‘Blew My Mind’: Elon Musk Claims Federal Agencies Had Access to Twitter Direct Messages

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that U.S. government agencies had “full access” to direct messages on the platform in an excerpt of an interview with Tucker Carlson released Sunday afternoon.

“The degree to which various government agencies had effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind. I was not aware of that,” Musk tells Fox News anchor Carlson in one clip cut from a longer interview set to air Monday night.

“Would that include people’s DMs?” Carlson asked.

“Yes,” Musk responded.

In another clip posted on Monday morning, Carlson jokes with Musk about Twitter’s recent decision to remove the New York Times blue verification badge following news that the outlet would not pay for Twitter Blue.

“You called them diarrhea – you did, you did – I’m just quoting you. You describe their Twitter feed as diarrhea,” Carlson says smirkingly prompting the tech billionaire to laugh before correcting the anchor’s statement.

“I said it’s the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea…it’s a metaphor,” Musk said.

The executive’s comments come on the heels of the recent controversy surrounding Twitter’s decision to label National Public Radio “government-funded media,” which led the outlet to ditch the platform altogether.

“NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform,” David Folkenflik, a media correspondent for the news site, wrote on Wednesday morning.

The announcement coincided with a series of tweets on NPR’s official account directing users to download their app, sign up for their newsletter, and follow their Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn accounts.

The first clip shared by Carlson of the interview last Friday also teased a segment on artificial intelligence.

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance, or bad car production in the sense that it has the potential — however, small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential for civilizational destruction,” Musk said.”

The full interview is set to air Monday night.