Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted to his 34 million followers to "take the red pill," leading some followers, including Ivanka Trump, to cheer the tech billionaire for pushing for the conservative cause. This, however, angered one of the makers of the 1999 film "The Matrix," from which the phrase originated.
Ivanka Trump quote tweeted Musk's initial "red pill" tweet, adding the word "Taken!"
Musk, in recent weeks, has become a champion of defying stay-at-home orders. Last Monday, he defied coronavirus guidelines in Alameda County, California and reopened Tesla's only U.S. production facility.
On Sunday, after posting his cryptic tweet, Musk also tweeted a meme of "Matrix" star Laurence Fishburne, who, playing Morpheus, had said the "take the red pill" line. Musk added a comment about taking "DayQuil & NyQuil at same time." The Fishburne meme itself said "did you seriously just take both pills? WTF is wrong with you?"
In "The Matrix," the full phrase is about seeking the truth, with Morpheus telling the main character Neo that "You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." Neo takes the red pill.
However, Fox News reported Monday that the phrase has become slang for people who abandon liberalism to become conservative.
Meanwhile, Lilly Wachowski, who wrote and directed "The Matrix" with her sister Lana, got angry at Musk's appropriation of the phrase and at Trump for her "taken" tweet, reports The Guardian.
"F*** both of you,” she replied on Twitter to Trump, before following up with a tweet supporting the Brave Space Alliance, which describes itself as “the first Black and trans-led LGBTQIA center located on the South Side of Chicago.”
Wachowski came out as transgender in 2016 after her fellow Matrix director and sibling Lana came out in 2012.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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