Elon Musk posted a meme on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday making fun of U.S. aid to Ukraine. Specifically, the meme features a photoshopped image of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky with the caption, “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”
The meme is a photoshopped version of a popular meme that goes by different names, including the “strained face meme,” first popularized in 2014, according to Know Your Meme.
Musk’s tweet, which appears below, has been seen by over 2 million people already at the time of this writing.
U.S. aid for Ukraine has been a controversial topic since Russia first invaded the country in 2022. Most Democrats and traditional conservative Republicans have favored aid to Ukraine, but Republicans aligned with former president Donald Trump have largely opposed the aid.
Some Trump supporters, including many in Congress who threatened to shut down the federal government during debt ceiling debates this past week, have said they oppose funding for Ukraine and want money to instead be spent on securing the U.S.-Mexico border. Musk has been sympathetic to this idea, even visiting Texas recently to see immigrants who had been detained.
The U.S. has approved roughly $113 billion in aid to Ukraine since the start of the war, according to the Associated Press. President Joe Biden has called for an additional $24 billion to be provided by Congress. But additional funding has been highly controversial and was stripped out of the most recent funding that kept the U.S. government open over the weekend.
It’s unlikely Musk made the anti-Ukraine meme himself, since the billionaire has a long history of seeing jokes on Twitter and posting them as his own, rather than simply pressing the retweet button. But it’s very clear where Musk stands on this issue, whether he made the meme or not.
Musk did not immediately respond to emailed questions sent through X on Sunday night. I’ll update this post if I hear back.
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