You are an asshole -- Elon Musk tells Silicon Valley journalist in an email 

Twitter's new chief reportedly sent an email to an influential journalist, calling her an "asshole". American journalist Kara Swisher recently revealed during a podcast that Musk wrote an email to her with the subject: "You are an asshole". Musk and Swisher have a long professional and social association so do not read too much into it. Yet, it is surprising that Musk, who is currently running five companies and is world's richest person, would send such an email to a journalist, however familiar.

Swisher in the past interviewed Musk multiple times. So, she certainty knows him better than most people on the internet. However, on her podcast she revealed that she had not spoken to Musk in a long time and described her relationship with him as "up and down".

Swisher was hosting "On Podcast With Kara" with Nayeema Raza when she revealed the details of the email she got from Musk. She said that Musk was not speaking to her and had called her an asshole. "He's not speaking to me. I'm an asshole. He emailed me this recently," she said.

The irony of it all, Swisher noted, was that Musk emailed her after she tweeted in support of him. In her tweet, Swisher had agreed that Musk should be paid by the US for providing Starlink services to Ukraine.

Swisher said that Musk emailed her with the subject: "You're an asshole." Inside the email was a screenshot of her tweets. "In this case, I was supporting him, which is really kind of ironic," she added.

Just to repeat: Swisher and Musk know each other fairly well. Swisher is also extremely well-connected in Silicon Valley, considering that she covered the tech companies and people who run these companies for Wall Street Journal and then for Recode, an outlet she co-founded with Walt Mossberg. After selling Recode to Vox, Swisher has focused on her podcasts, writing for New York Times and her books. But she still moves in the elite Silicon Valley circles and is considered an insider in the tech industry. So Musk and Swisher calling each other names is probably more of banter among acquaintances.

At the same time, Swisher has been a frequent critic of how tech companies work or how the tech elites, the people running these big giants, work and behave.

Recently as the world started seeing how badly Musk was running Twitter, and how badly he seemed to have been advised, Swisher on Twitter went after David Sacks. Sacks, who is part of the Musk's men inside Twitter HQ -- Twitter employees are reportedly calling them Elon's flying monkeys -- got some special mention from Swisher. Quote tweeting him and criticising Sacks' idea around Twitter Blue, she said: "Blah blah blah blah, blah blah. (Welcome to my world for the last 25 years everyone -- now you don't have to wonder why I sometimes get testy.)" Twitter Blue, in less than 48 hours after its rollout, was paused after paid verification created chaos on the social media site. Musk has said that the Twitter teams were now fine-tuning Blue and that it would be re-rolled out soon.