Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk clash over Trump election prediction: ‘100% not true’

Jeff Bezos is disputing Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s claim that the Amazon founder predicted President-elect Trump would lose the 2024 presidential election.

“I just found out tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos is telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump is going to lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock,” Musk wrote on his platform X social media in the early hours of Thursday. morning.

“No. 100% not true,” Bezos replied.

“Well then, I stand corrected,” Musk replied, with a laughing emoji.

Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote in the election and received strong support from Musk, whom the president-elect has tapped to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with Vivek Ramaswamy in his second term .

Musk’s cozy relationship with Trump has given investors further confidence in the success of Musk’s companies, particularly Tesla and SpaceX, which have billions in government contracts. Tesla shares are up nearly 57% over the past month.

Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, did not endorse any of the presidential candidates this year and sparked an outcry from the paper’s staff and subscribers after he withheld an editorial board endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, instituting a new policy of not issuing endorsements. for president. the candidates.

After the election, Bezos congratulated Trump on X for “an incredible political comeback and decisive victory.”

Musk is the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $316.2 billion, according to Forbes. Bezos is third on the real-time billionaires list with a fortune of $217.4 billion. However, Bezos has been at the helm several times over the years, most recently in March, when he briefly overtook Musk.

Bezos and Musk are also rivals in the space race, where their respective aerospace companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, compete in space travel and exploration. Amazon, with help from Blue Origin, is also planning to launch a broadband satellite service, Project Kuiper, to compete with Musk’s Starlink.