Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has sparked conversations about the direction the social media platform will take, and the future of the internet by extension. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat US representative, also expressed her concerns saying “Tired of having to collectively stress about what explosion of hate crimes is happening bc some billionaire with an ego problem unilaterally controls a massive communication platform and skews it because Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel took him to dinner and made him feel special”. 

Musk was quick to reply to this with his trademark sense of humour, asking the lawmaker to stop hitting on him. 

AOC earlier replied to Musk that her comments were about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, but has since then deleted her tweet. 

AOC has been a vocal critic of Zuckerberg and Facebook, as evidenced by her questions about the platform’s refusal to take down political campaigns which are often factually incorrect. Zuckerberg has hosted dinners with Peter Thiel, the German-American entrepreneur, and Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, in attendance as well. 

He’s also been known to meet with rightwing political pundits and AOC had questioned Zuckerberg about the same. 

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However, her deleted tweet seems to indicate that the shoe fits Musk just as well. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO goes way back with Thiel, as the two co-founded PayPal, and were even involved in a car crash in 2000. 

While AOC might have a tough time deciding whether she is labelling Musk or Zuckerberg as the “billionaire with an ego problem”, the replies to her tweet show a right-wing bolstering against the Democrat lawmaker for apparently targeting Musk. 

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Rita Panahi, a right-wing refugee who fled from Iran to Australia, said “You’re so right. Couple of Elon bros in Tesla caps attacked me outside Subway last night. They yelled racial slurs and said ‘this is Musk country’ then one threw bleach at me”, ending the message with three crying emoticons. 

Kristina Wong, the Pentagon correspondent for Breitbart news wrote she was awaiting Musk’s response before he’d tweeted. To this, Hans Mahncke of The Epoch Times, a far-right international multi-language newspaper, answered that Musk’s reply was worth waiting for, and attached a screenshot of the same. 

Musk, since acquiring Twitter has placed himself to the right of being a centrist, on the political spectrum, and has encouraged free speech on the platform from both sides.