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Elon Musk News Today - DOGE, Trump and Tesla · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  It all started with a cheese hat.
• 0:02
  Then came the $20 million political misfire, a tanking
• 0:06
  quarter for Tesla, and now whispers from MAGA loyalists
• 0:10
  urging Donald Trump to quietly sideline Elon Musk.
• 0:14
  How did the world's richest man go from tech Messiah to
• 0:19
  political liability and corporate anchor in just 24
• 0:23
  hours? Now his mounting defeats, a more
• 0:26
  than a billionaire's bad week, the rewarding about unchecked
• 0:30
  ego, messy alliances and what happens when Elon Musk mistake
• 0:34
  noise for influence. On Tuesday, Musk's political
• 0:39
  gamble in Wisconsin exploded spectacularly, betting big $20
• 0:44
  million big on a far right candidate for the state Supreme
• 0:49
  Court. Now Musk showed up at a rally in
• 0:51
  Green Bay donning a giant goofy cheese hat, checkbook in hand
• 0:57
  and hope in his eyes. The stunt was pure Musk,
• 0:59
  headline chasing and full of bravado.
• 1:02
  It also didn't work at all. The liberal leaning court
• 1:06
  retained its 43 majority, rejecting not just the candidate
• 1:10
  but Musk's overt display of wealth and persuasion.
• 1:14
  He handed out $2,000,000 checks to supporters on site, an act
• 1:19
  that drew immediate legal scrutiny.
• 1:21
  Now, buying influence in court races isn't just distasteful.
• 1:24
  In some states, it borders on illegal.
• 1:27
  Elon found a way around this, though, and this loss might have
• 1:31
  stung more if it stood alone. But hours later, Tesla delivered
• 1:35
  even worse news. The company posted a 13% drop in
• 1:39
  sales for the first quarter, the sharpest decline in the
• 1:42
  company's history. Now, that number was made even
• 1:45
  more humiliating by the context. Its top competitor, BYD, saw its
• 1:51
  revenue jump 60% over the same period.
• 1:54
  Now, the contrast couldn't have been more direct or damning.
• 1:57
  Investors quickly punished Tesla stock, driving it down 6% in a
• 2:02
  matter of hours. Now, Tesla's slump is about more
• 2:06
  than earnings, though. It reveals the company that's
• 2:08
  straining under poor leadership, distracting direction and a
• 2:13
  fraying identity. Musk, who once charmed a loyal
• 2:16
  base of environmentally conscious early adopters.
• 2:20
  His alienated much of that support by veering hard right
• 2:24
  politically. Coastal progressives, very
• 2:26
  demographic that gave Tesla its cool factor or abandoning the
• 2:30
  brand. And Musk hasn't figured out how
• 2:32
  to replace them. His solution?
• 2:34
  Embrace RedState buyers who have long rejected electric vehicles.
• 2:39
  And it's not going well for Tesla right now.
• 2:42
  And the Commerce secretary's awkward pitch urging America's
• 2:46
  people to buy Tesla stock seemed like a panicked attempt to
• 2:50
  counteract cratering confidence in the brand.
• 2:53
  A bizarre live sales event at the White House lawn with Trump
• 2:57
  present came across as more desperate than strategic.
• 3:02
  Then the FBI jumped in. Announcing they might prosecute
• 3:05
  Tesla vandals is domestic terrorists.
• 3:08
  This is a redefinition of the term the legal experts quickly
• 3:13
  dismissed as overreach. Now, none of these moves slowed
• 3:17
  the bleeding, though If anything, they made it worse.
• 3:21
  And perhaps the loudest rebuke came not from investors or
• 3:25
  federal agencies, but from Washington insiders who were
• 3:30
  suddenly less enthusiastic about Musk's involvement in
• 3:34
  government. MAGA aligned officials claims
• 3:37
  Leon Musk has outlived his usefulness and his welcome in
• 3:40
  Washington. According to them, Musk's role
• 3:42
  in the Trump administration as a special government employee
• 3:46
  assigned to the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE,
• 3:50
  is winding down soon. So it's 130 day stint.
• 3:55
  It's expected to expire in late May or June.
• 3:58
  And the White House initially dismissed the story as garbage.
• 4:02
  Complete trash. And Musk responded with his
• 4:06
  usual flair. He just said fake news on X.
• 4:09
  But then came confirmation that Musk's time in the federal gig
• 4:12
  is indeed ended. That detail was enough to
• 4:14
  reverse Tesla's stock slide, suggesting that Wall Street
• 4:18
  might finally want must to get back to building cars again
• 4:22
  rather than rewriting the Constitution or acting like a
• 4:26
  part time government fixer and trashing our government.
