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Billionaire Elon Musk appeared to agree with a conservative activists' sharp criticism of the Washington Post on Monday, saying the newspaper had great journalists but the "trend is super bad."
Christopher Rufo, known for his national fight against critical race theory, erupted on The Post in a Twitter thread Sunday evening over a report it did on him last year, invoking the paper's latest drama surrounding left-wing tech columnist Taylor Lorenz and her reporting.
It drew the attention of Musk, who has not been shy about criticizing lawmakers and the media to his nearly 97 million Twitter followers. This time he trained fire on the paper owned by another billionaire, Jeff Bezos, which has been wagging war against Musk since April.
"Taylor Lorenz is the rule, not the exception, at the Washington Post," Rufo wrote on Sunday. "Last year, the paper ran a hit piece against me and had to retract or add six full paragraphs, admit to fabricating a timeline, and reverse a key accusation, which I proved was false."
"The editors then tried to hide their errors through stealth edits and a completely misleading ‘clarification.’ Washington Post writers are grim and talentless mercenaries for the regime and have polluted a once-respected newspaper with smears, propaganda, and lies," he continued, adding in a shot at the paper's motto, "Democracy dies when the media lies."
Musk replied Monday morning in seeming agreement, writing, "There are still some great journalists at WaPo, but the trend is super bad."
Rufo had taken exception to a lengthy Post piece last year that ultimately needed two clarifications about its reported timelines, including one tying a Fox News interview he gave to a Trump White House visit nearly two months later. Rufo attacked the story in a New York Post op-ed last year, saying the piece rested on a "bed of lies."
Musk and the media have warred with each other in the weeks since he made his deal to buy Twitter, although that purchase at times appears in limbo. After a widely panned New York Times article about growing up among "White privilege" and "misinformation" in apartheid-era South Africa, he sent out the so-called "enlightened brain" meme in apparent mockery of the reporting.
The Washington Post published so many critical stories and columns about him in April, he finally responded, "The Washington Post targets me relentlessly! Their insults could be higher quality, but some are not bad. I gave them 3 stars on Yelp."
Lorenz, the outspoken Post writer who seems to attract media attention with every new story, found herself in the spotlight again last week after her story surrounding the explosive Johnny Depp-Amber Heard civil trial wrongly claimed she had reached out to two YouTubers for comment. The newspaper has since been forced to issue several corrections, and Lorenz lashed out at her editor, as well as media reporters for covering the saga, in a series of tweets, complaining the focus on the YouTubers she didn't contact was a "huge distraction."
WASHINGTON POST REPORTERS CONTINUE AIRING THEIR GRIEVANCES WITH ONE ANOTHER ON TWITTER
The paper's issues didn't stop there. Then came Felicia Sonmez lighting into Post colleague Dave Weigel on Friday for retweeting a joke that management called sexist, and her subsequent blasting of another Post reporter, Jose Del Real, who suggested that airing the laundry in public to embarrass a co-worker was a bad idea. Executive editor Sally Buzbee was forced to send a memo to the staff about treating one another with "respect and kindness."
Lorenz already drew sharp criticism from the right for her reporting on the collapse of the Biden administration's Disinformation Governance Board last month, which she blamed on a right-wing disinformation campaign, as well as her doxxing of the conservative woman behind the popular Libs of TikTok account.
Last month, she also walked back a claim that a Drudge Report editor had been "relentlessly" harassing her, and in an appearance on MSNBC in April, she wept on the air over online criticism she's endured, saying it had destroyed her life.
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Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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