Musk engaged in the Twitter spat with Warren on Tuesday, one day after the senator shared an article about the billionaire being named Time magazine’s person of the year. Warren tweeted that the “rigged tax code” should be changed “so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”
The world’s richest person responded to the senator by tweeting a 2019 Fox News opinion article calling the then-presidential candidate a “fraud” while maintaining that she had spread “lies about being Native American” in order “to benefit from affirmative action or other preferential programs.” Musk captioned his link with the comment, “Stop projecting!”
“You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason,” Musk added in a tweet minutes later. “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.”
In recent years “Karen” has become derogatory slang for a type of entitled white woman who complains a lot. The term is sometimes used to describe a woman who wrongly calls out others for what they misperceive as a failure to follow rules or regulations.
Newsweek reached out to Senator Warren’s office for comment.
Warren on Monday also retweeted a tweet from Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, that contended it was “‘TIME’ for Elon Musk to pay his fair share of taxes.” The senator responded that she had “a plan for that.”
Earlier this year, Warren, Jayapal and Pennsylvania Representative Brendan Boyle introduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, a proposal that would place a 2 percent annual tax on households with a net worth above $50 million and a 3 percent annual tax on households with net worths above $1 billion.
Time’s choice to name Musk, whose status as a polarizing figure has increased alongside his wealth and global influence, as the 2021 person of the year provoked strong reactions online. Political commentator Keith Olbermann insisted in a tweet that the magazine “went down the crapper many years ago” and had awarded Musk the title “for having the worst Ego:Accomplishment ratio in the world.”
Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller tweeted that the awarding the title to Musk was “well deserved” and “a solid & inspiring choice.” Fox News contributor Joe Concha argued that the selection “actually makes some sense” since Time’s “original criteria” for the person of the year did not mean that it was awarded “to the best person.”
“Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too,” a Time article on choosing Musk for the title explained. “Musk is in a class of his own. He sees his mission as solving the globe’s most intractable challenges, along the way disrupting multiple industries across two decades.”
“As provocative as his vision is his persona, a blunt instrument that often seems to revel in division and aggressive mockery as he gives the world access to his id through social media,” the article said.
