Elon Musk thought Ocasio-Cortez was talking about him but hey it was for Zuckerberg
Elon Musk and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got into a Twitter dispute when she chastised billionaires and provided an oblique reaction to Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk’s remark that the Democratic Party “had been seized by extremists.”
Musk, who agreed to pay $44 billion for Twitter Inc., tweeted about Democrats to his roughly 89 million followers on Thursday, just hours after tweeting a cartoon of liberals running far to the left since 2008.
Ocasio-Cortez, a young progressive Democrat with her own 12.9 million Twitter followers, never mentioned Musk. She denied his claim about the party. She blamed hate crimes on “some billionaire with an ego problem” who “unilaterally controls a large communication platform” in a separate tweet, but she didn’t specify who she was referring to.
Musk, on the other hand, replied to that tweet with the words “Stop hitting on me, I’m pretty shy,” followed by a happy face emoji. According to a ProPublica collection of deleted politician tweets, Ocasio-Cortez responded on Twitter, “I was talking about Zuckerberg, but ok,” in an apparent allusion to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and then deleted the comment 57 seconds later.
She did not react to a request for comment right away.
Musk has backed politicians from both parties. Many Republicans, on the other hand, have applauded his intention to take over and reform Twitter, claiming that conservative viewpoints have been blocked, a claim that Twitter and other internet companies refute. However, the agreement has enraged Democrats, who are concerned that the world’s wealthiest person would ease regulations designed to prevent the spread of disinformation and hate speech.
Several Senate Commerce Committee Democrats suggested on Thursday that they might call Musk to testify about his ambitions.
Musk’s tweet on Thursday, “I passionately backed Obama for President, but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by fanatics,” appears to have sparked the back-and-forth. That came only hours after he tweeted a cartoon from 2008 depicting liberals running to the left.
In a series of tweets, Ocasio-Cortez countered Musk’s claim without identifying him.
“The extreme left is taking over” WHERE. In Texas, Republicans passed a law allowing rapists to sue their victims for getting an abortion.
Can anyone name a “far left” policy that extreme implemented anywhere? We can’t even get our party to import cheaper RXs from Canada. foh
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 29, 2022
