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Elon Musk had the perfect response Friday when he found himself on the receiving end of one of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s scathing tweets.
In her tweet, the New York congresswoman wrote she is, “Tired of having to collectively stress about what explosion of hate crimes is happening (because) some billionaire with an ego problem unilaterally controls a massive communication platform and skews it because Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel took him to dinner and made him feel special.”
Musk, sensing that he was the target of the Democrat’s disdain for his recent purchase of Twitter, had a tongue-in-cheek response ready for the congresswoman.
“Stop hitting on me, I’m really shy,” he tweeted with a blushing emoji for added effect.
Undoubtedly a reference to Ocasio-Cortez’s previous insinuation that those who disagree with her politics are just “mad they can’t date” her, the Tesla founder’s response went viral, receiving more than half a million likes.
“I was talking about Zuckerberg but ok,” Ocasio-Cortez retorted in a tweet she later deleted. However, she then shared a screenshot of the exchange on Saturday with the note, “Like I said, ego problems.”
When another user pointed out that she had deleted her response, the congresswoman said she did not want to give “people with massive ego complexes” attention. But that explanation did not hold water with everyone as, per Bellingham Metro News, “#AOCLovesElon” began trending on Twitter following the exchange.
While Ocasio-Cortez might be stressed about Twitter’s new ownership, other users have been celebrating the change hoping that Musk will restore free speech to the platform, which has received criticism for its perceived anti-conservative bias.
According to Breitbart, while some left-leaning Twitter accounts have lost followers in the wake of Musk’s takeover, conservative accounts have been experiencing the opposite effect. For example, the outlet reported Barack Obama lost 300,000 followers “nearly overnight,” while the congressional account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., gained nearly 100,000 followers.
Although no official changes to the platform have taken place yet, Musk tweeted last week that in addition to honoring freedom of speech, he intends to “make Twitter better than ever” by adding new features, increasing transparency, and removing spammers.