Jeff Bezos pushed back on Elon Musk‘s claim that the Amazon founder predicted a Trump loss in the 2024 election and that shareholders should sell their Tesla and SpaceX stock.
Musk, CEO of those companies, posted early this morning that he “just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that Donald Trump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock.”
Bezos, a rival in the space business, responded to the X post, writing, “Nope. 100% not true.”
Their exchange raised the prospect that two of the world’s richest men would reignite a longtime feud.
Bezos also owns The Washington Post, and blocked the publication’s editorial section from endorsing a candidate in the race. The publication had planned to endorse Kamala Harris. He said that the action was necessary to help restore trust in the media, but the non-endorsement sparked a reader backlash, with more than 200,000 cancelling their digital subscriptions in the first few days after the news, per NPR.
Musk, though, campaigns for Trump and reportedly spent more than $100 million to boost his election bid. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been appointed by Trump to lead an effort called the Department of Government Efficiency, or D.O.G.E., to remake the federal government and provide guidance for massive cuts. In his new term, Trump wants to extend his 2017 tax bill, which included a massive cut in the corporate tax rate, from 35% to 21%.