Elon Musk accused Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of flirting with him after she raged that his purchase of Twitter had stoked hate crimes.
‘Stop hitting on me, I’m really shy,’ he wrote, adding a blushing emoji to go along with it.
Musk was replying directly to a tweet sent by the Democrat Representative earlier on Friday, which suggested he’d only bought the platform at the behest of Fox News host Tucker Carlson and his PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Earlier in the day, Ocasio-Cortez took exception to Musk’s claim that the ‘far left’ had taken over the Democratic Party in recent years after he posted a graphic showing what he saw as the straying of the party left since 2008.
‘The extreme left is taking over WHERE,’ she wrote. ‘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.’
Musk’s purchase of Twitter – which was confirmed on Monday – has sparked howls of outrage from many progressives online, while conservatives have welcomed it.
The entrepreneur has said he disagrees with censorship and bans Twitter currently levies on users who post what it deems ‘harmful content’ or misinformation.
Musk says he favors ‘time outs’ for rule-breakers, rather than outright bans.
He also tweeted his disapproval of Twitter’s $17m-a-year lawyer Vijaya Gadde and blasted her for censoring the New York Post’s October 2020 exclusive about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Initially dismissed as ‘misinformation’ – with some liberals even querying whether it was a concerted campaign by Russia – the contents of the computer have since been authenticated.
His behavior has sparked howls of outrage from many of Twitter’s current staff-workers, who tend to skew liberal.
They’ve vowed to quit the platform when Musk takes over in around six months – although the tycoon is likely planning widespread staff cuts to boost profitability anyway.
He is said to have discussed firing current CEO Parag Agrawal, who earned around $30 million in 2022, and will likely bring in his own board.
Musk also shared a meme earlier this week suggesting that his personal politics have moved from center left to conservative, because many liberals have grown so extreme in their woke views.
And days after his purchase, prominent conservative tweeters noticed their numbers begin to soar, while famous liberals saw sharp drops in their follower numbers.
Among the biggest beneficiaries was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has gained around 400,000 new followers since Tuesday.
Meanwhile, AOC has seen her followers slump by more than 15,000 in the last four days.
Conservatives have long suggested Twitter ‘shadow-bans’ them, and makes it harder for people to see their tweets.
They’ve suggested the algorithm used to punish them has been changed before Musk joins to avoid angering him.
Twitter insists the rises and falls in follower numbers are organic – and claims many right-wingers have flocked to join the platform after Musk’s purchase, while liberals infuriated with the deal have made good on promises to leave it.
Musk sold off a total of $8.5 billion in Tesla shares in recent days, new regulatory filings on Friday showed.
The filings double the previously reported amount of the fire-sale, which Musk is presumably conducting in order to fund his $21 billion cash commitment in a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
Though Musk is the richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $246 billion, most of his fortune is tied up in stock, and it had seemed clear he would have to sell off some assets to fund the Twitter takeover.
About half of Musk’s selloff of Tesla shares was made on Tuesday. Musk sold another $4.4 billion in the stock on Thursday, the new filings show.
On Thursday night, after the first round of share sales became public, Musk tweeted: ‘No further TSLA sales planned after today’.
Tesla stock, which dropped 12 percent as he made his initial stock dump earlier this week, popped 6 percent in morning trading on Friday following Musk’s vow not to sell the remainder of his stake.
To complete the Twitter takeover, which is due to close by October, Musk has committed $21 billion in cash, $13 billion from Morgan Stanley in traditional bank loans and another $12.5 billion from the bank and others in margin loans.
It’s unclear why Musk decided to liquidate part of his 17 percent stake in Tesla so far in advance of the deal’s expected closing date.
In total, sold about 9.6 million shares this week, according to the filings on Thursday and Friday, equating to 5.6 percent of his stake in the company. Musk still owns about 16 percent of Tesla, a stake worth $143 billion.
After taxes, Musk will make about $6.5 billion from his latest stock sale, and made about $3 billion in profit from another big sell-off late last year. That leaves roughly $10 billion in cash he will still need to meet his equity requirement for the Twitter deal.
It is not clear how he will cover the remaining equity financing. Musk holds a 44 percent stake in unlisted rocket company SpaceX that is reportedly valued at $100 billion.