Elon Musk decided to troll Vladimir Putin (and probably everyone else) on Monday morning.
In a Twitter post, the Tesla CEO challenged the Russian president to “single combat” with Ukraine as the prize.
Musk sent another tweet a short time later to Putin’s official English language Twitter page asking, “Do you agree to this fight?”
As of Monday afternoon, Putin hasn’t responded to Musk’s challenge.
The idea of a one-to-one fight might sound appealing to fans of bad action films, but Musk may not be the best guy to pin the hopes of a free Ukraine on.
Although the 6-foot Musk towers over the 5-foot, 7-inch Putin, the Tesla CEO told podcaster Joe Rogan in 2020 that, while he lifts weights and uses a treadmill, he prefers not to exercise. More important, he’s only dabbled in fighting sports like taekwondo, karate, judo and Brazilian jiujitsu. Meanwhile, a 2014 profile of Putin claimed that the Russian president swims for two hours a day and lifts weights in the gym. He also has military training in hand-to-hand combat.
Still, many Twitter users had thoughts about whether putting a serious geopolitical crisis in the hands of a billionaire Twitter troll was the right plan of action.
The tweet definitely fits Musk’s pattern of saying outrageous things on social media for attention.
Last month, he caused a furor with a now-deleted tweet that seemed to favorably compare Hitler to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In December 2020, he was widely panned on social media after appearing to complain that displaying pronouns in online bios was not visually appealing.
In July 2015, he lashed out at a rescue diver who dismissed his suggestion of using a small submarine to rescue some Thai kids stuck in a cave by baselessly calling the man “a pedo.”