Elon Musk Announces Support for Andrew Yang

The Tesla CEO’s supportive tweet was a response to a tweet from popular podcaster Dan Carlin agreeing with a statement Yang made about being adaptable to other viewpoints.

Carlin, who has nearly 225,000 followers on Twitter, retweeted Yang’s post in which he wrote: “I don’t expect people to agree with me on everything- that would be odd. My main hope is that people trust that I’m trying to solve problems and I’m open to different approaches – particularly if the data drives in a particular direction. Changing one’s mind is not a bad thing.”

Carlin captioned the post with: “How weird that this should be a somewhat novel thing to say.”

Musk then chimed in, saying that he supports Andrew Yang.

He also explained his support in jest via a second tweet: “He would our first openly goth president. I think this is very important.”

Musk’s tweet was apparently a reference on an April interview with Jezebel where Yang claimed he was once a goth. It’s worth noting that Musk has been a vocal supporter of the Universal Basic Income, which is Yang’s main campaign platform.

 

Musk and Yang have engaged each other in the past in discussing automation and its impact on society:

While not an official endorsement, many pointed out that Musk’s recent tweet to his 27 million followers will make a huge difference for Yang. Minutes after posting, Musk’s tweet was celebrated by the Yang Gang via the hashtags #ElonisYangGang and #ElonforYang.

Yang, who has just qualified for the Democratic presidential debates in September and October, has been generating quite the buzz since his last debate appearance.

On Friday, filmmaker Casey Neistat also announced his support for Yang by posting an image of his MATH (Make America Think Harder) hat order:

Featured Image via Wikimedia Commons/Steve Jurvetson (CC BY 2.0) (Left), Asa Mathat for Techonomy (CC BY-SA 4.0) (Right)