Elon Musk Awkwardly Called Out Jeff Bezos Over Trump And It Totally Backfired
As far as loyalty to him goes, President-elect Donald Trump has no trouble with his bestie, Elon Musk. Trump may not-so-secretly think the SpaceX founder is super annoying, but he knows Musk will always stand by him. He is "Uncle Elon" to at least one of Trump's grandchildren, after all! Unfortunately for Musk, he didn't do his research before striking back online in defense of Trump — and the move was not a good look for him.
Back in November 2024, Musk posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, "Just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock." He also included the hand-covering-face laughing emoji, to make it clear how silly he thought the whole thing was. This was posted after Trump won the presidential election. Unlike with his first term, Trump was victorious in both the Electoral College and the popular vote this time around.
Not long after, Amazon founder Bezos set the record straight about this claim, replying to Musk's comment, "Nope. 100% not true." To his credit, instead of puffing out his chest and trying to save face, all Musk wrote back was, "Well, then, I stand corrected," and included the laughing-while-crying emoji. At least this time Musk didn't get into a feud like he reportedly did with Boris Epshteyn, one of Trump's aides.
Musk received quite a lot of backlash after the exchange
Unsurprisingly, many people flocked to the comment section on X to share their thoughts on Elon Musk's blunder. He was critiqued for not doing his research, instead blindingly throwing out false statements without fact-checking first. Others felt like he was just straight-up lying to the people, and one person wondered why Musk didn't ask Jeff Bezos for forgiveness for his mistake.
On the other hand, several X users read the situation differently. "This is why X is the best source of news ... Straight from the people," someone tweeted. It was quickly pointed out to that person that initially the wrong information was posted to X for people to believe, before the facts came to light, so maybe it wasn't the most trustworthy news source. Another X user brought up a great question: "Do we really expect Jeff to admit it? Of course he is going to deny it."
Interestingly, an X Community Note notified everyone that the claim Musk made had been contradicted by Bezos — which is low-key hilarious because Musk bought X in 2022. His own app called out the untrue claim. Hopefully, Musk learned a lesson from this and won't post a another baseless accusation without getting all the facts first.