The man who gave the world killer clowns and haunted hotels knows a horror story when he reads one. Days before the midterms, he decided this one was a cheap rerun.
Bestselling author Stephen King took his review straight to X after Tesla Inc. (TSLA) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX) CEO Elon Musk predicted doom if Democrats won control of Congress.
“Democrats will execute their plan to end democracy in America if they gain control,” Musk wrote on X on Oct. 30, four days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
King wasn’t scared.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” King wrote in reply. “You sound like Trump. Next you’ll be saying ‘They’re eating the pets!'”
It took him three sentences, and the last one was a callback Musk would recognize.
A Callback To 2024’s Strangest Debate Moment
King was reaching back to the Sept. 10, 2024, presidential debate, when candidate Donald Trump repeated a viral rumor about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said during the debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats.”
ABC News debate moderator David Muir fact-checked him on the spot.
“ABC News did reach out to the city manager there,” Muir said. “He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
Musk had a hand in that story too. Two days before the debate, he replied to a post from conservative activist Charlie Kirk about the rumor.
“Apparently, people’s pet cats are being eaten,” Musk wrote on X on Sept. 8, 2024.
That’s what gave King’s jab its bite. He wasn’t just comparing Musk to Trump. He was reminding Musk of a rumor Musk had helped push.
Musk Put Real Money Behind The Warning
Musk didn’t stop at posting. He gave $427.5 million to federal political committees over 17 months, according to a Fortune analysis of Federal Election Commission filings through Oct. 14.
The bet didn’t pay off. Democrats won control of the House and Senate. In Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, lost the Senate race to Democrat James Talarico in a state Trump carried by double digits in 2024.
Why Tesla And SpaceX Investors Are Paying Attention
This is where a celebrity spat turns into a business story.
X, the platform where the fight played out, became part of SpaceX when the company merged with Musk’s AI startup xAI in February. That means Musk’s political posts now run on a platform owned by a publicly traded company he leads.
Investors have already shown they’re watching. SpaceX shares fell 3.8% on Nov. 4, the day after the election, even as the Nasdaq rose. They dropped another 9% on Nov. 5 as Republicans warned that a Democratic Congress could come after Musk.
The concern is practical. SpaceX counts NASA and the Pentagon among its biggest customers, and Tesla’s self-driving ambitions run through federal safety regulators. Starting in January, the party Musk spent the cycle warning about will run the congressional committees that oversee all of them.
King, for his part, has been needling Musk since Musk bought Twitter in 2022. He spent the 2024 race accusing Musk of flooding the site with pro-Trump posts. Musk has yet to land a comeback that stuck.
Election night settled the bet, if not the argument. Democrats got the control Musk warned about, and the man who runs Tesla, SpaceX and X now has to do business with them.
