False: Elon Musk fired Twitter's head of legal affairs and policy on air during Joe Rogan's podcast.

By: Annet Preethi Furtado
November 3 2022

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Context:

Shortly after a $44 billion takeover of Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk fired Twitter's top officials, including CEO Parag Agarwal and the Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde. In the above context, a video of Musk purportedly firing Gadde on Joe Rogan's podcast has gone viral. One such Twitter post was captioned, ‘'Elon Musk fired Twitter's head of censorship live on air @joerogan podcast.'' In the video, Gadde says: "I do think we have failed in a couple of ways, and I want to admit that." To which Musk is shown responding: "Failure comes with a big penalty. You're fired." In the viral video, the contrived conversation is followed by silence from Joe Rogan, former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey, and political commentator Tim Pool. However, this claim lacks context.

In fact:

The viral video purporting to show Musk firing Gadde on Rogan's podcast contains snippets from two different "The Joe Rogan Experience" episodes. Through a keyword search, we found the original podcast from which the viral video's excerpts were taken. Gadde's part in the viral video was taken from a March 2019 episode that included Dorsey and Pool. The outfits worn by Rogan, Pool, and Gadde matched those in the video that went viral in October 2022. The exact clip used in the viral montage is from the the 26 minutes 34 seconds time stamp in the March 2019 episode, where Gadde says, "I do think we have failed in a couple of ways". During this discussion, Musk was not present. In the podcast, Gadde was questioned regarding Twitter's censorship practices and stance on bullying.

Furthermore, we found that Musk's excerpts in the viral video are from Rogan's podcast he did in 2018. Rogan and Musk discussed Tesla's safety measures, artificial intelligence, and Musk's time management, among other topics. The SpaceX CEO smoking marijuana with Rogan on the program also incited some controversy at the time. It proves that both episodes were distinct, live-streamed roughly a year apart, and have no other connection.

Further examination revealed that a Twitter user named Damon Imani posted this video originally before it went viral. Imani mentioned in the twitter thread that the video is a parody and is also available to watch on Rumble. Although Imani's tweet still exists, along with his clarification that it is a parody, the same is not true for reposts of this video on Twitter and other platforms, leading many to believe it was a genuine incident after Gadde was actually terminated.

The verdict:

Although Musk fired Gadde, he did not do it live during a podcast. An edited video containing fragments from Musk's appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast and Gadde's interview with Dorsey and Pool has been widely shared to indicate that Musk fired Gadde during the podcast. Hence, we have marked this claim as false.