sympathetic to younger people's resentment of us boomers. I think you are seeing that on average younger people are more open to RFKJr.'s campaign, and you are right to make your appeal to them. But don't pander to them by smearing their elders with too broad a brush. My political heart died with Mr. Kennedy's father, and you're telling it not to bother struggling back to life.