I really don’t want to be on the Elon Musk beat forever but how can I pass up this on a Friday afternoon? AOC is weighing in on Elon Musk’s political polarization meme which I wrote about earlier.

The number of billionaires in the US couldn’t even fill an apartment building, but the number of people they negatively impact is only growing.

All the US billionaire votes combined couldn’t even come in 2nd for an NY city council election. That’s why they stay pressed

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 29, 2022

A little while later she added this subtweet which also seemed to be aimed at Musk:

Tired of having to collectively stress about what explosion of hate crimes is happening bc 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

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 29, 2022

I can’t be sure what AOC was talking about here but it seems likely she was referring to a story that appeared today in the Wall Street Journal about Peter Thiel and others who encouraged Musk to buy Twitter.

As Elon Musk’s crusade against Twitter Inc. escalated from a war of words to a full-on takeover, he was egged on behind the scenes by a mix of voices—from fellow billionaires to internet trolls—with their own beefs with the social-media platform.

In Mr. Musk, a serial entrepreneur with a hard Twitter habit, these men found a vessel for pent-up animosity over the company’s content moderation and management. One of them had a very personal stake: Twitter’s co-founder and former Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, who resigned last year under pressure from his board, was whispering in Mr. Musk’s ear that Twitter should be a private company, people familiar with the matter say.

Anyway, thus far this is the sort of stuff AOC spouts all the time, i.e. billionaires are evil. She’s tweeted about Musk and Jeff Bezos earlier this week. None of it would be very interesting on its own but in this case it became interesting when Musk responded.

Stop hitting on me, I’m really shy ☺️

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2022

I don’t know how closely Musk follows this stuff but this sounds like a sly reference to something AOC said back in December. Remember this?

If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet.

Ya creepy weirdos https://t.co/Z7bZCgXpWJ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 31, 2021

Mary Katherine Ham had a good time making fun of that tweet on CNN. In any case, AOC has accused her critics of transforming their secret desire for her into online criticism and Musk seems to be turning that around on her by suggesting her subtweet is just a way of hitting on him.

AOC’s post is still getting a lot of likes, it’s up to 63,000 as I write this. But for once she’s being outgunned. Musk’s response already has 186,000 likes and counting. This really is a kind of clash of the titans on Twitter. The Tesla-driving socialist congresswoman versus the billionaire owner of Tesla and soon Twitter. As you would expect, people are sparring in the replies.

Her policy is to wear slogans at galas instead of doing anything for voters.

— Mark Weissman (@Mark_Weissman) April 29, 2022

AOC did offer a snappy response to Musk but then she quickly deleted it. And yes, this was a real tweet. ProPublica archived the deletion.

pic.twitter.com/LgtfIVnWWv

— 🌲🌲🌲// (@HolakKof) April 29, 2022

I wonder why she gave up on it. Possibly it was too jovial? She almost seemed to be having fun there for a second. My guess is she’d rather turn this into a stern lecture/Twitter thread of some kind. That’s usually how she responds to everything. Her motto is always be lecturing. Why respond with humor when you can respond with the left’s favorite go-to reaction to almost everything: “That’s not funny.”