Elon Musk backs Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams following racist tirade

Elon Musk has deployed his 130 million-follower Twitter bullhorn to come to the rescue of a beleaguered cartoonist dumped by hundreds of newspapers across America for having delivered a virulent racist tirade.

The strip was founded in 1989, and at its peak about 2,000 newspapers across 70 countries carried it. Adams lit a fuse under the success of his own work in a recent episode of his YouTube show Real Coffee with Scott Adams.

On Saturday, Twitter made the latest round of job cuts, laying off at least 200 staff from a total workforce that has been depleted under Musk from about 7,500 to 2,000, a New York Times report said. Among the casualties was the product manager who led the transition to a new paid verification service known as Twitter Blue, according to the Verge technology news site.