‘Free speech guy wants to shut down freedom’: Elon Musk is shamelessly calling for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota
Musk’s “free speech absolutism” has always come with conditions.
Elon Musk has spent years branding himself as a free speech absolutist. On Thursday, he demonstrated exactly how conditional that belief really is. The tech guy is bored, so he wants his president boss to invoke the Insurrection Act for fun. Great America, here we are.
On Jan. 15, an X account named “Insurrection Barbie” laid out a cherry-picked explanation of the Insurrection Act. It was complete with a list of historical invocations and a conveniently elastic definition of “rebellion.” Musk soon picked up on the post and replied with four words: “Time to invoke the Insurrection Act.” He had no concern for constitutional limits. He’s just a billionaire urging the president to deploy extraordinary federal power against a U.S. state.
The original post framed the Insurrection Act as routine and broadly applicable. It argued that it has been invoked “30 times by 17 presidents.” Then, it redefined rebellion so loosely that nearly any political conflict could qualify. At the end, there was the punchline: “Look, I just described Minnesota.” Which is not supported by any evidence.
Minnesota is not in rebellion. Federal courts are functioning, elections are intact, and state authorities are enforcing the law. Protests, even disruptive ones, do not meet the legal threshold for insurrection. But Musk did not dispute any of that. He simply endorsed escalation as if it were a game.
What is the Insurrection Act?
The Insurrection Act is one of the most extreme emergency powers available to a U.S. president. It allows the deployment of federal troops or federalized forces inside the United States, bypassing state authority. The Act is invoked when a state is unable or unwilling to protect constitutional rights or suppress armed rebellion.
It is not a crowd-control statute or a protest-management tool. It is a last-resort power meant for genuine breakdowns of civil order. Calling for its use in response to protests and political unrest is not law-and-order rhetoric. It is authoritarian drift. And the man who just steered to that drift is not a random person on the internet.
Musk is one of the most influential people in the country. He owns the platform where the original post made this call. When such a person urges the invocation of the Insurrection Act, he is not engaging in abstract debate. He is encouraging the use of state force to override local governance. From the man who insists speech must be protected at all costs, the contradiction could not be clearer. But Public reaction was as swift as his shameless call.
Musk’s mask slipped, and people caught it in an instant
“Free speech guy wants to shut down freedom,” one user on X noted the hypocrisy in Musk’s words. Another mocked him ironically, writing, “Smells gas, lights match, good job you free speech absolutionist.” One also sarcastically pleaded to Musk, asking him, “Could we not speedrun the Constitution today?”
Others gave the whole situation a deep thought and concluded that “This was always the plan.” They elaborated how the administration deployed ICE as an “instrument of domestic repression” to “provoke confrontation and disorder.” Now, they’re framing the resulting chaos as civil unrest. Next step? “Invoke the Insurrection Act; suspend elections; centralize authority; destroy democracy.”
Several users warned that this would be Trump’s “playbook in 3 years to try and negate the election or prevent it from happening.” But one turned the definition around, writing, “This administration is trying to overthrow a state government. That’s the actual insurrection.”
Clearly, Minnesota is only a pretext. The logic Musk endorsed doesn’t stop there. Trump can neutralize any dissenting state if protests equal rebellion. If unrest equals insurrection, then elections become optional. That’s the textbook definition of consolidation of power, and Trump’s goons are advertising it right in front of our eyes.
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