Elon Musk Trolls Bernie Sanders On Twitter: “I Keep Forgetting You’re Still Alive”

Sheesh! Elon Musk is at it again. This time he’s aimed his insensitive tweet at Senator Bernie Sanders.

“I keep forgetting you’re still alive,” Musk tweeted Sunday morning. The tweet was in response to Sanders’s tweet that suggested the extremely wealthy should pay their fair share of taxes.

“Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the words…” Musk tweeted shortly after

Musk closed off the week selling a total of $6.9 billion worth of Tesla shares, which only amounted to less than 4% of the shares he holds, and less than 3%, including all the options he owns to buy additional shares, CNN reported.

One thing is for sure, Musk is among the list of those that qualify under Sander’s description of “the extremely wealthy.” In fact, he’s the world’s richest person, with a net worth of $285 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

When Musk asked Twitter if he should sell 10% of his Tesla holdings to pay taxes, 58% of voters responded with a yes. But it’s questionable if Musk will agree with the poll’s results. He does face a looming tax bill that will be triggered by his need to exercise 22.9 million options to buy shares before late next summer. The cost of doing that will be nearly $10 billion at current market prices.

Musk could also owe California state income tax, which has a max tax rate of 13.3%. Despite his move to Texas, a state that has no state income tax, but he still spends a lot of time working in the state and, therefore, will have to still pay state taxes there.

Sander’s is all for taxing the extremely wealthy. As the Senate’s budget committee chair, he has proposed an annual tax on the top 0.1 percent of US households, which he says will raise about $4.35 trillion over the next decade and cut the wealth of billionaires in half within the next 15 years. He also wants to put in place key enforcement policies on the proposed wealth taxes.

Democrats have continued to try to impose a billionaires tax to fund President Joe Biden’s sweeping social safety net plan.

“Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon tweeted in response to Musk’s Twitter poll. “It’s time for the Billionaires Income Tax.”

We must demand that the extremely wealthy pay their fair share. Period.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 13, 2021

Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the word …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2021