Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) didn’t pull any punches when Stephen Colbert asked her to weigh in on Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk during an interview set to air on Wednesday night’s Late Show.
The senator unleashed a massive eye roll when Colbert brought up Musk “dabbling in conspiracy theories” on the platform he recently took over. “You’ve never been a huge fan of billionaires, especially ones who don’t pay their taxes,” the host remarked before asking her what she thinks about the world’s richest man controlling Twitter.
“So I look at it this way,” Warren replied. “Somebody is going to make the decisions about what we see on Twitter, right? It can be made out in the open, it can be made in public, it could be made by a commission, we could decide to do that. We could make the rules out there and for anybody to see.”
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“Or, it could be made by one billionaire in a very dark room, based on whatever is running around in the middle of his head,” she continued ominously. “Me? I think those decisions ought to be made out in the open. I don’t think any billionaire—any billionaire—ought to be the one who has that kind of power to decide how Americans, how people around the world get a chance to talk to each other. So I’ve got a real problem with him.”
And that problem is not new to Musk since he acquired Twitter. In fact, it was on that site almost a year ago that Warren went after him, tweeting, “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”
In response, Musk brought up the allegations that Warren misrepresented her Native American heritage before adding, “You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason.” And then later, “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.”
It seems almost inevitable that Musk will use Twitter to fire back at Warren for her latest comments, especially after he spent Wednesday tweeting at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for criticizing his business model.
“Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually a $8/mo subscription plan,” the congresswomen tweeted, to which Musk replied, “Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8.”
