SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter earlier this week, on Friday, 29 April, engaged in a Twitter spat with United States representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after she indirectly criticised his tweet that said Democratic Party "has been hijacked by extremists".
The squabble ensued after Musk on Thursday, 28 April, tweeted to his 89.1 million followers saying, "I strongly supported Obama for President, but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by extremists." This came hours after he put out a cartoon, showing liberals moving to the left since 2008, on the social media platform.
Following this, Ocasio-Cortez, leader of young and progressive Democrats, put out a series of tweets critiquing his views. She, however, did not name Musk in her tweets.
“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 (sic)," she tweeted to her 12.9 million followers.
Separately, she put out another tweet blaming hate crimes on "some billionaire with an ego problem" who "unilaterally controls a massive communication platform and skews it because Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel took him to dinner and made him feel special". Here too she didn't name anyone, but Musk answered back to this.
"Stop hitting on me, I'm really shy," he tweeted along with a smiling face emoji. Hitting back at the comment, the US representative wrote that she was referring to CEO of Meta Platforms Mark Zuckerberg.
"I was talking about Zuckerberg, but ok," she wrote on Twitter and reportedly deleted it 57 seconds later, according to an archive of deleted politician tweets maintained by ProPublica, reported Bloomberg.
Although Musk has previously supported members of both Democrats and Republicans, the Democrats are concerned over his take over of Twitter as they feel Musk would relax restrictions that are place to prevent spread of hate speech and misinformation. Republicans, on the other have been supporting him saying conservative views have been restored.
(With inputs from Bloomberg.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)