Elon Musk Says Destiny 'Should Go to Prison' After Streamer Links Trump Rhetoric to Charlie Kirk Shooting
Steven Bonnell put his argument on the record. The world's richest man responded with a jailhouse threat. The internet, naturally, had opinions.
Darlings, last September Destiny (Steven Bonnell) did what Destiny does: he said the loud, incendiary thing out loud, on camera, with full eye contact. Following the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, Bonnell allegedly argued, per Mediaite's coverage at the time, that Trump's election and its surrounding rhetoric bore some connection to what happened. Elon Musk, who has never once in his life let a streamer's hot take go unaddressed, publicly declared that Destiny "should go to prison" for making that argument.
Let that marinate. Not "I disagree." Not "that's irresponsible." Prison. Prison.
The response from Bonnell's corner of the internet was about what you'd expect. A significant chunk of his audience treated the Musk post as a badge of honor, the kind of attention that confirms you've touched a nerve somewhere important. According to commentary circulating at the time, supporters argued that calling for someone's imprisonment over a political opinion was, to put it generously, a remarkable use of a social media platform worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The other camp, per the discourse captured in Mediaite's reporting, felt Bonnell had crossed a line by connecting the shooting to electoral politics while the situation was still unfolding. The argument was less about Musk and more about timing: that this was a moment for restraint, not a debate-club victory lap.
Then, a few days later, Destiny allegedly removed a Charlie Kirk fan from what appears to have been a debate stream or community space, per a separate Mediaite report. Now the conversation shifted again. Critics called it convenient moderation, the kind of thing that looks like silencing dissent depending on which newsletter you subscribe to. His defenders framed it as basic house rules. Bonnell himself, per available reporting, did not appear to treat it as a significant event.
Meanwhile, an event at Colorado State University that had apparently been planned in connection with Kirk's death quietly revised its September 18 plans, per the Coloradoan, which tells you something about how much the situation was still in flux at the time.
The 2017 YouTube clip that resurfaced alongside all of this, titled with a genuinely alarming phrase about Destiny "planning to kill someone's family," appears to be ancient context-free noise rather than a new development. We are noting its existence and immediately setting it down.
My loves, Bonnell has been in this exact energy before, trading fire with figures far larger than himself and somehow remaining standing. Whether Musk's "prison" post amounted to anything beyond engagement numbers is a question the past nine months have presumably already answered.
He is still streaming. Interesting.
