Elon Musk trades barbs with US Senator Elizabeth Warren after she accuses him of 'freeloading'

Tesla boss Elon Musk seemed to be hit by a bout of midweek blues. The SpaceX CEO got into a Twitter war of words with Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts in the United States.

The spat began when Warren tweeted a story naming Musk as the Time’s Person of the Year with a swipe at the rigged tax code. Musk’s spontaneous response slamming the senator’s tweet got thousands of likes and shares.

“Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” tweeted Warren, triggering an online spar between the billionaire CEO and the seasoned politician.

The billionaire was quick with a sharp rebuttal. He said, “And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.” However, the unruly banter did not end there.

Musk went on to add more tweets in his response. One of his snarky tweets asked Warren to ‘stop projecting’. Incidentally, the Tesla CEO attacked Warren with a 2019 report on her claim about her Native American lineage, leading up to her disqualification as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.
“Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen,” he added. According to pop culture references, Karen is a middle-aged white woman with a peculiar bob cut asking to speak to the manager at the slightest inconvenience.

This is not the first time that Musk has had taxing times, at least on Twitter. In November, he got into a row with Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who targeted the “extremely wealthy” in a tweet. “We must demand that the extremely wealthy pay their fair share. Period,” said Sanders.

In a stinging response, Musk said, “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.” He went on to add if Sanders wanted to sell more stock he only needed to speak up.