On top of being the busy CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has signed on to guest host the late night show Saturday Night Live on May 8. Miley Cyrus is slated to be the musical guest.
Despite being recognized as the second wealthiest person by Bloomberg (and briefly touching on the top slot not that long ago), Elon Musk rarely comes off as a stuffy executive. He jokes around on Twitter and, yes, occasionally makes ill-considered tweets such as occasional, very public disputes with critics and a previous comment that he could take Tesla private.
That tweet cost him a $20 million fine from stock market regulators and his position as president of the company’s board of directors. That incident may have added to, if not sparked, Musk’s long dislike of regulators, whom he has frequently blistered on Twitter when they took actions that they didn’t like. An FAA investigation into alleged safety issues at the Boca Chica test facility has, for instance, led to a delay in SpaceX’s Starship prototype test schedule. SpaceX is also currently appealing a ruling on the U.S. Department of Justice’s probe into alleged discriminatory hiring practices, which it may have grounds for considering that the Department of Defense has potentially conflicting regulations that govern the employment of non-citizen immigrants by military contractors.
He has since admitted that taking Tesla private could prove impossible now that the stock has gained enough ground to be included in the S&P 500 index. The stock’s price rise was likely spurred on by Tesla’s record number of vehicle deliveries in 2020 and another quarterly record of deliveries in Q1 2021, the latter of which was hampered only by a temporary pause in the production of the Model S and Model X to retrofit a factory to support their revamped look.
Although Elon Musk has previous said, “Vacation will kill you,” after catching an illness during a trip to his native country of South Africa, he does know how to have fun. He has been seen wing-walking with a professional aerial stunt group and playing the maracas with a mariachi band. The meme-based cryptocurrency Dogecoin gets the occasional mention on his Twitter account, usually as part of a joke. He was even the honorary “CEO of Dogecoin” for a day.
His sense of humor seems to extend to his companies’ operations on occasion. “Tesla Tequila” was recently added to Tesla’s online shop and sold out quickly upon its introduction, apparently to the annoyance of the Mexican government, which questioned whether it was authentic Tequila. Recent regulatory filings have added “Technoking of Tesla” to Elon Musk’s titles.
He may make an equally dramatic and fun SpaceX- or Tesla-themed entrance for his day on Saturday Night Live. It is somewhat rare for a CEO of a major company (let alone two) to host Saturday Night Live. Besides the expected lineup of big-name entertainers like Eddie Murphy and Betty White, previous high-profile hosts include Donald Trump, Steve Forbes, Al Sharpton, and Rudy Giuliani.
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