“She’s just saying what her cartel bosses tell her to say,” said current richest-man-in-the-world Elon Musk of Mexico’s president in a Monday X post.
“Let’s just say that their punishment for disobedience is a little worse than a ‘performance improvement plan.’”
Now, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is considering legal action against the tycoon. He’s known for leading Tesla and SpaceX, as well as his purchase and rebranding of Twitter as X and his complicated relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Musk’s comment was referring to another X user who questioned whether Sheinbaum Pardo was a “cartel plant.” Mexico, its president and its drug cartels have been in the news this week following a crackdown across several Mexican states that resulted in the death of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) leader Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, over the weekend.
“The National Defense Secretariat reported the operation carried out this morning by federal forces, which resulted in various blockades and other reactions,” said Sheinbaum Pardo in a Sunday Facebook post. “There is absolute coordination with governments from all states; we must stay informed and calm. The social networks of the Security Cabinet report continuously. Activities are taking place throughout most of the national territory with full normality. My recognition to the Mexican Army, National Guard, Armed Forces, and Security Cabinet.”
According to the White House, the U.S. also aided the operation.
Sheinbaum Pardo addressed Musk’s claim during a Tuesday news conference and called it “absurd,” per USA Today. It noted that she is a member of the left-leaning MORENA party.
“We are considering whether we take legal action,” Sheinbaum Pardo told reporters. “The lawyers are reviewing it.”
She also said: “I don’t know how they make this stuff up. It makes me laugh reading this from the commentators.”
Musk frequently posts on X, where he shares his political takes and, sometimes, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Last year X’s own in-house artificial intelligence bot, Grok, even called out Musk as a “top misinformation spreader” on the platform.
At the start of Trump’s second term last year, Musk was a close ally of the president and even led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative. Then, the two got in a public spat and Musk later said the controversial DOGE program was a disappointment.
Even after the feud, Trump and Musk still ally together on some issues. For example, FactCheck.org said just this month that they both shared a “long-ago debunked claim” about the 2020 election on social media. POLTICO also reported at the end of January that Musk was spending millions to keep Republicans in congress.
USA Today reported this week that press contacts for Musk’s companies, including Tesla and Space X, didn’t respond to requests for comment on the Sheinbaum Pardo issue.