In a hilarious tweet that he posted in mid-September of 2024, X owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk went on the very funny attack against Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing attention to a parody video that utterly roasted her campaign. Musk also got in a side-glancing blow at the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, over legislation he had recently signed into law that banned “digitally altered” and “deceptive” content.
As background, around the same time, California banned “deceptive content” such as deepfakes, with Governor Gavin Newsom’s office announcing, “Taking action to address the use of deepfakes and other deceptive digitally generated or altered content in election campaigns, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed three measures to remove deceptive content from large online platforms, increase accountability, and better inform voters.”
His office also noted, “AB 2655 by Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) requires large online platforms to remove or label deceptive and digitally altered or created content related to elections during specified periods, and requires them to provide mechanisms to report such content. It also authorizes candidates, elected officials, elections officials, the Attorney General, and a district attorney or city attorney to seek injunctive relief against a large online platform for noncompliance with the act.”
Governor Newsom, commenting on the legislation, said, “Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation – especially in today’s fraught political climate. These measures will help to combat the harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content, one of several areas in which the state is being proactive to foster transparent and trustworthy AI.”
That led into Musk’s roast of Kamala, as he used it as a reason for bringing back up the parody video, which originally came out in late July and nearly immediately took the internet by storm, as it does quite a good job of getting to what many on the right think is the truth of the matter about Kamala’s presidential run.
Musk, tweeting about the video on X, said, in a tweet both drawing attention to the draconian California legislation and the parody of Kamala Harris, “The governor of California just made this parody video illegal in violation of the Constitution of the United States. Would be a shame if it went viral.”
The clip is quite a funny mockery of Kamala’s presidential bid. “I, Kamala Harris, and your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed to senility debate,” the video opens. “I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire. I’m both a woman and a person of color, so if you criticize anything I say you’re both sexist and racist,” the fake commentary continues, joking about Democrat attachment to DEI and Kamala checking many of those boxes.
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The parody ad further claimed Biden and Harris are incompetent tools of the Deep State, saying, “I may not know the first thing about running the country, but remember, that’s a good thing if you’re a deep state puppet. I had four years under the tutelage of the ultimate Deep State puppet, a wonderful mentor, Joe Biden. Joe taught me rule number one, carefully hide your total incompetence.”
Watch the parody ad below:
Then, highlighting how Harris tends to meander with her words and ramble quite a bit, the ad adds, as you can watch above, “I take in significant things and I discuss them as if they’re significant. And I believe that exploring the significance of the insignificant is in itself significant. Talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time, and there is such great significance to the passage of time.”
The hilarious ad also says, “Another trick is find a sound box. I pretend to celebrate Kwanzaa, and in my speeches, I always do my best Barack Obama impression. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s tight and okay, look, maybe my work addressing the root causes of the border crisis were catastrophic, but my knowledge of international politics is truly shocking. The United States shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea. It is an alliance that is strong and enduring. And just remember, when voting this November, it is important to see what can be unburdened by what has been done. You think the country went to. Over the past four years. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”