Elon Musk went to Washington on Thursday, and Twitter talk was on the menu, according to the chief executive of the social-media platform. In a message on Twitter, which Musk bought in October, the billionaire entrepreneur wrote that he’d met with both House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
McCarthy, who took the gavel as speaker on Jan. 7 after 15 rounds of voting, told reporters only that Musk was an old friend and that the Tesla
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and SpaceX CEO had come to wish him a happy birthday. An aide to Jeffries, meanwhile, told Axios that the New York Democrat didn’t have a scheduled meeting with Musk — but was introduced when they crossed paths in California Republican McCarthy’s office. Two days before McCarthy was finally chosen as speaker, Musk tweeted that McCarthy should get the post. Musk’s meetings come as the House Oversight Committee is planning a hearing next month about how Twitter handled a story about the laptop of Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden. Republican lawmakers have accused social media platforms like Twitter of censoring conservatives, and have pledged oversight of Big Tech since taking control of the House in the midterm elections. Beyond meeting with top House lawmakers on Thursday, Musk met two Biden administration officials on Friday to discuss shared goals around electrification, according to a Reuters report citing a White House spokesperson. The two officials were John Podesta, a senior adviser for clean-energy
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innovation, and Mitch Landrieu, Biden’s infrastructure
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czar. “I can confirm that Mitch Landrieu and also John Podesta met with Elon Musk to discuss electrification and how the bipartisan infrastrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act can advance EVs and increase electrification more broadly,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a daily briefing. The Biden administration and Musk previously have been at odds, with the entrepreneur once tweeting that the president “for reasons unknown” is “unable to say the word ‘Tesla.’” Supporters of Tesla then launched a petition asking the president to say the company’s name and acknowledge it as the leader in electric vehicles. Related: Biden dismisses Elon Musk’s ‘super bad feeling’ about economy, wishes SpaceX CEO ‘lots of luck on his trip to the moon’
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