Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast on Friday. In an in-depth three-hour interview, Musk discussed how his work at Trump's Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) sparked personal hatred against him.
Rogen asked the billionaire how he personally deals with the hate and attacks directed at him.
"It's a lot of pressure," Musk said in a serious tone. "They actually want to kill me. That's what they say on the Internet. On the Reddit forum, they not only want to kill me, but they also want to desecrate my body."
Musk also addressed his controversial gesture at Trump's inauguration, which some media outlets described as a Nazi salute.
Since then, social media sites including Musk's X have been flooded with users accusing the billionaire of condoning Nazism.
Musk said in an interview on Friday that he is not a Nazi. He told Rogen that the continued criticism was "ridiculous" and that the gesture was not a Nazi salute. He also joked: "Now I can no longer point diagonally at objects."
"Hopefully people realize I'm not a Nazi. Just to clarify, I'm not a Nazi," Musk said with a laugh.
Musk went on to argue that if you didn't commit genocide, then you can't be called a Nazi.
"The thing about the Nazis is, were you invading Poland? If you weren't invading Poland, maybe you weren't a 'Nazi,'" he said. "You had to commit genocide and wage war."
He added: "What was really bad about the Nazis was not their fashion or their habits, but their war and genocide."
It's not just Musk's arm posture that has critics debating whether he supports Nazi ideology. The DOGE chief also supports Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany, a strongly nationalist and anti-immigration party.