Remember that whole saga involving Elon Musk, the Thai cave rescuer Vernon Unsworth and the whole ‘pedo guy’ name-calling thing? Well the latest season has dropped and hoo boy is it a doozy.
To quickly recap, the billionaire CEO of Tesla wanted to build some mini submarines to help with rescuing those kids in that Thai cave. Vernon told Elon basically to shove the submarine up his arse and let the experts do the work.
Elon then did the most Elon Musk-ey thing he could do and went on the attack by calling Vernon “pedo guy,” which led to a defamation lawsuit against the billionaire.
A court deposition from the lawsuit has now been released and it reveals the extreme lengths Elon went through in order to justify that ridiculous “pedo guy” claim against Vernon.
First there’s his argument that “pedo guy” is actually a common insult used in South Africa among all the kiddies when he was growing up and he totally wasn’t using to call Vernon a paedophile or anything.
When asked by lawyers what exactly “does a pedo guy look like?” Elon responded with a real gem of an answer:
I’m not a lawyer but the answer “It’s sort of a look. I don’t know” isn’t going to fly very well with anyone, particularly your own lawyer.
But that ridiculous “it’s what the all the South African kids call each other!” defence was trumped by the even-more-ridiculous reveal that Elon had hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on the Thai cave rescuer in hopes of justifying his “pedo guy” insult.
As for why Elon did this (beyond satisfying his ego), he said in the deposition:
“And I was like, well, what if this is a real situation? What if what we have here is another Jeffrey Epstein. We should, you know — I have this — I am told this information. I don’t know if it is true. But what if we have another Jeffrey Epstein on our hands? And what if he uses whatever celebrity he gains from this cave rescue to shield his bad deeds?”
Wow, Jeffrey Epstein, Elon? Make sure you stretch before reaching for something that far.
Despite Elon saying that his hired PI was “just taking [him] for a ride” in hindsight, the billionaire’s lawyers are doubling down on the claim, releasing this statement about Vernon:
“The investigator reported that Mr Unsworth was a fixture in Pattaya Beach, Thailand – a locale notorious for prostitution and child trafficking, that he had a taste for young Thai girls, that he whoremongered his way through the go-go bars of Thailand, that his only friends were his ‘sexpat’ peers, and that he married his Thai wife when she was a teenager, after starting a relationship when she was a young girl.”
Unsurprisingly, Vernon has denied all the claims.
So to sum up the entire story so far:
Elon Musk called Thai cave rescuer, Vernon Unsworth, a “pedo guy,” which the billionaire claims is a common insult he and kids used all the time in South Africa. Vernon sues. Elon hires a private investigator to dig up dirt on Vernon. Private investigator finds out that Vernon was just a diver who lives in Thailand. Elon and his lawyers double down on the claim anyway.
If season two gave us such incredible gems, Elon Musk vs. Vernon Unsworth season three is going to be a masterpiece.