SpaceX owner Elon Musk and veteran astronaut Mark Kelly, who now serves as a Democratic senator, got into a sharp verbal duel on social media. The occasion was the senator’s post about his recent visit to Ukraine, where he urged not to give in to Russia during peace talks. Musk responded by calling the politician a “traitor,” which ignited the conflict.
Inciting hostility
After visiting Ukraine, where Kelly spoke to military personnel, the senator said, “Any peace with Russia must be based on Ukraine’s security, not concessions to Putin.” He also criticized President Donald Trump for trying to “weaken Ukraine” with blackmail, hinting at the suspension of military help.
Musk responded sharply and rudely, “You are a traitor,” he wrote on his social media page X. Kelly responded to the billionaire: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”
Traitor?
Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do. pic.twitter.com/9dgmQfg7HZ
— Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) March 10, 2025
Context of confrontation
The controversy erupted amid Trump’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28, when the US president, along with Vice President J.D. Vance, accused Ukraine of “ingratitude” for providing military aid in the three years following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Kelly, as a Navy veteran and Gulf War veteran, said any deal with Putin would be devastating not only for Ukraine, but would weaken the U.S. position in the world as an unreliable partner and no longer be considered a “defender of freedom.”
The senator also recalled Musk’s “sabotage” against Ukraine in 2023, when he deliberately turned off Starlink, which disrupted a Ukrainian operation to attack the Russian fleet with unmanned maritime drones. The senator also rebuked the billionaire for repeatedly expressing his frank anti-Ukrainian position, proposing to give Crimea to Moscow, and generally being suspected of strong sympathy for the Russians.
Billions or principles
Kelly noted that Musk, as an advisor to Trump, was destroying the government system for the sake of tax breaks for billionaires.
When I was 22 years old, I took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.
— Captain Mark Kelly (@CaptMarkKelly) March 11, 2025
The only oath Elon Musk seems to have made is to his billionaire buddies and his own bank account. pic.twitter.com/ygO9h67Gig
“At the age of 22, I took an oath to the United States and to defend its constitution. I was in combat, I was in the Navy for 25 years. I spent 15 years at NASA, risking my own life, flying the Space Shuttle. At the same time, it seems to me that the pledge that Elon Musk is taking is a pledge to billionaires to make their lives easier, not to the American people,” Mark Kelly told MSNBC. And at the end he added: “This unserious guy would be better off building rockets instead of getting involved in politics.”
This isn’t the duo’s first confrontation: a month ago, Musk mocked the senator’s twin brother, and Kelly invited him to get into a spacecraft “to talk to the three of us like men.”
Earlier we reported on how Elon Musk mocked NASA employees.
According to The Guardian
