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Elon Musk at an award ceremony in December 2020
Photo: Britta Pedersen / AP
Elon Musk has brought his commitment to host the comedy show "Saturday Night Live" over the stage.
The 49-year-old Tesla CEO and founder of the space company SpaceX presented the audience with a mixture of arrogance and humility.
Probably because there had been criticism in advance of the appearance of one of the richest people in the world.
In his opening monologue, Musk joked about his monotonous speech, which makes it difficult for others to see what he meant: "It's great to do" Saturday Night Live, "and I'm really serious," said the billionaire on stage .
Musk said he was the first person with Asperger's Syndrome on the show - "or at least the first person to admit it."
According to US media, it could have been the first time Musk spoke about it publicly.
His mild form of autism was also addressed by the sentence: "I can play human being well in emulation mode." Emulators are usually programs that emulate a computer or an operating system.
Musk then addressed his influential Twitter account and some of his tweets for which his invitation had been criticized: Sometimes he says or posts strange things, but that's how his brain works.
Then came the sentence that earned him the most applause: “To everyone who is offended, I would like to say: I have reinvented electric cars and shoot people in rockets to Mars.
Do you really think I was a chilled out, normal guy? "
"This is how my brain works"
Critics had previously criticized that with Musk a man was celebrated for his excessive wealth in a time of great injustice.
In addition, he downplayed the danger of the corona virus on Twitter and thus misinformed and endangered millions of people.
Musk has more than 50 million subscribers on Twitter.
The entrepreneur also starred in a few skits during the show, including as a doctor in a soap satire and as a cowboy.
But it was not part of the Mother's Day program, in which employees and their mothers performed while the musician Miley Cyrus sang the song "Light of a Clear Blue Morning" by her godmother Dolly Parton.
For this Musk later brought his mother Maye on stage to let her tell what he was like when he was twelve.
The Musk episode was also the first to be streamed live on YouTube.
It could therefore be viewed in parallel in over 100 countries.
Löw / AP