Tesla CEO Elon Musk argued in his defamation trial Wednesday that when he called a British diver "pedo guy," this was clearly a flippant remark and that using the word "guy" made it "less significant than pedo."
Musk is being sued for defamation by Vernon Unsworth, a diver who helped rescue soccer players trapped in a Thailand cave and who Musk publicly called a "pedo guy" on Twitter last year. The Tesla CEO has been arguing that when he called Unsworth a "pedo guy," he was not legitimately accusing him of being a pedophile, claiming this was simply a common insult used in South Africa, where he grew up, to call someone creepy.
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