Elon Musk tweets about buying Coca-Cola to ‘put cocaine back in’
- Elon Musk jokes about buying Coca-Cola, days after clinching a deal to buy Twitter for US$44 billion
- Musk’s past tweets show how he has used social media to craft his public image as a brash billionaire
Emboldened by his successful US$44 billion bid to buy Twitter, Elon Musk took to the platform to joke about a new potential takeover target - but even the world’s richest man may find this one a bit too pricey.
“Next I’m buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in,” he tweeted, referring to the drink’s original recipe when it was launched in 1886 as a tonic for various ailments.
Musk’s tweet about Coca-Cola, which went viral with a 1.1 million likes hours after it was posted on Wednesday, prompted a response from US Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who took a jab at Hunter Biden’s documented drug use. “Has Hunter been asking you for favors?” she wrote of US President Joe Biden’s son.
But the soft drinks’ company makes Twitter look like small-fry, with its market cap of US$284 billion. Musk’s own fortune currently stands at US$253 billion - way ahead of his nearest rival Jeff Bezos, who’s currently worth US$162 billion.
Still, it could be best not to write off the man who created the world’s biggest electric car company from scratch and is potentially on his way to putting people on Mars.
Playful, aggressive and often juvenile, Musk’s past tweets show how he has used social media to craft his public image as a brash billionaire unafraid to offend.
Three days before Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, he tweeted a photo of Bill Gates and used a crude term to make fun of his belly.
Musk joined Twitter in 2009 and now has more than 85 million followers - the seventh most of any account and the highest for any business leader.
He muses about technology and trade, but has also posted jokes about women’s breasts and once compared Canada’s prime minister to Hitler. He regularly weighs in on global events, as he did in March 2020 when he tweeted that “The coronavirus pandemic is dumb”.
Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was announced, many of the platform’s users have tweeted suggestions at him on what companies he should buy next.
One Twitter user wrote that Musk should “buy Fox” to get another season of the Firefly TV series greenlit, to which Musk responded: “Some sci-fi that actually features sci-fi would be great”.
Bloomberg, Associated Press, Business Insider
