New year, new Elon Musk roast. With last year’s “paedophile” dig at US President Donald Trump’s administration, the Tesla CEO proved that he wouldn’t shy away from attacking anyone even remotely appearing to stand by the problematic matter. Once again, the SpaceX boss stood on business, as he took aim at The New York Times this week for the same reason.
The eye-widening development particularly grabbed quite the attention on X as the world awaits official word to learn which all high-profile personalities were involved with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein‘s nefarious crimes, including his operation of a sex-trafficking ring preying on young women and underage girls. The backlash is louder than ever as people continue to assert that no one should be above the law, regardless of their wealth or power.
Why is Elon Musk hating on NYT?
“The New York Times is utterly disgusting,” Elon Musk declared on X this Monday (US time).
His post was a response to US Senator Mike Lee’s tweet, in which the politician also called out the American news outlet for a years-old opinion-based article titled “Pedophilia: A Disorder, Not a Crime.”
On his part, Lee countered The NY Times: “No, it’s a crime. This is delusional.”
Which NYT article are they talking about?
Back in October 2014, Margo Kaplan, a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, contributed to an editorial for The New York Times, calling for paedophilia to be classified as a disorder, not a crime. (Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/opinion/pedophilia-a-disorder-not-a-crime.html)
She began the article: “THINK back to your first childhood crush. Maybe it was a classmate or a friend next door. Most likely, through school and into adulthood, your affections continued to focus on others in your approximate age group. But imagine if they did not.
“By some estimates, 1 percent of the male population continues, long after puberty, to find themselves attracted to prepubescent children. These people are living with pedophilia, a sexual attraction to prepubescents that often constitutes a mental illness. Unfortunately, our laws are failing them and, consequently, ignoring opportunities to prevent child abuse.”
She then turns to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ definition of paedophilia, describing it as an “an intense and recurrent sexual interest in prepubescent children, and a disorder if it causes a person “marked distress or interpersonal difficulty” or if the person acts on his interests.”
At the same time, Kaplan noted that laws ignore paedophilia until after the commission of a sexual offence. She then points out that with the focus being on punishment instead of prevention, the system’s failure stems from the “misconception that pedophilia is the same as child molestation.” And so, she emphasises that one can live paedophilia without acting on it, while adding that the other misconception tied to it was that paedophilia was a choice.
Although she goes on to explain the issues associated with the disorder, Kaplan subsequently also clarified her viewpoint (as she does in the article too) in an interview with Talk Radio 1210 WPHT just days after writing the NYT op-ed.
At the time, she told the radio station, “I’m not arguing we should de-criminalize child sex abuse. That would be absurd. What I’m looking at is the mental disorder of pedophilia, of sexual attraction alone, not the actual behavior of child abuse. I’m arguing that by treating and intervening in the mental disorder of pedophilia early, we can help prevent child abuse which, of course, is something horrific that should be punished.”
Additionally, she even asserted that paedophiles shouldn’t be allowed to use their condition as a legal defence, noting that they have control over their actions. Throughout the conversation, she continued arguing that understanding the condition was essential to prevent crime.
Moreover, she pointed out the importance of dealing with paedophilia as has been done with other such disorders in the past so that the situation doesn’t exacerbate to the extent that people suffering from it act out.
“Criminal defenses are reserved for people who generally don’t understand the consequences or nature of what they’re doing or can’t control their actions,” she said during the 2014 interview.
“Pedophilia doesn’t have that implication here. Individuals are able to control their ability to make decisions. It’s possible to make it harder for them, but they still have the ability to control what they’re doing. So, unless it’s combined with some other type of mental disorder that makes them unable to understand what they’re doing, they still have the capacity to control their actions. So, it’s not the thing that’s going to afford you an insanity defense. It’s important to understand pedophilia, not because it’s an excuse for crime, but because it will help us prevent crime.”
Elon Musk’s previous ‘paedophilia’ dig at Trump admin
Last year in July, Elon Musk’s war of words with Donald Trump escalated to the point where it endangered his informal “First Buddy” identity in association with the US president. One of the predominant reasons for the same was his scathing commentary related to the Epstein Files and Trump’s past friendship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
At the time, the DOJ and FBI were facing severe backlash over their joint memo declaration that there was no such thing as an Epstein ‘client list.’ And so, Musk took aim at the Trump administration for presumably lying about releasing the Epstein Files during the 2024 presidential election campaign trail.
He infamously dropped a snide remark against the POTUS’ government as it had failed to make any arrests related to the Epstein scandal despite officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, making a deal out of it ahead of the 2024 election. “What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Musk wrote on X, alongside a picture of the ‘Official Jeffrey Epstein Pedophile Arrest Counter’ being set at ‘0000.’
Elon Musk’s father was accused of child sex abuse
Estranged from his own father, Errol Musk, Elon has rarely mentioned him publicly. While it’s unclear whether the Tesla CEO’s dad grapples with paedhophilia, last year a New York Times investigation citing court records and other documents revealed that Errol was facing several allegations of child sex abuse.
The issue reportedly involved five of Errol Musk’s own children and stepchildren.