Shes a lobbyist for Senator Karen: Elon Musk turns his fire on MSNBCs Joy Reid – Daily Mail

Elon Musk‘s bizarre feud with a senator and a television host intensified on Thursday, with news anchor Joy Reid accusing him of ‘misappropriating black vernacular for misogynistic purposes’ by using the insult ‘Karen’ – and Musk referring to Reid, in turn, as a lobbyist for Elizabeth Warren.

The row began when Musk, 50, was named by Time magazine as the person of the year – leading Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has long campaigned for higher taxes for the wealthiest, to say that Musk was unworthy because he had not paid enough tax.

Warren and Musk traded insults, and then on Wednesday Warren appeared on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show and continued her attacks.

Musk called Warren ‘Senator Karen’, using the pejorative slang term for an entitled, ignorant and culturally insensitive white woman. 

Reid then defended Warren, accusing Musk of misusing the ‘Karen’ insult.

‘Elon wasn’t happy, so he did what he always did, and stomped his little feet and insulted Senator Warren,’ said Reid.

‘Calling her an ‘angry mom’ and referring to her as Senator Karen.

‘So for so many reasons – being a freeloader, and a selfish and disrespectful one, and for misappropriating black vernacular for misogynistic purposes – Elon Musk is the absolute worst.

‘Meanwhile Senator Warren has better things to do than fight with Junior Birdman on Twitter.’

Musk, inevitably, responded, tweeting: ‘(Lack of) Joy Reid is a lobbyist for Sen Karen.’

Reid prefaced her interview with Warren by calling Musk ‘the absolute worst’ – highlighting his opposition to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, and noting that, even though he has called for an end to government subsidies, electric vehicle subsidies helped Tesla get ahead.

Then, after quoting Warren’s tweet, Reid referenced a ProPublica report, saying: ‘Its investigation found that in 2018, Musk paid nothing in federal income taxes, and less than $70,000 in 2015 and 2017.’

She then turned the conversation over to Warren to get her thoughts on Musk’s tweet about her.

Warren replied: ‘The world’s richest freeloader evidently has a very thin skin.

‘But you know the part that makes me angry about this?

‘It’s on behalf of every public school teacher, every waitress, every computer programmer, every street cleaner who actually paid taxes, and that means they paid more than Elon Musk did in federal income taxes.

‘And that’s just not right, and it means the system is broken.

‘But the days – when these guys not only get to rake it all in, but then rub everybody else’s nose in it while they head off into outer space and declare how they did this all on their own when they were subsidized by the federal government and subsidized by every waitress and public school teacher who paid their taxes – are over.

‘This is wrong and Elon Musk needs to eat a big dish of that,’ she concluded. 

Last month, Musk mocked Senator Bernie Sanders who called on the nation’s ‘extremely wealthy’ to pay more taxes, in a tweet that drew the attention of Musk – who had sold more than $5 billion of his Tesla stake.

Musk did so after launching a Twitter poll that guided him toward selling $25 billion in stock to fund Biden’s proposed billionaire tax.

Musk, responding to Sanders’ demands, indicated he wouldn’t draw the line there.

‘I keep forgetting that you’re still alive,’ Musk, the world’s richest man, tweeted at the senator.

‘Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the word …’

He also attacked Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, of Oregon, who supported a wealth tax for billionaires and criticized Musk’s twitter poll.

‘Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,’ Wyden wrote. 

‘It’s time for the Billionaires Income Tax.’

Musk lashed back by mocking Wyden’s face, writing, ‘Why does ur pp look like u just came?’ 

His row with Warren, though, comes as the Tesla founder was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

He was recognized for selling off his possessions and moving to Texas; launching rockets into space; inventing new driverless cars; sharing his Asperger’s diagnosis while hosting Saturday Night Live; and influencing the stock market with this tweets.

In his bid to become the Person of the Year, Musk spoke with Time magazine and discussed his ‘semi-separated’ status with his musician girlfriend Grimes, slammed vaccine mandates as an ‘erosion of freedom’ and shared his plans to fly a Noah’s ark spaceship packed full of animals to Mars as he works to colonize the planet.

As of Thursday, Musk has a net worth of $243 billion. 

Speaking about being the richest man in the world and all of history, Musk pointed to someone who he claims is even richer than he is.

‘Well, I think there’s like some, you know, sovereigns,’ he said. 

‘I think [Russia’s] President Putin is significantly richer than me. I can’t invade countries and stuff. 

‘When looking at income and asset distribution, it is very important to normalize that for age. So as societies age, there are more older people; the older somebody is, the richer they are,’ he explained. 

‘But a lot of the push for higher government involvement and expropriation of assets by the government is pushed by a bunch of politicians who are actually saying that resources shouldn’t be in control of private individuals. They should be in control of the government,’ Musk said. 

One of the biggest criticisms leveled at the billionaire is the fact of his enormous wealth, while paying little to no taxes. 

Recently, he has attacked Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, which is fully funded by ‘the very largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans.’ 

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made history several times this year – including SpaceX’s September launch of the first all-civilian crew into space. 

The aerospace company also won a $3 billion contract with NASA – sparking a feud with fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos. 

The SpaceX CEO commented on the success of the aerospace company. 

‘If we have ships and boosters but no engines, we would be losing billions of dollars a quarter. And if that continued, then bankruptcy would not be out of the question,’ he admitted. 

‘I feel as though we’ve had many years of success and a lot of people at the company have never seen a launch failure. A lot of people have never in their career experienced a recession,’ Musk said. 

‘If somebody entered the workforce after 2009, it just seemed like things always go up. I was concerned that we may be getting complacent.’ 

Musk has described himself as a ‘utopian anarchist’ and aims to utilize his businesses to create a more efficient and automated future. 

‘If there’s a utopia where people have access to any goods or services that they want, there’s plenty for everyone,’ he said. 

‘If we have a highly automated future with the robots that can do anything, then any work you do will be because you want to do it, not because you have to do it. 

‘I don’t mean to suggest chaos, but rather that you’re not under anyone’s thumb.’

But the billionaire is now facing a tax bill of more than $15 billion, which will come due in the coming months on stock options, CNBC reports.

In 2012, when Tesla was just a fledgling company, Musk was awarded stock options as part of a compensation plan that would give him 22.8 million shares at a stock price of $6.24. 

His gains on those shares have now reached nearly $28 billion.

Stock options give the investor the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a stock at an agree-upon price. 

It also allows the trader to choose a specific date when they expect a stock to rise or fall, known as the expiration date, according to Investopedia.

In Musk’s case, his stock options come due in August 2022, and in order to exercise them, Musk has to pay the the income taxes on the gains, and since they are taxes as an employee benefit or compensation, they will be taxed at 37 percent, plus the 3.8 percent net investment tax, CNBC reports.

Musk will also have to pay the top tax rate in California, since the options were granted and earned when he was a California resident.

Combined, CNBC reports, the state and federal tax rate on his gains will be 54.1 per cent, so the total tax bill would be $15 billion by August. 

Meanwhile, Telsa has disclosed that he has taken out loans using his shares as collateral, and with the sales, he may want to repay some of those obligations.

As the company noted in its third-quarter Securities and Exchange 10Q filing: ‘If the price of our common stock were to decline substantially, Mr. Musk may be forced by one or more of the banking institutions to sell shares of Tesla common stock to satisfy his loan obligations if he could not do so through other means.

‘Any such sales could cause the price of our common stock to decline further.’

Tesla closed at $975.99 on Wednesday, up more than 1 per cent from the day before.