Canada trucker's protest: Elon Musk tweets meme comparing Trudeau with Hitler; deletes later

New York: Elon Musk has triggered a storm on Twitter after comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with Adolf Hitler in a tweet that appeared to support truckers protesting vaccine mandates.

Musk posted the tweet on Wednesday just before midnight in California, and had deleted it by midday on Thursday, without explanation. He did not respond to a request for comment.

The truckers' protests in Canada have sparked a lot of tensions in the country, with the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau-led government trying to contain the situation over the past few days.

Responding to a tweet describing how Trudeau's government had ordered banks to help cut funding to the protesters, Musk posted a meme of a photo of Hitler, with "Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau" written above his head and "I had a budget" below it.

The tweet came as Musk and Tesla on Thursday accused the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of an "endless" investigation to punish Musk for criticism of the U.S. government.

Musk has 74 million followers on Twitter, making his one of its most prominent accounts. That is often seen as a marketing boon for electric car maker Tesla.

Musk is known for edgy humor and blunt assessments, but his comparison of Trudeau with the Nazi leader, who was responsible for the genocide of millions of Jews and starting World War Two, went too far for many Twitter users.

He was also criticised by the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, which is on the site of the Nazi concentrate camp where 960,000 people were killed.

"Using the image of Adolf Hitler and therefore exploiting the tragedy of all people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured and murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany created by him is sad and disturbing," the memorial wrote.

"It disrespects the memory of all victims and hurts many people."

The American Jewish Committee responded to Musk's tweet with a call for an immediate apology.

Canadian Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne addressed Musk on Twitter, telling him his reported comments were "quite frankly shocking".

But his tweet also had more than 35,000 likes, more than 9,000 retweets and many positive responses, including one from @maroongolf17 saying "my next car has to be a #tesla now."