This Is Just Pathetic
Talk about clutching at straws.
Elon Musk had to call the Big Orange Guy to bail him out of the ketamine-fuelled crater of a hole he had dug for himself. “Oh, Daddy, help! The free market and free speech are hurting my fraudulent swasticar business!” So, what does Trump do to help out one of his biggest political backers and federal government hitman? He conducts an openly corrupt and dreadful Tesla advert on the lawn of the White House. This is not just a new depraved low for American politics, but it’s palpably pathetic. I thought they were meant to be strong men, not limp-dicked morons who can’t handle warranted criticism.
If you somehow didn’t catch it, Trump turned the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom. He denounced those “punishing” Musk and said he would buy a Tesla to support his poor friend, who lost $148 billion in just a few months. Musk is still somehow the wealthiest man alive, so you will forgive me if I don’t shed a tear for the drugged-up neo-fascist moron.
And Trump didn’t stop there; he also provided a terrible sales pitch for Tesla. Photographers even managed to snap a picture of his cue cards for the speech. What’s funny is that Trump would obviously make a terrible car salesman. He has zero charisma and was practically incoherent, spurting out “It’s a computer!” at one point. Trump is not a salesman, dealmaker, or businessman; he is a bully, and this little stunt demonstrated that perfectly.
However, Trump couldn’t help himself and had to go further. He, and later on Musk too, decried “radical left lunatics” for protesting Tesla and causing so much damage to Musk. This is deeply funny, as rational centrists only look like radical leftists to authoritarian fascists. I don’t think they realise that this calling wolf is just painting themselves out as authoritarian goons. Trump also claimed the boycott of Tesla to be illegal and said he would treat violence against Tesla dealerships as an act of domestic terrorism. To which the entire world pointed and laughed.
You see, boycotting Tesla is not illegal. The US at least tries to make it look like their markets are free, and as such, there are countless laws with enormous amounts of precedent that US citizens have the right to choose who to buy from and withhold commerce for personal or political reasons. If this were made illegal, the US would be an authoritarian state-capitalist society. You know, like the Soviets…
What’s more, “violence” against Tesla dealerships isn’t domestic terrorism; it’s vandalism. Tesla’s dealerships aren’t essential main hubs of the community, like train stations, town centres, major locations of employment (like the World Trade Center, for example), or key locations of government (such as Jan 6th). The general public won’t be terrified to function in society if Tesla dealerships are sitting through Molotov cocktail parties.
Moreover, it’s not clear what Trump meant by “violence.” There have been no true violent actions committed against Tesla dealerships in the US, just petty vandalism, such as graffiti or broken windows. Yet, there are reports of police “protecting” Tesla dealerships from peaceful protesters. What do you reckon the police are there to make these meaningful public acts of protest violent so that that the “perpetrators” can be charged with domestic terrorism? It’s not like Trump hasn’t used such dirty tricks in the past.
But we are missing the broader picture. A president openly advertising and supporting his main backer’s business is corruption, plain and simple. He is using his public office to enrich those closest to him. Sadly, US law is particularly impotent in holding Trump to account here. Laws like the Hatch Act don’t apply to presidents.
Here is why Trump is really a lousy businessman. This little stunt didn’t work.
Tesla stocks had a temporary 4% boost, but that didn’t even make up for the staggering losses of the day before this moronic stunt.
If Trump really wanted to boost Tesla, he would announce that the government would buy Tesla cars to increase efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. After all, EVs are far cheaper to operate; this would appease climate protestors, and thanks to his stupid tariffs, Tesla would be the cheapest EV option. Trump could even say he will use fully automated FSD for transport, firing “wasteful” drivers and making the governmental transit systems far more efficient. If you want to save Tesla and protect your political movement, this is the deal to strike. Again, Trump isn’t a businessman; he settled for pulling a PR move to gain attention and openly threatening and bullying those who hurt his poor little baby backer.
But the question has to be asked: why did Elon let Trump do this? I mean, Tesla’s customer base is predominantly progressive, particularly when you take a global view. So, Trump claiming he will buy a Tesla and twisting the law to protect it isn’t going to win back any customers or investors.
Well, Musk is incredibly desperate.
He has taken out a huge number of multi-billion-dollar loans over the past few years to fund Tesla, SpaceX, and his purchase of Twitter. But all these loans use his Tesla shares as collateral. In fact, we know that well over half of his 170 million Tesla shares have been used in this manner. But these shares have lost over 50% of their value in just a few months! This means that Musk currently has well over $84 billion in debt collateralised against assets that are only worth $42 billion and are set to be worth far less in the coming months.
Understandably, Musk’s lenders are worried that if he keeps destroying Tesla, they will never see their money again. And, because Tesla can easily lose over 95% of its value (read more here), they are likely to try and get their money back sooner rather than later. So, it’s expected that they could recall their loans imminently, and if they did, Musk’s entire empire would crumble (read more here).
Musk needs to do anything to keep Tesla afloat. So, what does an authoritarian neo-fascist tech bro do in such hard times? Use his bought-for presidential bully to defend his turf for him.
It’s pathetic. These men, their scams, their hypocrisy, their lack of integrity, their fragile egos, and their fragile sense of masculinity are pathetic. We should point and laugh.
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Sources: VF, The Guardian, CNBC, Reuters, FBI, NBC, New Republic, BS
Future textbooks will use Musk as an example. His worshippers claim it will be because he’s an engineering genius, but the last two months are showing he’s a reckless, feckless, authoritarian. Thanks for providing the info on his crumbling empire of outdated cars and exploding rockets.
"Musk needs to do anything to keep Tesla afloat. So, what does an authoritarian neo-fascist tech bro do in such hard times? Use his bought-for presidential bully to defend his turf for him."
Um, you make the point that TSLA is basically a meme stock. For a long time I had lots of the technorati tell me that Musk and Tesla was a tech play, akin to Google, Microsoft, and Apple, but more on the edge, and that justified the 100+ P/E and the valuation to be worth more than all the other major car companies combined.
That was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now. Tesla is a car company, and car companies run on razor thin margins with tons of seasonality to their market, and fickle customers who expect regular cadences of major updates to refresh the products.
All the Tesla vehicles that actually sell are what Tenpenning and Eberhardt planned with their original business case. Start with the Roadster as a PoC, then a luxury sedan, then an SUV, then the mass market sedan, then a mass market SUV, and finally the commodity market (the sub $25K market).
Musk had all of that loaded but he felt he needed his vision, so that was first the Cybertruck, and then the vaporware of the 600mile range Roadster 2 that he took 1,000 reservations for, at $250K a pop, a cool $250M cash injection that still doesn't have a working prototype.
A lot of the Musk fans are deep in the delusion.