Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk feud over Trump election prediction: ‘100% not true’

Published

9 months ago

November 22, 2024

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Jeff Bezos is pushing back against Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s claim the Amazon founder predicted President-elect Trump would lose the 2024 presidential election.

“Just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X in the early hours of Thursday morning.

“Nope. 100% not true,” Bezos replied.

“Well, then, I stand corrected,” Musk responded, with a laughing emoji.

Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote in the election and received heavy backing from Musk, whom the president-elect has tapped to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with Vivek Ramaswamy in his second term.

Musk’s cozy relationship with Trump has given investors further confidence in the success of Musk’s companies, particularly Tesla and SpaceX, which has billions in government contracts. Tesla shares have surged nearly 57% over the past month.

Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, did not endorse either presidential candidate this year and sparked a revolt from staffers and subscribers of the newspaper after he halted the editorial board’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, establishing a new policy of not issuing endorsements for presidential candidates.

Following the election, Bezos congratulated Trump on X for “an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.”

Musk is the world’s richest person with an estimated net worth of $316.2 billion, according to Forbes. Bezos is third on the outlet’s real-time billionaires list with a fortune of $217.4 billion. However, Bezos has been in the top spot several times over the years, most recently in March when he briefly overtook Musk.

Bezos and Musk are also rivals in the space race, where their respective aerospace companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, compete in space travel and exploration. Amazon, with the help of Blue Origin, is also planning to launch a satellite broadband service, Project Kuiper, to compete with Musk’s Starlink.

Politics

Starmer facing mounting pressure over immigration as MP says far right ’emboldened’

Published

37 mins ago

August 25, 2025

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Starmer facing mounting pressure over immigration as MP says far right 'emboldened'

Sir Keir Starmer faces mounting pressure over the small boats crisis after protests outside asylum hotels continued over the bank holiday weekend.

A poll suggested that voters believe the prime minister is failing to grip the problem, despite his government setting out measures to speed up removals.

It comes as Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer warned that “the far right feels emboldened and validated” by other political parties.

So far this year a record 28,076 people have made the perilous journey across the English Channel in small boats, 46% more than in the same period in 2024.

Like many other European countries, immigration has increasingly become a flashpoint in recent years as the UK deals with an influx of people fleeing war-torn and poorer countries seeking a better life.

Official figures released earlier this month showed a total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001.

There were 32,059 asylum seekers in UK hotels by the end of the same month.

Protests and counterprotests at sites housing asylum seekers continued over the weekend and the government is braced for further legal fights over the use of hotels.

A YouGov poll for The Times found that 71% per cent of voters believe Sir Keir is handling the asylum hotel issue badly, including 56% of Labour supporters.

The survey of 2,153 people carried out on August 20-21 found 37% of voters viewed immigration and asylum as the most important issue facing the country, ahead of 25% who said the economy and 7% who said the health service.

Ms Denyer, who is MP for Bristol Central, condemned threats of violence in the charged atmosphere around immigration.

“The far right feels emboldened and validated by other political parties dancing to their tune.

“The abuse I’ve been sent has got noticeably worse in the last few months, escalating in some cases to violent threats, which are reported to the police.

“It doesn’t matter how much you disagree with someone, threats of violence are never, ever OK. And they won’t silence me.”

Is it time for gunboats to help stop the people smugglers?

Jon Craig

Chief political correspondent

@joncraig

Curbing the power of judges in asylum cases to tackle the migrant hotel crisis is a typical Keir Starmer response to a problem.

The former director of public prosecutions would appear to see overhauling court procedures and the legal process as the answer to any tricky situation.

Yes, the proposed fast-track asylum appeals process is fine as far as it goes. But for a government confronted with a massive migrant crisis, opponents claim it’s mere tinkering.

And welcome and worthy as it is, it isn’t going to “smash the gangs”, stop the boats or act as a powerful deterrent to the people smugglers plying their trade in the Channel.

Environment

Orsted shares tumble 17% to record low, as U.S. government halts wind project construction

Published

2 hours ago

August 25, 2025

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Orsted shares tumble 17% to record low, as U.S. government halts wind project construction

View of an offshore wind energy park during a press moment of Orsted, on Tuesday 06 August 2024, on the transportation of goods with Heavy Lift Cargo Drones to the offshore wind turbines in the Borssele 1 and 2 wind farm in Zeeland, Netherlands.

Nicolas Maeterlinck | Afp | Getty Images

Shares in wind farm developer Orsted tumbled soon as trading kicked off on Monday after the U.S. government ordered the company to halt construction of a nearly completed project.

