Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, mocked CNN on Thursday after it reported that Musk never made good on his promise to deliver ventilators to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

In March, Musk vowed to donate 1,000 ventilators to help California amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

What are the details?

On Thursday, CNN reported that the governor's office said that it had not received any ventilators despite Musk's March promise.

CNN tweeted the article on Thursday, captioning it, "Three weeks after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he had obtained more than 1,000 ventilators to help California hospitals treating patients infected with the coronavirus, the governor's office says none of the promised ventilators have been received by hospitals."

Musk, however, said that it was all a misunderstanding, and that he had delivered on his offer.

In a Twitter response, Musk fired back, "What I find most surprising is that CNN still exists."

He later tweeted at Newsom, asking him to clear up the misunderstanding, and shared screenshots of receipts that appeared to confirm that he did send the promised ventilators to California hospitals.



One screenshot appears to show a message thread between Los Angeles County Health Services' Director of System Operations and Support Services Phillip Franks.

In a March 27 message — just days after Elon made the generous offer — Franks wrote, "[The ventilators] worked great during testing today. We will put these to use tomorrow! Thanks!"

Musk later laughed, "I literally have the receipts!! This is so dumb."

CNN seemed to stand by its reporting in a Twitter response.

The Daily Caller pointed out a tweet from Matt Dornic — who is the network's vice president of communications — which seemed to mock Musk for his indignation.

Dornic wrote, "Weird to attack CNN for what the CA governor's office said — especially when your own spokespeople at Tesla didn't respond to requests for comment. Seems like your outrage should, uh, be directed at the entity that made the claim, not the one that reported it. U new to this?"



To make matters worse, Dornic then defensively dredged up an early March tweet in which Musk called the pandemic panic "dumb."

Dornic wrote, "Nearly 29k Americans have now died. Still think it's dumb @elonmusk? Or are you too busy attacking news orgs to care?"

At the time of this writing, it does not appear that CNN has updated its original story. Dornic, too, still appears to be employed.