With power comes great responsibility — and Trevor Noah isn’t so sure he wouldn’t give in to his desire to be just a little bit petty if he had as much power as Elon Musk.
During Tuesday night’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Noah weighed in on Musk’s impending purchase of Twitter. While some rejoiced the news, others vowed to leave the site due to the Tesla CEO’s ownership of the social media site. While Twitter founder Jack Dorsey tweeted that he believed Musk would act in good conscious, Noah pointed out that Musk has leveraged power in the past.
“Don’t forget, this is a guy who once personally canceled a blogger’s Tesla order because of something they wrote about him. So I’m just saying, he has nice intentions but when you have the power to be petty on an epic scale, the temptation to do it can be really hard to resist,” Noah said.
He added that, if he were in a similar situation, he didn’t know that he’d remain so honorable, either.
“If I bought Google, you best believe I would abuse those autofills, especially around like Emmy voting season,” Noah joked. “You would be like ‘John Oliver,’ and it would be like ‘children’s wig collector.’ Stephen Colbert, hit and run. Trevor Noah saves puppies.”
As the audience laughed, he added: “I just had to, because Stephen Colbert hit the owner and I had to. Just one of those things.”
Twitter’s board unanimously approved Musk’s $44 billion offer to purchase Twitter this month, and the transaction is expected to close in 2022, subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders and regulators.