March 5, 2025
Even if President Donald Trump were to heed Shapiro’s plea, any federal pardon for Derek Chauvin wouldn’t touch the state charges that ensure he remains behind bars.
Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist and owner of X has once again waded into controversy by amplifying a plea from conservative commentator Ben Shapiro for President Donald Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the disgraced former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd.
Shapiro, in a podcast clip Musk retweeted March 4, argued that prosecutors and law enforcement were “railroading” Chauvin and framed the officer’s conviction as the “defining achievement of the Woke movement.”
“The inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in the United States and set America’s race relations on their worst footing in my lifetime was, in fact, the railroading of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd,” Shapiro claimed in the video.
https://t.co/ZQ9yABoWtM pic.twitter.com/4Wo1R3hamx
Musk’s response? A casual, “Something to think about” as if the murder of a Black man under Chauvin’s knee for nine minutes and 29 seconds—a killing that ignited a global racial justice movement—was merely fodder for debate.
Something to think about https://t.co/KbZQEMpFXP
The Tesla maker’s decision to amplify Shapiro’s inflammatory rhetoric drew immediate support from right-leaning clowns on X.
I thought they could get him on a manslaughter but they got him on an intentional murder charge. It’s disgusting.
I think he should get a new trial — and in a different jurisdiction.
Needs to happen. It was a grave injustice.
They should pardon Derek. That being said, Shapiro needs to be put on mute because he's just going to send my taxdollars to his Real Country and tribe.
Chauvin, who is concurrently serving 21-year federal and 22½-year state sentences for violating Floyd’s civil rights and committing murder and manslaughter, became a global symbol of police brutality after Floyd’s killing in 2020. The video of the convicted killer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as Floyd begged for his life is seared into public memory. Shapiro’s revisionist framing—and Musk’s tacit endorsement—seems designed to erase this reality.
For Musk, this latest episode is emblematic of his increasingly reckless stewardship of X. Under his ownership, the platform has become a haven for reactionary voices and disinformation campaigns, with Musk himself often fanning the flames. Amplifying Shapiro’s plea for Chauvin’s pardon is not just an endorsement of bad-faith arguments but a troubling display of Musk’s willingness to undermine public trust in the justice system for clout and clicks.
Shapiro’s remarks—which dismiss the racial reckoning sparked by Floyd’s murder and cast the subsequent protests as nothing more than destructive riots—are equally galling. His characterization of Chauvin as a victim, rather than a perpetrator of state-sanctioned violence, is a chilling reminder of how far some are willing to go to rewrite history in the name of political expediency.
Even if President Donald Trump were to heed Shapiro’s plea, any federal pardon for Chauvin wouldn’t touch the state charges that ensure he remains behind bars. But that reality doesn’t seem to matter to Musk or his reactionary fan base on X, who are more interested in stoking outrage and feeding conspiratorial narratives than engaging with facts.
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