The inauguration gesture: salute or “my heart goes out”?

At a Capital One Arena rally on 20 January 2025, Musk thanked the crowd, put his right hand to his chest and extended his arm outward, then repeated it toward the audience behind him. “My heart goes out to you,” he said. [1]

The ADL called it “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.” The Jewish Council for Public Affairs called it a fascist salute. AP reported that extremists celebrated it whatever its meaning. [1][2][3][6]

Musk replied that “the ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” On 23 January he posted puns on Nazi names, which the ADL condemned as trivializing the Holocaust. [5][4]

On Joe Rogan’s podcast on 28 February 2025, Musk said: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” He went on to describe what he called the “empathy exploit,” arguing that people’s empathy is being used against them. [1]

Clips often stop at the first sentence. He did say it, and the context is his argument about exploited empathy. [1]