Elon Musk Attacks Celebrity Chef During Interview

Elon Musk is once again turning his own social media platform into a public grievance machine — this time after celebrity chef José Andrés called him out for attacking a journalist who dared to ask tough questions.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has been lashing out on X for days following a bruising interview with The Economist’s editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, who pressed Musk on his increasingly hard-right political commentary, his fixation on Europe, and the growing backlash to his global influence.

The interview, recorded on July 23, quickly drew attention for its tense exchanges, including one moment where Beddoes confronted Musk over his habit of amplifying far-right rhetoric on X. She questioned why the world’s richest man repeatedly uses his enormous platform to suggest the U.K. is heading toward “civil war,” that Europe is being overrun by Muslim immigrants, and that sexual violence is supposedly rampant.

Musk, who has often presented himself as a free-speech crusader, did not appear especially eager to answer for the real-world impact of his own rhetoric. Instead, he leaned on his follower count, insisting that he must be a “popular guy” because roughly 250 million people follow him on X.

But the backlash only escalated over the weekend after Musk responded to a user criticizing Beddoes by suggesting the journalist was a “traitor to the West, plain and simple.”

That was too much for Andrés, the award-winning chef and founder of World Central Kitchen, who fired back at Musk in a blistering post.

“Elon drink a glass of water before you tweet,” Andrés wrote, before acknowledging Musk’s work building “rockets and satellites and cars” while warning that it did not give him permission to smear a respected journalist for asking legitimate questions.

“You can not call a great journalist that actually ask you good questions and enemy to humanity!” Andrés wrote. “You sound and act like a tyrant….change!”

Musk’s response was short, crude, and very much on brand.

“You’re an a—–e,” he replied.

The clash immediately became another example of Musk’s thin-skinned approach to criticism, especially when the criticism comes from someone with a major public profile. Andrés, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden in January 2025, has built a reputation for humanitarian work through World Central Kitchen, which has delivered meals in disaster zones and war-torn regions around the world.

The Economist interview also included one of the most direct confrontations Musk has faced over his attempts to influence politics beyond the United States.

“Why should you be able to shape European politics? You don’t even live there,” Beddoes asked him. “Do you see why this makes people think that this man who has all this power, he’s the world’s richest man, he thinks he has a right to influence our politics?”

She then put the criticism even more bluntly.

“It’s why people loathe you,” she said. “I mean, some people do loathe you.”

Musk brushed off the idea that he is widely disliked, again pointing to his massive online following as proof that more people like him than hate him.

“The fact that, as you pointed out, a quarter billion people follow me is that I think a lot more people actually like me than don’t,” he said.

Then, borrowing from the familiar media-bashing playbook of Donald Trump, Musk turned the attack back on Beddoes and the press.

“The shoe is on the other foot,” Musk said. “They hate you. They hate you far more than they hate me. I think you’re the problem. The media.”

The exchange comes after Musk spent heavily to help Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and later became closely associated with Trump’s government-cutting DOGE initiative, making him not just a tech billionaire with opinions, but a political power broker with immense influence and very little accountability.

For critics, the interview and the Andrés spat captured exactly what has made Musk such a polarizing figure: a billionaire who demands limitless freedom to attack journalists, immigrants, governments, and political opponents — but appears to unravel the moment anyone powerful pushes back.