Elon Musk said on a Thursday podcast that he'd be willing to fight North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after having already posed a challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During an appearance on the Nelk Boys' Full Send podcast, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO acknowledged he would accept a challenge from Kim. The hypothetical scenario was posed to him while Musk was talking about some of the more controversial messages he's posted on Twitter in the past.
One such message Musk mentioned was when he jokingly tweeted that he'd buy Coca-Cola if the company put cocaine back in its soft drinks. He then talked about how he once posed a fight to Putin in a tweet weeks after the Russian leader invaded Ukraine.
"I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat," Musk wrote on March 14. "Stakes are Ukraine."
On Thursday's podcast, Musk said, "It was pretty insane for me to challenge Putin to one-on-one combat."
"Would you ever take on Kim Jong Un?" Full Send co-host Kyle Forgeard asked.
"If he wants," Musk answered. "I wouldn't say no."
Further discussing possible threats on his life, Musk said he doesn't have "an assassination squad," but he admitted he has worried that certain statements he's made "could really backfire."
Musk touched on several other topics during his nearly three-hour appearance on Full Send, including a tweet that got him in trouble with his mother. In May, he wrote, "If I die under mysterious circumstances, it's been nice knowin ya." His mom, Maye Musk, commented that the remark wasn't funny, leading him the world's richest man to apologize.
Talk also turned to the fallout Musk faced for smoking marijuana on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2018. He told the Nelk Boys he was subjected to random drug tests from the federal government for a year as a result.
"I did get a lot of backlash because it's still federally illegal," he said. "SpaceX has federal government contracts, so our competitors were like 'Why aren't you doing anything, look at him brazenly smoking weed on Joe Rogan's podcast.'"
He also told the hosts he wasn't just checked for cannabis, adding, "They drug tested me for everything."
Despite the rebellious act on Rogan's podcast, Musk said he's not much of a cannabis smoker.
"I find weed is not that good for productivity," he said. "I do actually have to make the rockets work and the cars work and make the factories work."
Newsweek reached out to Musk via Tesla for comment.
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Jon Jackson is an Associate Editor at Newsweek based in New York. His focus is on reporting on the Ukraine ... Read more
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