Former Vice President Kamala Harris put Elon Musk on blast for saying “empathy” has made America weak.
“There was someone that is very popular these days, at least in the press, who suggested that it is a sign of weakness of Western civilizations to have empathy,” Harris told a real estate conference in Australia.
In March, Musk—the head of the government-slashing Department of Efficiency (DOGE)—spoke with MAGA influencer and conspiracy theorist Joe Rogan on his podcast.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said, adding that “they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Slamming the DOGE chief for having “this misplaced idea that the sign of the strength of a leader is who you beat down,” she said she thinks it is, in fact, “a sign of strength to have some level of curiosity and concern and care about the well-being of others.”
Though Harris did not refer to Musk by name, it was clear her comments were aimed at the Tesla CEO, who has stepped back from his duties at DOGE in recent weeks.
During her Sunday conference appearance, Harris acknowledged the rise of fascism, telling the audience, “I do worry, frankly, about what’s happening in the world right now.”
“It’s important that we remember the 1930s,” she said. “It’s important that we remember that history has taught us that isolation does not equal insulation [and] the importance of relationships of trust, of the importance of friendships, integrity, honesty.”
These comments also appear to have been in veiled reference to Musk, who has courted controversy since assuming his post as President Donald Trump‘s government efficiency czar with a raft of statements and gestures widely perceived as a dog whistle for white supremacists.
Perhaps most famously, this included the Tesla chief giving what appeared to have been a “Roman salute” at a speaking event on the night of Trump’s inauguration, quickly followed by a slew of posts on X that featured a series of puns on the names of prominent Nazi figures.
