Bernie Sanders, Elon Musk, and the Twitter fight over a tax on billionaires

Sen. Bernie Sanders accepts none of your hypocritical hot takes, Elon Musk.

Musk's seeming inability to think before tweeting (or his desire for attention) bit him in the ass Friday night when he attempted a dunk on Sanders. The beefing started when Musk replied on Twitter to an article about a bill proposed by the Vermont senator that would create a one-time tax for the country's billionaires to cover the out-of-pocket medical costs for millions of Americans for one year.

The Make Billionaires Pay Act (co-sponsored by Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass, and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY) would tax the wealth windfall increases accumulated by the 467 richest Americans from March 18 through Jan. 1, 2021. From February through May 2020, an estimated 5.4 million Americans lost their health insurance, according to an analysis done by nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer health advocacy organization Families USA. According to the bill, the money collected would "cover all necessary healthcare expenses of the uninsured and underinsured, including prescription drugs, for one year."

The proposed bill would cost Jeff Bezos $42.8 billion, Mark Zuckerberg $22.8 billion, the Walton family $12.9 billion, and Elon Musk $27.5 billion.

Musk, apparently not thrilled at the idea of helping people not fall into crippling medical debt, posted a response to the tax in the form of a copied-so-many-times-it's-blurry meme of the "Official Bernie Sanders Drinking Game."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Well, "The Bernster" shut down The Elonster quite gloriously with a tweet of his own.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Sanders quote-tweeted Musk's drinking game tweet with a screenshot of a 2015 Los Angeles Times story outlining the estimated $4.9 billion in government subsidies given to Musk's companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Sanders accompanied his tweet with a nice lil' burn, writing:

"Every time Elon Musk pokes fun at government assistance for the 99%, remember that he would be worth nothing without $4.9 billion in corporate welfare. Oh, Elon just l-o-v-e-s corporate socialism for himself, rugged capitalism for everyone else."

*smoke rises*

The Friday evening beef roast resulted in some delighted reactions.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The Make Billionaires Pay Act isn't without its critics, including Fast Company writer Mark Sullivan who says the data Sanders and his bill co-sponsors are relying on is faulty.

Either way, the burn and the beef still stand and more pressingly, millions of Americans are now living through a pandemic without health insurance.