Rolling Stone Digs Up Kash Patel’s Attacks On Elon Musk

Kash Patel is one of the latest of President Donald Trump’s unqualified loyalists to be confirmed for a leadership role in Washington, with Senate Republicans installing the QAnon promoter and 2020 election denier as director of the FBI, Rolling Stone reported.

In 2022, Patel criticized Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, arguing that he wielded excessive control over Americans’ private data and could potentially share it with Beijing. I Photo: Gage Skidmore Flickr

Patel is expected to go after Trump’s personal enemies, but he may face challenges targeting one of his own: tech oligarch and Trump confidant Elon Musk. During the Biden administration, Patel made numerous media appearances and hosted a podcast, Kash’s Corner.

The show aired on EpochTV, part of the far-right Epoch Media Group, which has been known to amplify conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Patel previously criticized Musk, calling him a monopolist, accusing him of mass data collection, and advocating for increased government oversight of his companies. He also argued that Musk’s wealth stemmed primarily from federal contracts—essentially, taxpayer dollars.

“He is literally launching this thing called Satlink, which almost no one knows about, but he’s been building for five years, which is free Wi-Fi for the world,” Patel said on Greg Gutfeld’s Fox News show in December 2021, referring to Starlink.

He continued, “I mean, we’re all paying for it.

This is why he’s so rich,” before labeling Musk the “biggest” contractor for the Department of Defense. Musk’s SpaceX currently holds approximately $22 billion in government contracts.

In 2022, Patel criticized Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, arguing that he wielded excessive control over Americans’ private data and could potentially share it with the Chinese Communist Party.

“He’s already got Tesla, he’s already got the SpaceX program and the government DoD contracts, which I believe to be the largest portion of his income,” Patel said. “And now he’ll have Twitter. So what scares me is, if you want to talk about a monopoly, he is the ultimate monopoly.”