FILE PHOTO: An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos. Picture: Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
REACTING to calls to reinstate American far-right radio show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Elon Musk on Monday categorically denied Jones’ return to Twitter, saying he has no mercy for those who use the “deaths of children to gain fame” and fulfil their political ambitions.
A jury in the US state of Connecticut last month ordered Jones to pay $965-million in damages to the family members of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The families sued Jones after he claimed the shooting on December 14, 2012, at the school in Newton, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by US authorities to impose gun control measures.
Amid calls by his followers to reinstate Jones like former US President Donald Trump, Musk said: “My first-born child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame,” the new Twitter CEO added.
In an earlier tweet on Jones, he quoted a verse from the Bible, saying: “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.“
The shooting at the US school left 20 children aged six to seven and six adults dead.
Jones, 48, apologised for spreading the conspiracy and was ordered in August to pay nearly $50 million in damages to the relatives of another victim in Texas.
“I’m in bankruptcy,” Jones said live on his show. “You want to fight. That's fine.”
He now acknowledges the attack was “100 percent real”.
Jones still faces a third defamation trial over the Sandy Hook shooting that begins in Texas later this year.