Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and several of his allies spent the weekend sharing memes and posts about the potential of Musk purchasing liberal news channel MSNBC following news that parent company Comcast may be looking for a new home for the network. The possibility that Musk could use his fortunes to purchase MSNBC isn’t entirely out of left field – in 2022, Musk purchased Twitter, which he has rebranded as X, to restore accounts to many users, including Donald Trump, who were banned for spreading inflammatory misinformation.
The news also comes on the heels of another major media sale—Infowars was just purchased by The Onion, which plans to rebrand the conservative conspiracy network as “The Dumbest Website on the Internet.” Musk recently weighed in on the sale, supporting claims by former owner Alex Jones that the purchase was unlawful collusion.
Though, unlike Infowars, which was sold at auction after Jones filed bankruptcy to pay defamation fees for the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, the sale of MSNBC would be overseen by Comcast and likely to go to another liberal company.
Furthermore, MSNBC isn’t really “for sale,” Comcast is merely considering moving the network to a pure-play cable programming company called SpinCo to boost shares for SpinCo and Comcast. The outlet will no longer be affiliated with NBC News. Offloading the company alone will take about a year. In the meantime, there is still the possibility that someone could swoop in with an unrefusable offer, but the likelihood of Comcast risking their loyal MSNBC audience is slim.
Still, Musk had fun trolling the internet with posts about buying the network. “MSNBC is going up for sale. Should I buy it?” He posted on X on Sunday. “I would like to fire Rachel Maddow (for fun) and then turn it into a channel that reports the top stories from X each day. Citizen reporting on cable news!” Later in the day, conservative podcaster Joe Rogan added fuel to the fire, requesting Musk give him Maddow’s show, to which Musk responded, “Deal.”
