Elon Musk mocks Wall Street Journal editor after affair claim

The Tesla CEO has denied ever having a relationship with Sergey Brin’s wife, Nicole Shanahan

Elon Musk mocked The Wall Street Journal’s investigations editor by posting a photo of himself with Sergey Brin amid the newspaper’s claim that the Tesla titan had an affair with the Google founder’s wife.

Late on Sunday night, Mr Musk tweeted the photo in reply to Michael Siconolfi’s post promoting a report published earlier that day that alleged Mr Musk had slept with Nicole Shanahan at Art Basel in Miami last December. Mr Musk’s photo response also featured the pants and fire emojis in the caption, seemingly to imply that Siconolfi is a “liar, liar, pants on fire.”

The picture shows the two tech entrepreneurs at an outdoor party together, along with two unidentified women.

Mr Musk has been adamantly denying the Journal’s story in many tweets since it was published. In one tweet, the father of ten slammed the report: “This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night! I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.”

Minutes after that tweet, Mr Musk even called the report a “character assassination” full of “nothing-burgers.”

“I work crazy hours, so there just isn’t much time for shenanigans. None of the key people involved in these alleged wrongdoings were even interviewed!” he alleged.

Another tweet had Mr Musk accusing the Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, of conducting “hit pieces” against him.

“WSJ has run so many bs hit pieces on me and Tesla I’ve lost count! It’s embarrassing for them, frankly,” he said in a reply to a Twitter user.

“WSJ is supposed to have a high standard for journalism and, right now, they are way sub tabloid. WSJ should be running stories that actually matter to their readers and have solid factual basis, not third-party random hearsay,” he said in another tweet.

Notably, Mr Brin filed for divorce from Ms Shanahan in January, citing irreconcilable differences for the break-up.