During a speech commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence last week, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani took aim at the richest person in the world to make a salient point about growing inequality.
“We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry, while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more,” he said.
Elon Musk, who temporarily became a trillionaire following his company SpaceX’s IPO last month, didn’t take kindly to the slight.
“Mamdani has built nothing,” he tweeted angrily in response. “He is a taker, never a maker.”
But his knee-jerk retort didn’t exactly land. The most-liked reply pointed out that Musk’s empire had been built on tens of billions of dollars of government handouts. One user called him out for being the “biggest single recipient of US taxpayer dollars of all time.”
One particularly scorching takedown came from grassroots political organizer Jay Ponti, who pointed out that many of Musk’s business successes were built on the shoulders of others.
“[Martin] Eberhard and [Marc] Tarpenning founded Tesla,” he wrote, referring to the EV maker’s original CEO and CFO before Musk joined in 2004. “You didn’t invent eBay or Twitter.”
“Your wealth is from acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and stealing credit,” Ponti added. “Everything you have was built by workers and you fight to keep from unionizing while you receive [government] welfare.”
“You are a parasite,” the political organizer concluded.
The scathing remarks highlight Musk’s more-than-rocky rise to fame and how his companies, Tesla and SpaceX in particular, have massively benefited from government contracts over the years. According to an eye-opening Washington Post investigation last year, Musk’s businesses have sucked up at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits.
If Musk himself hadn’t been a “taker,” his companies could’ve easily flatlined without regular taxpayer-funded cash infusions.
Meanwhile, Mamdani has done little to earn such a title. On the contrary, his administration has been built on giving — from plans to expand low-cost childcare, fighting wage theft affecting gig workers, setting up city-run grocery stores, and adding a second homes tax for wealthy New York City residents.
After SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO last month made Musk the world’s first trillionaire, Mamdani had some choice words.
“Reason #1,000,000,000,000 why we should tax the rich,” he tweeted at the time.
There’s at least one subject where both Mamdani and Musk do see eye to eye: eliminating waste and pushing for efficiency. In a jab at the billionaire’s ill-fated and enormously wasteful Department of Government Efficiency, Mamdani recently launched what he calls the Commission on Government Efficiency.
However, instead of cutting foreign aid and condemning thousands to die around the world, Mamdani is using the group to make it easier for NYC residents to access affordable city services.
More on Musk: Elon Musk Has Sucked Up $38 Billion in Aid From the Federal Government, and Now He’s Slashing That Help for Others