Musk hits Merkel ‘below the belt’ – German media

Elon Musk has directed an unusual insult at former German Chancellor Angela Merkel after she criticized him for being too influential in both politics and space.

Merkel, who led her country from 2005 to 2021, has just published a memoir (Freedom: Memories 1945-2021), which hit the German bookstores on Tuesday. Promoting the book in an interview last weekend, she criticized Musk’s Starlink program.

“If a person like him [Musk] owns 60% of all satellites orbiting in space, then that has to be a huge concern for us in addition to the political issues,” Merkel told Der Spiegel on Friday.

“Who is this Angela Merkin person?” Musk posted on X in response. 

Merkin is an artificial hairpiece once used to cover the pubic area. Musk’s use of it was unlikely to be a misspelling: he had posted about merkins in 2019, urging people not to search for the term because it’s not safe for work.

Although Musk made the cheeky post on Sunday, the German media only noticed on Tuesday. Bild called it a “below the belt” insult, while Der Spiegel refrained from descriptions but used the notoriety to promote the Merkel interview as well as another article about Musk, which dubbed him “Public enemy number two.”

“It is questionable whether Musk read the entire interview,” the German tabloid wrote. “At least he took note of one of the Spiegel articles about him.”

This is not the first time Musk has insulted German politicians. On November 7, when the ruling ‘traffic light’ coalition imploded, he called Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “fool” (ein Narr). He used the same term for Economy Minister Robert Habeck three days later, after the leader of the Greens argued that algorithms of social media platforms such as X needed to be regulated by EU laws.

Musk’s SpaceX operates the satellite internet provider Starlink, which has over 6,000 satellites in orbit. One of its most prominent clients is Ukraine, which uses Starlink for military communications.

The world’s richest man has also become a prominent adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, after helping his re-election bid. Together with Vivek Ramaswamy, he is due to lead the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE), charged with slashing the size of American bureaucracy.