Former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued Elon Musk was only able to become the world’s first trillionaire because of a “rigged system.” The famous economist also bashed SpaceX — Musk’s rocket company that just went public — by calling it nothing more than a “Ponzi scheme.”

Krugman criticized Musk, SpaceX, and Musk’s leadership of his other companies during an appearance on Ari Melber’s MS NOW show on Friday night.

“This is a rigged system. Sorry, but this is genuine rigging,” Krugman said. “Clearly, the system has all been tilted into producing this absurd valuation that makes the world’s first trillionaire.”

He said that was obviously the case because a lot of people were being “forced” to invest in SpaceX — whether they wanted to or not — because it was being added to major indices and top universities have sizable portions of their endowments parked in the rocket company’s stock.

Krugman said SpaceX’s $2.10 trillion valuation after its first day of trading on Friday didn’t make a lot of sense to him, either. He said it would be fine if Musk had a record of “actually pulling off technological miracles routinely” — but he said the man running SpaceX, Tesla, and NeuraLink doesn’t have that.

He also ripped Musk for his leadership of X. Krugman said Musk — after buying the app formerly known as Twitter in late 2022 — turned the platform into a “right-wing, Nazi-infested wasteland.”

And speaking of Nazis, Krugman recently said the U.S. will have to go through a “de-MAGAfication” process after President Donald Trump leaves office, just like Germany went through a Denazification process following World War II.

Krugman wasn’t the only one on cable news complaining about Musk becoming a trillionaire on Friday. His former NYT colleague Michelle Goldberg called Musk a “white supremacist” on MS NOW, and political pundit Bakari Sellers made the same accusation over on CNN.

Those comments came a few hours after Musk’s rocket company SpaceX went public. The stock jumped nearly 20% in its first day of trading, closing around $161 per share.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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