Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro challenged Elon Musk to a fight on national television after the Tesla tech mogul alleged that the country’s presidential election was fraudulent.
Following the results of Venezuela’s presidential election, in which both Maduro and his opponent claimed victory, the Tesla CEO took to X to accuse the socialist leader of “major election fraud.”
“Maduro, leave! Venezuelans chose to end the communist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro. The data announce a crushing victory of the opposition, and the world is waiting for you to recognize the defeat after years of socialism, misery, decadence and death,” Musk wrote in a second post.
Musk’s posts quickly caught the attention of Maduro himself, who called the billionaire a threat to Venezuela and, in a bizarre turn, challenged him to a fight on national television, the Anadolu Agency reported.
“Social media creates a virtual reality, and who controls the virtual reality? Our new archenemy, the famous Elon Musk,” Maduro said before adding, “Do you want to fight? Let’s do it. Elon Musk, I’m ready.”
He continued: “I’m not afraid of you, Elon Musk. Let’s fight, wherever you want.”
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council — the country’s electoral authority that is loyal to Maduro and the ruling party — declared Maduro the winner of Sunday’s election with 51% of the vote, despite multiple exit polls that pointed to an opposition win.
The electoral authority said opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won 44% of the vote.
The Carter Center, however, said Tuesday it was unable to verify the results of the presidential election, blaming authorities for a “complete lack of transparency” without providing any individual polling tallies.
“The electoral authority’s failure to announce disaggregated results by polling station constitutes a serious breach of electoral principles,” the Carter Center said.
The Atlanta-based group, which had a technical mission of 17 experts spread out in four cities across Venezuela, added that the election did not meet international standards and “cannot be considered democratic.”
Venezuela’s military has long supported Maduro, a 61-year-old former bus driver and foreign minister.
But after being unable to oust the leader during three rounds of demonstrations since 2014, the opposition concentrated its efforts on the ballot box, with many opposition leaders now disputing the election’s results.
Maduro is not the first global figure Musk has provoked.
The tech billionaire has long claimed he could win in a fight against Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, with him reigniting the longstanding rivalry last week when he told a reporter: “I’ll fight Zuckerberg any place, any time, any rules.”
Zuckerberg, however, seemed much less willing, writing on threads, “Are we really doing this again?”
Talks of a brawl between the two date back to last June when Zuckerberg launched Threads, a social media platform that competes directly with Musk’s X.
REUTERS
A charity cage match was in the works until late last August, when Musk posted that he might need surgery to fix a back injury he suffered during his showdown with a sumo wrestler eight years earlier.
Zuckerberg eventually got fed up with the delays, stating that “we can all agree Elon isn’t serous and it’s time to move on.”
With Post wires