By mid-morning, the company’s shares were around 17% lower, with shares hitting a record low according to LSEG data.

Late on Friday the U.S.’ Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had issued a stop-work order for the Revolution Wind Project off of Rhode Island. According to Orsted, the project is 80% complete and 45 out of 65 wind turbines have been installed.

The company also said that it would comply with the U.S. order and that it was considering options to resolve the issue and press ahead with construction.

The order comes at a critical time for Orsted, which is seeking to raise much-needed capital under plans that analysts suggested were now under pressure.

Orsted had announced plans for a 60 billion Danish kroner ($9.4 billion) rights issue earlier this month. On Monday, the company said it would continue with the proposal, noting that it had the support of its majority stakeholder, the Danish state.

Shares have pulled back sharply since the rights issue plans were announced.

In a Monday note, Jacob Pedersen, head of equity research at Sydbank, said the potential financial consequences of the U.S.’ order had led to uncertainty about whether Orsted would be able to continue with its capital raising plans.

“The financial consequences of the stop-work order will at best be the ongoing costs of the work being stopped,” he said, according to a Google translation. In the worst-case scenario, the Revolution Wind Project would never supply electricity to the U.S., he added.

“In that case, Orsted faces a double-digit billion write-down and significant additional costs to get out of contracts. This will, by all accounts, increase the capital raising requirement to significantly more than DKK 60 billion,” Pedersen said.

He that the company’s Monday announcement to push ahead with its rights issue plans suggested it did not expect the worst-case outcome and was expecting its 60 billion Danish kroner target to be sufficient.

“Orsted’s assessment of this is positive – but it is no guarantee that it will end up like this,” Pedersen said.

World

Mushroom murderer Erin Patterson left me ‘half alive’, sole survivor says

Published

7 hours ago

August 25, 2025

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Mushroom murderer Erin Patterson left me 'half alive', sole survivor says

The sole surviving guest of a lunch where three others died after being served food laced with toxic mushrooms has told an Australian court that the actions of murderer Erin Patterson have left him feeling “half alive”.

Ian Wilkinson, who received a liver transplant and spent months in hospital after the poisoning in July 2023, described how he had been left traumatised as he delivered his victim impact statement at Patterson’s pre-sentencing hearing in Melbourne.

Patterson, 50, was found guilty last month of luring her mother-in-law Gail Patterson, father-in-law Donald Patterson and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, to lunch at her home in Leongatha and poisoning them with individual portions of Beef Wellington that contained toxic death cap mushrooms.

A jury also found her guilty of the attempted murder of Mr Wilkinson, Heather’s husband.

Speaking at the start of the two-day hearing, Mr Wilkinson, a Baptist pastor, said the death of his wife had left him bereft.

“It’s a truly horrible thought to live with that somebody could decide to take her life. I only feel half alive without her,” he said, breaking down in tears.

“It’s one of the distressing shortcomings of our society that so much attention is showered on those who do evil and so little on those who do good.”

‘I bear her no ill will’

He described Gail and Don Patterson, the parents of Erin Patterson’s estranged husband Simon Patterson, as the closest people to him after his wife and family.

“My life is greatly impoverished without them,” Mr Wilkinson said.

“I’m distressed that Erin has acted with callous and calculated disregard for my life and the lives of those I love. What foolishness possesses a person to think that murder could be the solution to their problems, especially the murder of people who have only good intentions towards her?”

He called on Patterson, who said the poisonings were accidental and continues to maintain her innocence, to confess to her crimes.

“I encourage Erin to receive my offer of forgiveness for those harms done to me with full confession and repentance. I bear her no ill will,” he said.

“I am no longer Erin Patterson’s victim and she has become the victim of my kindness.”

The court received a total of 28 victim impact statements, of which seven were read publicly.

‘An irreparably broken home’

Patterson’s estranged husband Simon Patterson – who was invited to the lunch but declined – spoke of the devastating impact on the couple’s two children.

“The grim reality is they live in an irreparably broken home with only a solo parent, when almost everyone else knows their mother murdered their grandparents,” he said in a statement that was read out on his behalf.

Patterson attended the court in person on Monday rather than watch via a video link from prison which she did during a hearing earlier this month.

The hearing is scheduled to continue on Tuesday.

Patterson faces a potential life sentence for each of the murders and 25 years for attempted murder.

She has 28 days from the day of her sentencing to appeal, but has not yet indicated whether she will do so.