Dave Chappelle can’t save Elon Musk from angry boos in San Francisco

Dave Chappelle certainly got the crowd riled up Sunday night at the end of his San Francisco set, but perhaps not in the way he wanted when his audience reportedly gave loud and protracted boos to the controversial guest he brought on stage: Elon Musk.

Chappelle asked his audience at the Chase Center to “make some noise for the richest man in the world.” They definitely did, and footage caught of the comedian’s bit of stunt casting makes for some curious, even uncomfortable, viewing, even for people who don’t like Musk, as Gizmodo reported. 

The crowd initially erupted into a mixture of cheers and boos at the sight of Twitter’s polarizing new CEO. But as the shock of Musk’s appearance wore off, the boos began to win out, according to footage of the set and some people in the audience.

“Cheers and boos, I see. Elon…” Chappelle said.

“Hey Dave,” Musk responded, prompting another wave of boos from the crowd.

The footage showed the booing getting louder as Musk wandered around onstage with a microphone in hand. Musk tried to wave and paced some more, evidently unsure about how to respond to such negative reaction.

Chappelle tried to salvage the moment by cracking some jokes: “It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience.”

“All these people who are booing, and I’m just pointing out the obvious, you have terrible seats,” Chappelle also said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Musk offered up a different account of the extent to which he was booed, tweeting Monday morning: “Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter). It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.”

Someone shot back in a reply to Musk: “We have the tapes.”

Phones were not allowed inside Chase Center for the show, but at least one person snuck theirs in and captured the exchange and posted it to Twitter, Gizmodo reported. It was subsequently taken down from Musk’s platform, with a notice that read: “This Tweet is from an account that no longer exists.” However, people online, “in the interest of free speech,” saved the footage and managed to post it to YouTube and to Twitter.

The footage showed Chappelle cracking some more jokes, this time about about Musk’s business practices, his SpaceX company and ambition to colonize Mars. “His whole business model is (expletive) Earth, I’m leaving anyway,” said Chappelle, who pondered the type of women or topless bars one might find in space.

For a moment, the crowd appeared to get back into the rhythm of laughing along with Chappelle until Musk spoke.

“Thanks for having me up on stage,” Musk said awkwardly, with the boos starting up again. After the comedian said that Musk had given him a jetpack last Christmas, and the boos continued, Musk became visibly frustrated and said, “Dave, what should I say?”

“Don’t say nothing. It’ll only spoil the moment,” Chappelle said. “Do you hear that sound, Elon? That’s the sound of pending civil unrest. I can’t wait to see what store you decimate next … You shut the (expletive) up with your boos.”

According to Gizmodo and the footage, the mood in the stadium began to change when Chappelle became belligerent in his defense of Musk.

“I wish everyone in this auditorium peace and the joy of feeling free,” Chappelle said.  “And your pursuit of happiness. Amen.”

While it appeared that Chappelle was ready to call it a night, a third video showed comedian Chris Rock coming out on stage with a few other people, Gizmodo reported. The video shows Chappelle asking someone on stage to do a version of the catchphrase from his 2000s sketch show, “I’m rich, biatch.”

The man gave it a shot, yelling the catchphrase into the mic. Chappelle then handed the mic to Musk, imploring him to do the same thing. Musk complied, offering up a very awkward version, prompting the crowd to erupt into more boos.

People on social media estimated that the vast majority of people in the 18,000-capacity stadium booed during Musk’s appearance, Gizmodo said. According to Indiewire, James Yu, founder of Sudowrite, shared on Twitter:

The angry crowd reaction came amid Musk’s latest provocations on Twitter, including his latest apparent effort to question both transgender identities and the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. He tweeted on Sunday that his pronouns on Twitter are “Prosecute/Fauci.”

Musk defended this tweet against criticism from former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who had written: “Elon, please don’t mock and promote hate toward already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence members of the #LGBTQ+ community. They are real people with real feelings. Furthermore, Dr Fauci is a dedicated public servant whose sole motivation was saving lives.”