CEO Linda Yaccarino's memo to X staff calls Musk 'candid and profound'

By Ed Ludlow

X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino, who oversees the social network’s relationships with advertisers, sent a memo to employees signaling her support of owner Elon Musk after his incendiary comments insulting brands that have backed away from the platform.

“Our principles do not have a price tag, nor will they be compromised — ever,” Yaccarino wrote Thursday, a day after Musk told former advertisers including Walt Disney Co. to go “f—-” themselves. “No matter how hard they try, we will not be distracted by sideline critics who don’t understand our mission.”

Musk at Wednesday’s DealBook conference flung expletives at advertisers who had paused their campaigns in protest of his posts earlier this month supporting an antisemitic conspiracy theory, in which he agreed that Jewish people hold a “dialectical hatred” of white people. At the conference in New York, Musk said the advertisers pulling their money will kill the company.

In the memo, sent Thursday and viewed by Bloomberg, Yaccarino encouraged staff to watch Musk’s appearance at the conference if they hadn’t seen it. Musk’s “interview was candid and profound,” she said. “He shared an unmatched and completely unvarnished perspective and vision for the future.” Earlier, Yaccarino had reposted the specific clip calling out advertisers via her own X account.

Yaccarino’s memo is the the latest example of the CEO openly standing up for X’s owner, despite his comments that alienate the advertisers the company needs in order to continue operating, making her own job harder. The company’s advertising revenue is down more than 60% since Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover, in part because of his behavior responding to racist or antisemitic tweets. The platform, renamed X, is still indebted to the banks that helped fund the transaction.