Biden jokes Elon Musk could ruin National Public Radio by buying it

US President Joe Biden has joked about the business abilities of US business magnate, Twitter CEO Elon Musk at the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner in Washington.

His jokes were related to Musk’s possible buying of an American nonprofit media organization National Public Radio (NPR), Forbes writes.

“Not everybody loves NPR. Elon Musk tweeted it should be defunded. Well, the best way for Elon Musk to make NPR go away is for Elon Musk to buy it,” Biden joked.

“And that’s more true than you think,” Biden said to more laughter from the crowd.
Why did President Biden joke about Musk buying NPR? Perhaps because the billionaire bought Twitter for $44 billion back in October 2022, but it’s already worth nearly less than half that.
Musk has been sparring with NPR over the news outlet’s funding. The billionaire previously slapped NPR with a label that marked the radio station first as “state-affiliated media,” putting it on par with outlets like China’s Xinhua and Russia’s RT. Musk then switched the label to “government-funded,” which NPR took issue with because only about 2 per cent of NPR’s funding comes from the government. The rest is from corporate sponsorships and fees charged to local radio stations.

In the end, Musk decided to scrap all “government-funded” and “state-affiliated media” labels for news outlets, a move that’s controversial among some Americans concerned about Russian and Chinese influence in the US But Musk has previously expressed approval of Russian state media, which only came to light when his text messages were revealed in court filings, and there’s obviously Musk’s business interests in China.