Elon Musk is tweeting again.
The eccentric billionaire ended his short Twitter sabbatical to post about how ecommerce giant Amazon is a monopoly that needs to be broken up.
Usually, this is a call that would be echoed by progressives such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, the reason Musk jumped back on Twitter and called for Amazon’s breakup was to defend a former New York Times writer who has become a bit of a right wing celebrity due to his coronavirus skepticism.
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“This is insane @JeffBezos,” posted Musk referring to the company’s decision to remove a coronavirus book authored by the former Times writer, Alex Berenson, from its platform. As you can see, he even tagged Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in the tweet.
“Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!” he continued.
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The Tesla CEO has previously shared tweets from Berenson, who’s claimed that the number of coronavirus infections and deaths have been inflated. Musk has tweeted his skepticism about COVID-19 himself over the past few months, criticizing lockdowns and often sharing misinformation about the virus that has now killed more than 100,000 people in the U.S.
Musk had announced he’d be “off Twitter for a while” on June 1, following the successful launch of his SpaceX rocket last Saturday. It was the first time NASA had launched astronauts into space since 2011 and the very first time a private company’s spacecraft was used to do so. Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX.
It should be noted that Bezos has founded a competing private space company, Blue Origin.
Amazon has since reinstated Berenson’s book. A spokesperson for the company said its removal was a mistake.
“Thanks to @ElonMusk and everyone who helped,” tweeted the author in his announcement about the book going back on sale.
