Did Elon Musk Seriously Just Do a Nazi Salute at Trump’s Inauguration?

During a speech at Capitol One Arena Monday following Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk appeared to deliver a Roman salute not once, but twice.

The gesture is associated with Nazi Germany, and Musk was speaking triumphantly about Trump’s election victory when he made the salute.

What was Musk thinking when he decided to point his arm unambiguously in a fascist symbol? It would seem that the billionaire tech CEO and major Trump backer doesn’t care if he is called a Nazi or racist anymore now that Trump is officially president.

Just one month ago, Musk came out in full support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has been accused of neo-Nazi sympathies. Less than two weeks ago, Musk hosted AfD leader Alice Weidel in a livestream on X, where the pair dismissed Adolf Hitler as a “communist.” Musk has also voiced his support for British neo-Nazi Tommy Robinson in an attempt to influence politics in that country. All of these would seem to suggest that despite earlier denials, Musk does seem to harbor actual Nazi sympathies.

Of course, the tech mogul is probably going to claim later that he was trolling the libs, or that the media is out to get him, or something else dismissive. He can probably count on Trump defending his gesture, claiming that he didn’t see it, or having no idea what it means. After all, Trump has defended Hitler in the past. But one thing is clear: Every Nazi sympathizer who has a soft spot for Trump is probably feeling emboldened.

President Donald Trump plans to pardon people convicted for participation in the January 6 Capitol riot, which may include two of its organizers: Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, and Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, ABC News reported Monday.

Rhodes and Tarrio were both convicted for seditious conspiracy, a Civil-War era charge, and were sentenced to 18 years and 22 years in prison, respectively. Tarrio’s sentence was the longest of any January 6 defendant.

Federal prosecutors previously described Tarrio as the driving force behind the masses of self-described “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys who arrived in Washington on January 6. Several of his organization’s leaders were the first to enter the U.S. Capitol. Earlier this month, Tarrio requested a pardon from prison via his lawyer.

In addition to pardoning those who have already been convicted, the Justice Department is also expected to dismiss cases that have not yet gone to trial, a Trump transition official told CNN.

This sets a disturbing precedent that the president could potentially push to dismiss any charges placed against his supporters—even the most dangerous.

Donald Trump’s inaugural address Monday showcased an unusually refined version of the MAGA leader on the cusp of his presidency: it toiled over the economy and immigration, promising to bring America into a “golden age.”

But Trump’s unscripted second speech to a throng of his supporters served as his cutting room floor, sharing all the gripes that his script writers implored him not to dish. Seemingly unrehearsed and riddled with grammatical errors, Trump’s second speech of the day was remarkably more like him.

Trump ripped into a cohort of his so-called enemies, torching former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for supposedly allowing his supporters to tear through the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

“She’s guilty as hell,” Trump said, claiming he had promised to send 10,000 soldiers to the complex that day—despite the fact that multiple witnesses said Trump watched TV and stood by doing nothing as his supporters hunted and chanted death threats for Pelosi and former Vice President Mike Pence. “Maybe she wanted that to happen,” Trump wondered aloud.

“If you did that civilly, that would be a criminal offense,” Trump continued, blaming the former House speaker for failing to thwart some of his most ardent and violent supporters. (You cannot be charged with a criminal offense in a civil case, though a civil case can launch a companion criminal investigation.)

Trump also complained about former Representative Liz Cheney and other members of the House January 6 investigative committee. “Why are we helping some of the people—why are we helping Liz Cheney? She’s a crying lunatic,” Trump rambled.

And minutes after Trump was sworn in, a portrait hanging in the Pentagon of former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley—who refused Trump’s orders to send the military to crush protesters in Washington in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and who has since referred to Trump as a “fascist” and a “wannabe dictator”—was suddenly stripped from the wall. (President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Milley on Monday, saving him from the Trump administration’s litigious ire.)

Trump has repeatedly promised to enact revenge on individuals he deemed to be “enemies of the state.” In the weeks leading up to the election, former Trump White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews warned that the ex-reality TV star had morphed from someone with a vision for America into a vindictive far-right ideologue “hellbent on revenge and retribution.”

Donald Trump will rename the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali by executive order in one of his first acts as president. 

The news broke shortly before he was sworn in Monday morning, and Trump confirmed it during his inaugural address. The order will rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and Mount Denali to Mount McKinley, which was the official name recognized by the federal government from 1917 until 2015. 

Trump first announced his plans to rename the gulf nearly two weeks ago in a rambling press conference, saying, “We’re gonna be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America…. What a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate…. Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country. They can stop them.”

Not long after that declaration, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum held a news conference of her own where she asked, “Why don’t we call it Mexican America? It sounds pretty, no?”

Denali is the tallest mountain in North America, and gained its name from the Koyukon Athabaskans, the original inhabitants of Alaska. A gold prospector gave it the name McKinley in 1896 as a show of support for William McKinley, who was running for president at the time, and the federal government made the name official in 1917. In 1975, the state of Alaska sought to have the name changed, only to be blocked by Ohio politicians supporting their native son McKinley. 

In 2015, President Obama officially renamed the mountain to what Alaska natives had called it for centuries. Last month, though, Trump told supporters in a speech in Arizona that he would  “bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it.”

Trump could also be making the move because he wants to stick it to Obama, or because he admires McKinley’s imperialism. In any case, changing both names will be costly to U.S. taxpayers, and serve no strategic purpose whatsoever. It’s the first of likely many more pointless moves in the new Trump administration.

Trump wants to carry out another “manifest destiny” —but this time on Mars..

“We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars,” the newly inaugurated president said on Monday to the audience gathered in the Capitol Rotunda, who reacted to his comments with a standing ovation. “Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation. And right now our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation.”

“Manifest destiny” was the violent, presumptuous 19th century idea that white American settlers had some religious obligation to seize Native land in the West, to convert Native Americans to Christianity, and to exploit the region’s ample resources.

Trump’s Mars pledge elicited a huge grin and enthusiastic double thumbs up from billionaire and top Mars colonization enthusiast Elon Musk, who has been pushing his Mars colony agenda for nearly a decade via his SpaceX company.