Back in January, when Elon Musk made an strange hand gesture which resembled a Nazi or Roman salute while celebrating President Trump’s inauguration, the corporate media were eager to conclude that Musk’s on-stage awkwardness must categorically make him a Nazi. Yet last week, when Democratic Senator Corey Booker made an identical motion at the end of a speech in California, none of those same journalists even noticed.

MRC analysts looked at all left-wing cable (CNN and MSNBC) and broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS) coverage in the week following both Musk’s (January 20 through January 26) and Booker’s (May 31 through June 6) odd salutes, finding that not a single on-air speaker on any of the networks bothered to mention the Democratic Senator’s faux pas. Musk’s incident, however, received ample and immediate coverage: 16 minutes and 17 seconds, all told.

Commentators on a panel for CNN, which was covering the January event live, instantly took notice of Musk’s hand gesture. PBS, meanwhile, was the first outlet to report on it as a breaking story. MSNBC quickly followed suit, though it should be noted that none of the other three broadcast networks got around to covering it on any of their flagship morning or evening newscasts.

Although our study covered only the first week after each incident, for the sake of comparing apples to apples, it should be noted that the coverage of Elon’s salute extended long beyond the initial news cycle in which it occurred. To date, it has been brought up a total of 55 times on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS combined, but only 22 of those occurred during the week. 

In fact, the incident is still receiving airtime. Its most recent mention was on the June 5 edition of CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip, when it was brought up by Democratic Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh.

The single longest discussion about it took place more than a month after the fact, on the February 23 edition of MSNBC’s Velshi.The salute was a part of a larger segment focusing entirely on the question of whether Musk was, in fact, a crypto-Nazi.

In the days immediately following the gaffe, a few commentators gave Musk the benefit of the doubt. For example, on the January 21 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Tulane University professor Walter Isaacson opined: “Well, obviously he did not intend it to be a Nazi salute… I mean, I’m sure he didn’t intend it to be a Nazi salute.” 

But as time wore on, such analysis became vanishingly rare, especially after Musk gave a speech in front of Germany’s immigration restrictionist AFD party. Since then, no host or journalist on CNN or MSNBC has suggested the gesture was anything other than a deliberate Nazi salute.

It’s also worth nothing that Musk’s gaffe occurred during one of the busiest news cycles in years — the inauguration of President Trump — which might explain why it received only modest coverage on the cable networks, and none at all from ABC, CBS, or NBC. These networks’ utter silence about Booker’s identical gaffe, however, cannot be explained away in the same fashion. 

Booker, a sitting Democrat and media darling, was spared the coverage because his allies in the corporate press had no incentive to assassinate his character. This stark disparity in attention clearly indicates that the media’s selective outrage over Elon’s goofy gesture was more performative than genuine. 

And of course it was. Elon Musk has done plenty to upset the left (and in the past 24 hours, much of the right as well), but the claim that he is a Nazi is the kind of thing one should only expect to hear on a liberal arts college campus, or perhaps on Keith Olbermann’s show.