LOS ANGELES — Elon Musk testified Tuesday that he was being insulting, not literally calling a British cave diver a pedophile when he lashed out on Twitter and ended up in a defamation lawsuit from the man who helped rescue a dozen boys and their soccer coach from a flooded Thailand cave last year.
The Tesla CEO told jurors that he called Vernon Unsworth “pedo guy” because he was upset the spelunker had belittled his efforts to build a mini-submarine to transport the boys to safety. The sub was never used and Unsworth called it nothing more than a “PR stunt” and said Musk could stick the craft “where it hurts.”
“It was wrong and insulting, so I insulted him back,” the billionaire said in federal court in Los Angeles. “It was an unprovoked attack on what was a good-natured attempt to help the kids.”
Unsworth’s lawyers argue that Musk’s tweet overshadowed what should have been one of the diver’s proudest moments and left him no choice but to sue.
