Elon Musk in contrast Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with Adolf Hitler in a tweet that appeared to help truckers protesting vaccine mandates – and which instantly triggered a storm on Twitter.

Musk despatched the tweet on Wednesday simply earlier than midnight in California, and had deleted it by noon on Thursday, with out clarification. He didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Musk, the chief government of Tesla, in late January tweeted help for the Canadian truckers, who’ve shut down roads and bridges, drawing worldwide consideration to their opposition to well being insurance policies pushed by Trudeau’s authorities.

Responding to a tweet describing how Trudeau’s authorities had ordered banks to assist minimize funding to the protesters, Musk posted a meme of a photograph of Hitler, with “Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau” written above his head and “I had a budget” beneath it.

The tweet got here as Musk and Tesla on Thursday accused the US Securities and Exchange Commission of an “endless” investigation to punish Musk for criticism of the US authorities.

Musk has 74 million followers on Twitter, making his one among its most distinguished accounts. That is usually seen as a advertising and marketing boon for electrical automotive maker Tesla.

Musk is understood for edgy humor and blunt assessments, however his comparability of Trudeau with the Nazi chief, who was liable for the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Jews and beginning World War Two, went too far for a lot of Twitter customers.

“@elonmusk making a disgusting comparison of Trudeau to Hitler. Don’t do this kind of stuff. You just look dumb,” wrote @ElliotMalin. At noon on Thursday, rather than the unique tweet was the discover “This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author.”

The American Jewish Committee responded to Musk’s tweet with a name for a direct apology.

Canadian Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne addressed Musk on Twitter, telling him his reported feedback have been “quite frankly shocking”.

But his tweet additionally had greater than 35,000 likes, greater than 9,000 retweets and lots of optimistic responses, together with one from @maroongolf17 saying “my next car has to be a #tesla now.”

© Thomson Reuters 2022