Ro Khanna

Elon Musk has a lot of stuff on his plate right now (asking investors for another $20 billion for SpaceX, defending Tesla, getting to Mars), but he’s not so busy that he doesn’t have time to respond to claims from Ro Khanna, the Democratic congressman who represents the district in the heart of Silicon Valley, that DOGE cuts to USAID may ultimately kill millions of children. For that prediction, the trillionaire wants Khanna thrown in prison.

If you’re just tuning in: over the weekend, Khanna, a Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on a podcast that Musk should testify about the DOGE cuts that effectively shuttered USAID, referencing analysis from The Lancet that the agency had helped prevent 90 million global deaths (30 million among children) over the last two decades, and that its gutting “could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4·5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years.” Speaking to Jennifer Welch, the host of “I’ve Had It,” Khanna declared “There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk. You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires [through the SpaceX IPO], but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.” Musk, Khanna continued, “needs to answer for that. He needs to be subpoenaed. He needs to face investigation. He needs to answer for what he did with DOGE. It’s not just ‘let’s move on.’” During the same episode, Khanna promoted his tax proposal, the “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act,” which would apply a 5% annual wealth tax on assets over $1 billion. (As of midday on Tuesday, Musk’s net worth sat at $1.1 trillion.)

One or both of those things apparently didn’t sit right with the richest person in the universe, who responded by calling the Congressman an “evil liar,” a “robber,” and an “insider trader.” Then he threatened to sue Khanna, agreed that he should be arrested, and told his 240 million X followers that “Ro the Robber should be in prison!!” That all happened on Monday, but apparently sleeping on it didn’t change Musk’s feelings about the situation. On Tuesday he:

Shared a post encouraging him to “take Ro ‘the Robber’ for every penny that he has”:

Shared a post that declared shuttering USAID saved people:

Claimed it was USAID, actually, that killed people:

Last year, Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, created a model that said the cuts to USAID were responsible for 300,000 deaths, more than 200,000 of them children, between January and May.

After Musk called for Khanna’s imprisonment, the lawmaker called on Musk to debate the aid cuts on TV, saying in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday: “I challenge him to a debate…do it on CNN, do it on CNBC, do it at a university, he can pick the setting and let’s debate what happened at DOGE, let’s debate why I’m for a wealth tax. We can have a conversation of ideas if he believes in free speech and free expression about these issues.” He added, “It’s not pleasant to have the world’s richest person with the biggest platform on X go say you should be in prison and that he’s going to sue you, and then I’m a liar. I’m taking on the richest person in the world, but I mean, I would hope that he would have an actual debate about it.”

Musk does not appear to have commented on the invitation.