Elon Musk is gloating on X over fumbles at Biden's 'big boy' press conference

"Reality is beyond parody!" Musk said in response to a clip of Biden accidentally referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as "Vice President Trump."

• Elon Musk couldn't hide his amusement at President Joe Biden's latest gaffe. 
• Biden accidentally referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as "Vice President Trump."
• "This is real!!??" Musk said in an X post on Thursday.  

President Joe Biden can count Elon Musk among those who caught at least part of his highly anticipated press conference on Thursday night.

And Musk, who has frequently derided Biden and his administration, couldn't stop himself from poking fun at Biden's gaffes.

"This is real!!??" Musk said on his social-media platform, X, in response to a clip in which Biden accidentally referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as "Vice President Trump."

Biden misspoke during Thursday's press conference when he was asked whether he had any concerns about Harris' ability to beat former President Donald Trump if she took over from him.

"I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president did I think she was not qualified to be president," Biden said.

Musk also poked fun at the muted facial expressions Biden's Cabinet members had when he made the mistake.

"Reality is beyond parody!" he wrote a few minutes later.

"The most entertaining outcome is the most likely," Musk said in another post referencing the incident.

There were, however, parts of the press conference that observers deemed to have gone well — namely, Biden's command of issues regarding foreign policy.

But the mixed reaction is probably a downer for Biden, whose team saw it as an opportunity for him to quell the growing doubts surrounding his mental acuity.

During a press briefing on Monday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, and the national security communications advisor, John Kirby, jokingly referred to the event as Biden's "big boy" press conference, a term coined by the Bloomberg reporter Justin Sink.

Musk's amusement shouldn't come as a surprise to many. The mercurial businessman has been an outspoken critic of Biden ever since Tesla was excluded from the president's electric-vehicle summit in 2021.

Musk, who said he voted for Biden in 2020, has slammed Biden for his approach toward the Southern border crisis and accused the Democratic Party of being "controlled by the unions."

That said, Musk has stopped short of endorsing Biden's rival, Trump. (The former president has had his own share of name mixups, too; earlier this year, for instance, he confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.)

"I think I would not vote for Biden. I'm not saying I'd vote for Trump," Musk told Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times DealBook Summit in November.

It's worth noting that Musk has used X to platform several GOP figures. In May last year, he helped Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida kick off an ultimately failed presidential bid via an X stream riddled with technical difficulties.

And while Musk has stopped short of endorsing Trump, he's admitted to meeting privately with the GOP candidate.

"I was at a breakfast at a friend's place, and Donald Trump came by, that's it," Musk told the former CNN host Don Lemon in an interview that aired on March 18. "I'm not paying his legal bills in any way, shape or form. And he did not ask me for money."

During a June 13 Tesla shareholder meeting, Musk said of Trump, "He does call me out of the blue for no reason."

"I don't know why, but he does," Musk continued.

Representatives for Musk and Biden didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.