Elon Musk shocked the world in July when he leveled wholly unsubstantiated charges of pedophilia against one of the divers working to rescue a youth soccer team from a cave in northern Thailand.
Musk shocked no one when, amid a firestorm of pressure, he apologized three days later.
“The fault is mine and mine alone,” he said at the time.
Apparently, he was just kidding about that.
In an email sent to Buzzfeed News, the increasingly erratic tech maven has now doubled down on the pedophilia claim, angrily demanding the digital news outlet investigate what he says — again, without evidence — was diver Vernon Unsworth’s taking of a child bride in Chiang Rai province.
“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk said in replying to Buzzfeed inquiries about a potential defamation lawsuit Unsworth’s lawyer floated at the time of the original accusations.
“He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time,” he wrote to the outlet.
“As for this alleged threat of a lawsuit, which magically appeared when I raised the issue (nothing was sent or raised beforehand), I fucking hope he sues me.”
In all fairness, threatened defamation lawsuits generally do appear after someone has been defamed, so we’re not quite sure what that is supposed to prove.
Musk’s initially leveled the accusation at Unsworth after the diver mocked the tiny submarine Musk had built in a bid to aid in the rescue attempt.
According to Buzzfeed’s report, Musk prefaced the emails with the phrase “off the record,” though the outlet never agreed to the terms beforehand.
Following the email, reporters for the outlet contacted Unsworth’s longtime Thai girlfriend, Woranan Ratrawiphukkun, who declined to comment on the accusations.
In recent months, Musk’s carefully crafted image has taken a battering amid a series of public missteps involving everything from his relationship to Aussie rapper Azealia Banks to a publicly mooted scheme to take his Tesla, Inc. private, a move some suggested could provoke trouble with the US’ Securities and Exchange Commission.
