Elon Musk In Bizarre Spat With ‘Pregnant Man’ Bill Gates Over Tesla Stock

Elon Musk brought a reported quarrel he has with fellow billionaire Bill Gates into the public sphere on Saturday after confirming Gates’ short position on Tesla as well as comparing the Microsoft founder to the pregnant man emoji.

Musk, who is currently in the midst of an attempted takeover of Twitter, confirmed the authenticity of a leaked series of messages where he confronted Gates over his half-a-billion short position against Tesla, according to the Daily Beast.

“Do you still have a half billion short position against Tesla?” Musk reportedly said.

“Sorry to say I haven’t closed it out. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities,” Gates replied.

“Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change,” Musk responded.

Musk has denied leaking the message chain to the New York Times, whilst saying that he found out about the short position through some people in the TED community, CNBC reported.

After confirming the authenticity of the messages, Musk sent out a tweet of a picture of Bill Gates in a blue shirt next to a picture of the pregnant man emoji, with the caption “in case u need to lose a boner fast.” This was followed by a tweet jokingly saying “shadow ban council reviewing tweets” accompanied by a picture of cloaked figures looming in the distance.

Musk and Gates have been on similar quarrels before. In 2020, Gates bought an all-electric Porsche Taycan, after which a Twitter user asked Musk about why the billionaire did not order their electric car from Tesla instead.

“My conversations with Gates have been underwhelming tbh,” he replied.

Gates has also been critical of Musk’s own initiative to address climate change, saying that Musk was tackling “easy stuff, like passenger cars” instead of bigger industries that still need to be addressed today.

“We’re basically not doing enough on the hard stuff: steel, cement, meat,” he said in an interview. “And sadly, the things people think about — the electricity, passenger cars — are a third of the problem. So we have to work on the two-thirds.”

“If all you pay attention to is those short-term metrics, not the green premiums across the board, then you miss out on what is the longest lead time, which is the hard stuff.”