Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation and acting administrator of NASA, appeared on CNBC on Monday to say that SpaceX had fallen behind in its effort to return Americans to the moon with the Artemis program. And SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was not happy about it.
Duffy announced that while SpaceX had the contract to build the Human Landing System (HLS), NASA would be opening it up to other competitors like Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
“SpaceX had the contract for Artemis 3,” Duffy said. “The problem is they’re behind. They push their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the Moon in this president’s term.”
Musk replied to Duffy’s video of the CNBC appearance Monday morning in a post on X with, “Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone the Moon.” After many of Musk’s followers pointed out that this wasn’t true (Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket did deliver a test payload to space), the billionaire followed up with another tweet about a half hour later: “(Useful payload).“
But Musk was clearly stewing all day about Duffy’s video, returning to the Transportation Secretary’s tweet late into the night with “Also, one question,” and a meme GIF that reads “why are you gae.”
Also, one question pic.twitter.com/DhpuWoOTPt
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2025
The meme originates from a 2012 segment on the Ugandan TV show called Morning Breeze with Simon Kaggwa Njala and LGBTQ activist Pepe Julian Onziema. To open the show, Njala addressed Onziema by stating, “Thank you for coming in, good morning. Why are you gay?” Onziema, a trans man in a relationship with a woman, responded, “Who says I’m gay?” Njala then went on to insist, “You are gay.”
The video evolved into a meme online in the 2010s, with some people intentionally misspelling gay as “gae.” And Musk, who’s revealed himself in recent years to be bigoted against the LGBT community, was clearly trying to get a rise out of Duffy with some old-school homophobia.
Musk’s fans subsequently shared memes on Tuesday about his tweet calling Duffy “gae,” and Musk responded with a crying-laughing emoji.
😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2025
Musk posted a poll asking “Should someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running America’s space program?” and also retweeted a video from an account called PatriotTakes that shows Duffy during his days in the 1990s as a reality TV star. Duffy is a former world champion lumberjack and climbed trees in competition.
Musk boosted a tweet from Grok about whether chimps, which are good at climbing trees, would be good for leading NASA.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2025
In another tweet, Musk referred to Duffy as “Sean Dummy” and also tweeted, “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”
Musk has many reasons to hate Duffy, it seems. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire buddy of Musk, was initially nominated by President Trump to lead NASA earlier this year, but his nomination was pulled after someone close to Trump pointed out Isaacman had previously donated money to Democratic candidates. And there’s clearly a power struggle still going on, even after Musk left his role with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in May.
Musk, who started the second Trump era by giving two Nazi-style salutes, had a rather messy departure from his official government role, but he still relies heavily on government contracts and can use his money, power and prestige to influence decisions behind the scenes. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Isaacman is still interested in the top job at NASA, but Duffy may have different plans entirely for the agency as he leads in an “acting” capacity.
According to the Journal, Duffy told people over the summer that he wanted to bring NASA under the Department of Transportation’s purview. An unnamed spokesperson for NASA told the Journal that “NASA might benefit from being part of the Cabinet,” but denied that Duffy wanted to “keep the job himself.”
Historically, Americans don’t get a front row seat to the power struggles of government, played out in front of the entire world on social media. But that’s precisely what’s happening when Musk tweets aggressively at Duffy on the platform he owns. And to make it even more odd, Musk does it with all the finesse of a 12-year-old boy. A particularly immature and homophobic 12-year-old boy at that.
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