Zinger Key Points
- Elon Musk accused Jeff Bezos of advising others to sell Tesla stock ahead of the 2024 election.
- Bezos promptly denied the allegations.
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Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, two of the world’s richest people, entered a social media sparring match on Thursday.
What Happened: The controversy began when Musk accused Bezos of urging “everyone” to sell shares of Tesla Inc TSLA ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Musk supported Donald Trump during the presidential stakes, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump’s election efforts.
“Just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock 🤭,” Musk posted on his social media platform, X. The post garnered over 29 million views.
Bezos responded nearly nine hours later.
“Nope. 100% not true,” the Amazon founder succinctly replied.
It is unclear whether the billionaire entrepreneur plans to pursue legal action against Musk.
Tesla’s stock has far outperformed the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY since Trump’s election win on Nov. 5. Tesla shares are trading up 35%, breaking the $1 trillion mark, while the benchmark has gained 2.97%.
Musk is the largest shareholder of Tesla. While Musk did not start the company, he has served as CEO since 2008.
Musk and Bezos’ rivalry stretches decades. Musk is the principal shareholder of SpaceX while Bezos owns Blue Origin, two space exploration companies.
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