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Larry David confronted Elon Musk at a wedding over Republican vote: ‘Do you just want to murder kids in schools?’

‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ star is an outspoken critic of the Republican Party

Tom Murray
Wednesday 20 September 2023 15:55 BST
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Elon Musk intervenes during Tesla self-drive demonstration

American comedy star Larry David once confronted Elon Musk over his support of the Republican Party, according to a new biography about the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.

The interaction is detailed in acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson’s 615-page tome, titled Elon Musk, which follows the tech mogul’s meteoric rise.

Musk, 52, and Curb Your Enthusiasm star David, 76, were seated next to each other at Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel’s wedding in Saint-Tropez, France, last year, Isaacson writes.

The event took place just days after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.

Isaacson wrote that David “seemed to be fuming” and asked Musk: “Do you just want to murder kids in schools?”

Musk was allegedly “baffled and annoyed” by the question and said he’s “anti-kid murder”.

“Then how could you vote Republican?” David reportedly asked.

Elon Musk (left) and Larry David (Getty Images)

David confirmed the incident to Isaacson, explaining that Musk’s negative tweets about the Democratic Party were “sticking in my craw”.

Musk said in a May 2022 post that the Democratic Party has “become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican”.

“Even if Uvalde never happened, I probably would have brought it up, because I was angry and offended,” David said.

The Independent has contacted Musk’s representatives for comment.

For his new book, Isaacson shadowed the billionaire businessman for two years – watching him rule over his tech empire, poring over emails and text messages, speaking to those closest to (and most estranged from) him.

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Isaacson examines the tech CEO’s tumultuous romantic relationships, his early life in South Africa, and his inherent “compulsion to stir up drama”.

You can read about the six most intriguing and startling revelations in Isaacson’s book here.

David is an outspoken proponent of the Democrats. He started out as a stand-up comedian before briefly writing for Saturday Night Live in the mid-Eighties. It was here that he teamed up with Jerry Seinfeld in 1989 to create Seinfeld.

The long-running sitcom was one of the most popular and lucrative ever made, earning David a reported $250m (£183.6m) payday when it was syndicated at the end of the Nineties.

He has continued to earn money from the rights ever since, and the deal stipulates he will do so until a full $1.7bn (£1.24bn) has been paid out. In 2019, Netflix picked up the Seinfeld streaming rights and David again pocketed somewhere north of $100m (£80.7m).

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