Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk hit back at Elizabeth Warren after the Senator criticized him for his tax-paying practices and campaigning for policy adjustments in his favor. In the Twitter spat between the two, Musk compared Warren to “a friend’s angry mom.”
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Twitter Row
Warren dealt the first blow by writing on Twitter: “Let's change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”
Musk, who was indeed named “person of the year” by TIME magazine, bitterly addressed her as “Senator Karen” and said: “You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason.”
He also added, “And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.” In another tweet he sentenced, “Don’t spend it all at once … oh wait you did already.”
The background of the scornful exchange is the tax plan policymakers are preparing for billionaires like Elon Musk. Using legal methods, the Tesla CEO managed to avoid federal income tax payments back in 2018, according to a ProPublica investigation a while ago.
One More Round
Musk was also vitriolic at Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has intensely campaigned in favor of more taxes on the richest Americans and large firms. Back then, Musk said: “I keep forgetting that you're still alive.”
In his interview with TIME magazine, Musk expressed his discontent with the government’s electric vehicles funding plan and said: "The government is inherently not a good steward of capital.”
“In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness," the billionaire had said on Twitter in September.
Tesla is part of the Entrepreneur Index, which tracks 60 of the largest publicly traded companies managed by their founders or their founders' families.
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