Skip to content Skip to footer

AOC Says Her Twitter Account Hasn’t Worked Properly Since She Criticized Musk

“You’re a union buster with an ego problem who pockets the change from underpaying and mistreating people,” she wrote.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is seen on the House steps of the U.S. Capitol on June 9, 2022.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) hit back at Twitter CEO Elon Musk on the website on Wednesday after Musk, perhaps bothered by comments Ocasio-Cortez made earlier that week, attempted to criticize her in a tweet.

Musk tweeted a screenshot of Ocasio-Cortez’s merchandise website, showing a campaign sweatshirt on sale for $58, with the price circled in an attempt to criticize the lawmaker for selling merchandise at that price point.

“Proud of this and always will be,” Ocasio-Cortez shot back. “My workers are union, make a living wage, have full healthcare, and aren’t subject to racist treatment in their workplaces. Items are made in USA. Team AOC honors and respects working people. You should try it sometime instead of union-busting.” She added that the proceeds from her shop go toward her team’s community organizing efforts.

She also directly replied to Musk’s tweet, saying, “You’re a union buster with an ego problem who pockets the change from underpaying and mistreating people.”

After those tweets, she noted that her Twitter account appeared to stop working properly and she was “conveniently” unable to view mentions and notifications correctly. “I was informed via text that I seem to have gotten under a certain billionaire’s skin,” she wrote. “Just a reminder that money will never buy your way out of insecurity, folks.”

Musk has indeed gotten in legal trouble with labor officials for anti-union statements in recent years, and Musk’s Tesla is currently the largest U.S.-based car manufacturer without a union. Meanwhile, perhaps not coincidentally, Tesla is notorious for its poor working standards. Tesla is a uniquely unsafe place to work; in 2019, Forbes found that Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, had three times more federal safety violations in the previous four years than that of the top 10 U.S. factories combined.

Tesla’s work environment also appears to be incredibly abusive. In a lawsuit filed earlier this year by the state of California, the state alleged that Black workers in the Tesla factory constantly hear racial slurs and that the factory floor is racially segregated, with Black workers relegated to areas that other workers call heinous, racist names like “the slave ship” or “porch monkey stations.”

The company was also sued last year by a woman who worked at the plant. She said she was the subject of constant sexual harassment at work, where she alleges coworkers would catcall her and aggressively touch her body multiple times a week.

With the working conditions at Tesla in mind, Twitter users noted the irony that Tesla appears to sell apparel at an even higher price than Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign store. A sweatshirt from Tesla’s merchandise shop, similar to the Ocasio-Cortez sweatshirt Musk had tweeted about, costs $75. It’s unclear where the apparel on Tesla’s site is made.

The attack on Ocasio-Cortez appears to have been triggered by tweets she made earlier this week criticizing Musk for his plans to overhaul the website, including charging $8 a month for verification on the platform — a proposal that has been met with widespread criticism.

“One guy’s business plan for a $44 billion over-leveraged purchase is apparently to run around and individually ask people for $8,” she said in a tweet on Wednesday. “Remember that next time you question yourself or your qualifications.”

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy