X Suspends, Then Reinstates, ‘White Dudes for Harris’ Account After Group Raises $4 Million for Her Campaign: ‘We Scared Elon Musk’
UPDATE, 12:50 p.m. ET: White Dudes for Harris said its X account was reinstated Tuesday after “a groundswell of grassroots complaints” to X’s owner, tech mogul Elon Musk. “WE ARE SO BACK! After a groundswell of grassroots complaints to @ElonMusk from the #WhiteDudesforHarris community, our account was reinstated & we’re allowed to post again,” the post said. “Thank you for coming to our aid & carrying on this conversation in our absence. More to come! ❤️”
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White Dudes for Harris, a pop-up group backing VP Kamala Harris’ bid to defeat Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election that features some notable Hollywood white guys, said Elon Musk’s X had suspended its account — right after it hosted a YouTube livestream that raised more than $4 million for the Harris campaign.
Mike Nellis, founder/CEO of digital advertising firm Authentic, who is one of the organizers of White Dudes for Harris, wrote in a post Monday evening that X notified the group its account was suspended for “Violating our rules against evading suspension.”
“We scared @elonmusk and @DonaldJTrumpJr so much tonight they suspended our account and won’t let us back in,” Nellis wrote. “These guys are running scared of the success we’ve had tonight, but we’re not going to quit.” In a follow-up posted, he added, “I ask this question seriously… are we the first white dudes to ever get suspended by @elonmusk’s Twitter? I think we are.”
In an update Tuesday morning, Nellis wrote that “Our tweets are back (@dudes4harris) but our account remains suspended and according to Twitter our account is ‘permanently in read-only mode.’”
A representative for X did not respond to a request for comment.
Hamill, commenting on the seeming suspension, wrote, “In a little over 3 hours, the @dudes4harris Zoom call triggered $4M in donations for @KamalaHarris. Apparently, someone else was triggered, too. 🤣”
Musk — replying late Monday evening to someone who posted an excerpt of Hamill’s comments during the livestream saying that “never has it been more important for us to stand up to [Trump’s] mental illness and vote for Kamala in 2024” — wrote about Hamill, “His brain has been marinating in Kool-Aid for a long time.” Musk controls X, formerly known as Twitter, after he completed a debt-saddled takeover of the social network in October 2022.
White Dudes for Harris said 190,000 people tuned in to the YouTube livestream on Monday, which featured appearances from actors including Hamill, Jeff Bridges, J.J. Abrams, Sean Astin, Josh Groban, Josh Gad, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bradley Whitford. “I qualify, man. I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m for Harris,” Bridges, who played the “The Dude” in the Coen brothers’ 1998 film “The Big Lebowski,” said on the livestream.
The White Dudes for Harris account on X describes itself as “Just a few dudes who support Kamala Harris.” It currently has more than 58,000 followers.
Musk, meanwhile, has not made a secret of his opposition to Harris. On Friday, July 26, Musk shared a deepfake video that altered a recent Harris campaign video, which featured Harris saying she was “the ultimate diversity hire” and that she “had four years under the tutelage of the ultimate deep-state puppet, a wonderful mentor, Joe Biden.” The original account that posted the video labeled it a “parody,” but Musk’s post simply was captioned “This is amazing,” with a crying-laughing emoji.
In a post Sunday on X, California Gov. Gavin Newsom cited an article about Musk’s post and wrote, “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal. I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.”
Musk replied to Newsom, “I checked with renowned world authority, Professor Suggon Deeznutz, and he said parody is legal in America 🤷♂️”
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