Elon Musk Mocks Bill Gates With The Emoji Of A Pregnant Man, The World Conglomerate War Has Not Stopped

JAKARTA - Tesla founder Elon Musk denied making fun of Bill Gates on Twitter on Sunday April 24 when he posted this photo of the Microsoft founder with Apple's controversial pregnant man emoji. The tweet he also wrote 'if you need to kill a fool' ('in case you need to kill a boner').

Musk, the world's richest man and corporate America's chief executive, posted the image as a follow-up to his tweet posting Friday, April 22, in which he tweeted about six hooded figures that were captioned 'shadow ban council reviewing Tweets.'

The low-key joke could further infuriate Twitter staff who were outraged by Musk's offer to buy the company. Moreover, he said that he would take a hard-line stance in favor of free speech on the platform.

The post of the pregnant man's emoji was purportedly aimed more specifically at transgender people, which he once called "outrageous". But he himself has repeatedly insisted that he has no ill will towards the LGBTQ community.

Many have complained about Musk, accusing him of being a transphobe for his mocking tweets for LGBTQ people in 2020. But many netizens also said that he was the breath America needed to fight big tech censorship.

Gates, the world's third-richest person after Musk and Jeff Bezos, took the opportunity earlier this year to target Tesla after Elon Musk announced he had taken a $1.5 billion stake in Bitcoin.

“Elon has a lot of money and he is very sophisticated, so I don't worry about his Bitcoin going up or down randomly,” Gates told Bloomberg on Thursday, April 21.

“I think people are falling into this maniac who may not have a lot of money, so I'm not optimistic about Bitcoin. My general thought is if you have less money than Elon you should probably be careful," he said.

Gates has also previously made comments about electric trucks such as the Tesla Cybertruck that he called inappropriate, which Musk immediately opposed.

In an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, Musk said he believed the Microsoft founder had a large “short” position in Tesla stock at one point.

“I heard that at one point he had a big short position. I don't know if that's true or not, but it just seems weird," Musk told Rogan.

“People I know who know the situation pretty well, I ask them, 'are you sure?' and they said "yes, he has a big short position at Tesla." It didn't go well," Musk said.

The tweet came hours after it was reported that Musk was poised to collect $23 billion in bonuses after electric car company Tesla reported its record quarterly profit.

Musk, the richest person in the world now has about $249 billion in his name. He will now receive a bonus share payment, after Tesla posted a $3.3 billion quarterly profit on Wednesday, April 20.

The news, combined with a projected year of strong production growth in 2022, sent Tesla's stock up 3.2 percent - despite prolonged supply chain woes.

The expected windfall for Musk's already huge fortune came as the entrepreneur secured a $46.5 billion package to fund his audacious bid to launch a takeover of social media company Twitter.

He already holds 9.2 percent of the company, and said last Thursday he had the funds needed to make an offer for the rest.