Argentina’s President-elect Milei replies to Musk’s interest: ‘We need to talk, Elon’

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social network X, shared a video Tuesday in which Argentina’s President-elect Javier Milei says equality should never come before freedom, in a sign of how some notable conservatives are closely watching the incoming libertarian head of state.

“We need to talk, Elon,” Milei replied on X, formerly Twitter.

This is not the first time that Musk, the founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, has expressed support for Milei on social media. “Prosperity is about to come to Argentina,” Musk wrote when Milei won the election runoff on Nov. 19.

In the interview excerpt that Musk posted, Milei spoke against efforts to make societies more equal, saying it is far more important for people to be free.

“There’s a sublime phrase by Milton Friedman that I find to be outstanding, which is that when you prioritize equality over freedom, you end up achieving neither. But when you prioritize freedom over equality, you achieve many of both,” Milei said in the interview, referring to the American economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976.

In the same interview, Milei said that John Stuart Mill, a 19th-century British philosopher, economist and politician, argued that a society that emphasizes equality “ultimately becomes a society of looters and it sinks. That is the history of Argentina.”

The president-elect, who takes office on Sunday, also said income redistribution involves “using the repressive apparatus of the state to take from the successful” and distributing it arbitrarily “based on what the person in power wants.”

Milei has also caught the attention of former President Donald Trump and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Milei before the election. Trump congratulated Milei on his victory in a phone call last month in which he told the president-elect he planned to visit Buenos Aires.