Elon Musk calls British cave rescuer a ‘paedo’

Billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla chief Elon Musk has launched an extraordinary attack on a British cave diving expert who was involved in the rescue of a youth soccer team from a flooded cave in northern Thailand.

In a series of now-deleted Tweets, Musk called cave diving expert Vern Unsworth a “paedo”, doubling down on the comment before deleting the Tweets after a storm of public backlash.

Musk’s outburst came after Unsworth labelled a mini-submarine that Musk had offered to use to rescue the trapped youths as a “PR stunt”, adding that it had “absolutely no chance of working”.

Musk responded on Twitter, implying it was “sus” [suspect] for a British ex-pat to be living in Thailand, before offering to make a video of the mini-sub working inside the cave.

“We will make [a video] of the mini-sub going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry paedo guy, you really did ask for it,” Musk wrote.

The Guardian says that when one of Musk’s 22 million followers pointed out that Musk was “calling the guy who found the children a paedo”, the entrepreneur “doubled down”, writing: “Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true.”

There is “no indication that Musk’s statement is true, and he provided no justification or proof to back up his claim”, CNN says.

Musk had reportedly been seen briefly in Thailand during the rescue last week, bringing a “hastily built” mini-sub to the mouth of the cave shortly before divers rescued the youths.

The Washington Post says Musk has since been arguing with people who have accused him of “shoehorning himself into the drama and imagining hypotheticals” which experts at the scene had deemed “unnecessary and impractical”.