Tech billionaire Elon Musk ripped into a media figure who was trying to characterize him as supporting "far right" political and media figures.
Musk was being challenged by Economist editor in chief Zanny Minton Beddoes when he took over the interview to lob accusations of unfair bias at members of the mainstream media.
'I would just like to admonish you and the media for the absurd characterization of the far right. It is false and misleading and nonsense!'
"You support not just the populist right but the far right, in fact very fringe parties in some countries," Beddoes said.
"No, I support the normal people. What you call the far right, falsely," Musk replied.
"You think is the normal person?" she asked.
"Yes!" he responded.
"Literally you could go back 10 or 15 years, and these policies were completely normal. In fact, one of the tricks I think is quite funny is to take a speech from [former President Barack] Obama and Hillary [Clinton] and then go to someone who's ... on the sort of what I call the lunatic left and say, 'What do you think of this speech by [President Donald] Trump?' And they're like, 'Oh wow, he's the worst person ever!'" he opined.
"Actually, that was a speech by Obama, or actually that was a speech by Hillary. Literally!" he added.
Beddoes appeared exasperated with the response.
"No, I agree that the center of gravity in this country has shifted. Certainly the Democratic Party has shifted to the left, but that's not what I'm talking about," she said.
"Not fringe right, please. It's actually just normal people. ... And here are the principles, and tell me which of these sound terrible: that we should have secure borders, that we should have safe cities, that we should have sensible spending. Which of those three are far-right fringe?" he responded.
"And I would like to just admonish you and the media for the absurd characterization of the far right. It is false and misleading and nonsense!" Musk added.
"Please keep this part in!" he joked.
"We'll keep all of this in," she replied.
"Don't cut this part!" he laughed.
Video of the exchange was posted to social media by a United Kingdom Parliament member who had been called right-wing by Beddoes.
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Elsewhere in the interview, Musk predicted that artificial intelligence may exceed the sum of human intelligence in about five years.
"There really won't be anything that AI can't do better than humans, apart from being human, perhaps," he said.
He said the most likely outcome is an age of "amazing abundance" when anyone can have "anything they can think of."
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