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Attacks on the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, escalated this week after he announced on Wednesday that he would be voting Republican on Twitter.
Following the announcement, Insider published a report sharing a claim that the billionaire innovator engaged in alleged sexual misconduct in 2016, an accusation suddenly brought into the limelight by a “friend” of an anonymous flight attendant.
Musk responded to the accusations in a thread of tweets refuting the claims with both sarcasm and a challenge.
He noted that the accusations were “utterly untrue” and added that he had a challenge for “this liar who claims their friend saw me ‘exposed’ – describe just one thing, anything at all (scars, tattoos, …) that isn’t known by the public. She won’t be able to do so, because it never happened.”
Musk humorously added, “Finally, we get to use Elongate as [a] scandal name. It’s kinda perfect.”
On Wednesday, Musk stated on Twitter that he would be voting Republican after having voted for Democrats in the past. “In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party,” he said. “But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.”
“Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold…” he predicted.
One day after his announcement that he would be departing from the Democrat Party, sexual allegations were released to the press. “The attacks against me should be viewed through a political lens – this is their standard (despicable) playbook – but nothing will deter me from fighting for a good future and your right to free speech,” he stated on Twitter.
Currently, Musk is in the process of acquiring Twitter for $44 billion. However, he announced last week that the deal was “temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
Despite the wild accusations against him, Musk appeared to put the media frenzy aside on Friday for a launch of Starlink – a high-speed broadband internet service that provides coverage around the world – for 19,000 schools in rural areas in Brazil and to provide “environmental monitoring” of the Amazon.