Elon Musk dubbed Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) a “Karen” for calling him a freeloader as part of her ongoing war against the “rigged” US tax laws, after TIME magazine named him Person of the Year.
“Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” Warren tweeted on Monday, linking to a Boston Globe article about the honors for Musk.
“Stop projecting!” Musk replied on Tuesday afternoon, linking to a 2019 Fox News op-ed calling the Massachusetts Democrat “a fraud” who lied about being Native American to get ahead in academia.
“You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason,” the entrepreneur and frequent Twitter edgelord added.
Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.
The term “Karen” in the US refers to an overly entitled customer who mistreats service workers and insists on speaking to the manager. Responses to Musk and Warren have devolved into a flame war between the tech billionaire’s fans posting memes and Democrats telling Musk to “pay your taxes.”
Between the electric car business of Tesla and his SpaceX venture, Musk became the world’s richest person this year. That was in part why TIME chose to give him the honors, describing the South African-born entrepreneur as a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, and cad.”
Warren has been vocal about the need to reform the US tax code in order to make the wealthy pay “their fair share” and thus help bankroll the multi-trillion-dollar ‘Build Back Better’ agenda of the Biden administration.
Though the proposal includes tax incentives and federal credits for electric cars that would make Musk even richer, the Tesla executive is on the record opposing it.
“Honestly, I would just can this whole bill,” he said last week. “Don’t pass it. That’s my recommendation.”