Benzinga | Dec 22, 2021 10:27AM EST

Elon Musk Says Twitter Poll Had No Impact On Tesla Stock Sale

Elon Musk announced he sold "enough stock" in Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) to reach his goal of selling 10% of his shares in the company, adding that his much-ballyhooed poll of social media followers on whether to sell the shares did not influence his decision.

What Happened: Musk, in a video interview with the Babylon Bee -- a satiric website pursuing a rare serious endeavor -- acknowledged that the Nov. 6 poll of his Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) followers on whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stake did not impact his decision, admitting that he needed to exercise stock options expiring in 2022 "no matter what."

"I sold enough stock to get to around 10% plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here," Musk said.

Reuters reported that Musk sold an additional 583,611 shares of Tesla on Tuesday, raising the total number of shares he jettisoned to 13.5 million, or roughly 80% of what he had planned to sell. Out of the total shares that he sold, more than 8 million were related to Musk's tax bill related to his options exercise. Musk previously stated he is paying more than $11 billion in taxes for 2021.

What Else Happened: Musk used the interview to serve some political digs, including a slam at California's tax regimen and bureaucracy as being the fuel for moving Tesla's headquarters to Texas.

"California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is ... becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation," he said, noting that it became "increasingly difficult to get things done" in the state.

Musk also criticized the rise of what he described as the "woke culture," which he dismissed as a "mind virus" that seeks "make comedy illegal" while giving "mean people a shield to be cruel, armored in false virtue."

He touched on his Twitter feud with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), noting that she "struck first" by claiming he was a "freeloader" who didn't pay taxes.

"I'm literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year, ever, and she doesn't pay taxes, basically," he complained. "And her taxes and salary is paid for by the taxpayer like me. If you could die by irony, she would be dead."

Musk was also asked about Mark Zuckerberg's advocacy for the metaverse and repeated earlier online comments that viewed the concept with skepticism.

"I think we're far from disappearing into the metaverse," he stated. "It sounds just kind of buzzwordy."

Photo: Screen shot of Elon Musk from his Babylon Bee interview.