• 4:29
  For now, investors seem cautiously hopeful he'll
• 4:32
  abandoned his political sideshow and focus on reversing Tesla's
• 4:37
  steep decline. A Trump, as usual tone tried to
• 4:42
  keep things amicable while offering a soft push out the
• 4:45
  door. When asked about Musk's expiring
• 4:48
  government role, Donald Trump replied, Well, I think he's
• 4:52
  amazing, but I also think he's got a big company to run.
• 4:56
  And so at some point he's going to be going back.
• 4:59
  He wants to basically, he said thanks, but it's time you went
• 5:03
  back and played with Tesla again.
• 5:06
  Now. It's worth noting that Musk
• 5:08
  hasn't been universally reveled inside the White House, though
• 5:12
  some aides have praised the cost cutting measures his doge group
• 5:16
  introduced across various departments.
• 5:19
  But the price of his presence, constant media chaos on X,
• 5:24
  internal rifts and backlash in federal courts has worn very
• 5:29
  thin. Now, several Trump advisors had
• 5:31
  grown so exhausted with Musk's unpredictability that they
• 5:36
  stopped trying to rein him in and instead began counting down
• 5:40
  the days until he'd be out of their hair.
• 5:42
  Now, Elon Musk still has a lot of money.
• 5:44
  His financial fortunes have taken a beating, though.
• 5:46
  Since January, he's shed more than 1/4 of his total net worth.
• 5:50
  Given he still holds a commanding $323 billion fortune,
• 5:56
  well ahead of Jeff Bezos, who trails by over 100 billion, the
• 6:00
  dip might not seem catastrophic at first glance.
• 6:04
  Still, the number isn't just symbolic.
• 6:06
  Much of Musk's wealth is tied to Tesla stock.
• 6:09
  The Tesla sharp nosedive reflects not only its weak
• 6:13
  sales, but a broader market revaluation of Elon Musk
• 6:17
  himself. But why does this all matter?
• 6:21
  It's because Tesla isn't just another automaker.
• 6:23
  It's a bellwether for the EV industry in a public facing
• 6:28
  laboratory for new tech when Musk flounders confidence in EVs
• 6:33
  and Tesla and tech waivers for average consumers deciding
• 6:38
  whether to go electric, Tesla's instability injects uncertainty
• 6:43
  into a choice that's already expensive and familiar.
• 6:47
  And for investors, Tesla's erratic performance cast doubt
• 6:51
  on the entire sectors reliability and its stability.
• 6:56
  It also matters politically. Musk's attempt to realign test
• 7:00
  this customer base with red state values while
• 7:03
  simultaneously partnering with Trump's administration kind of
• 7:07
  blur the line between corporate strategy and also the White
• 7:12
  House. And yet, despite the barrage of
• 7:16
  criticism setbacks, Elon Musk remains of repentant.
• 7:21
  His feed continues to pump out provocations and potshots,
• 7:25
  seemingly undisturbed by the crumbling credibility of both
• 7:29
  his company and his personal political alliances.
• 7:33
  His online audience Huge offers a kind of echo chamber that may
• 7:38
  be shielding him from fully grasping just how many bridges
• 7:42
  he's torched in the real world. Does he read the comments?
• 7:46
  Maybe a Tesla's deteriorating reputation among its core
• 7:51
  customers is perhaps the most glaring consequence of Musk's
• 7:56
  hard right turn. Once the darling of coastal
• 7:59
  liberals and environmentally conscious tech enthusiasts,
• 8:03
  Tesla now finds itself battling for relevance among buyers it
• 8:07
  once ignored. But the rural and conservative
• 8:11
  markets, Musk now courts, have long been skeptical of EVs, and
• 8:17
  no amount of red baseball caps or MAGA hats or Trump adjacent
• 8:21
  stagecraft has changed that. Musk's attention span seems
• 8:25
  increasingly fractured. Autonomous driving, once Tesla's
• 8:28
  big promise suddenly point, remains perpetually just around
• 8:33
  the corner a couple years away. Tesla's much hyped self driving
• 8:38
  software FSD remains in beta, still years past its original
• 8:42
  promise delivery now. Meanwhile, competitors like BYD
• 8:45
  and even legacy automakers Ford and GM are catching up in some
• 8:51
  areas surpassing Tesla both on tech and also what we all want,
• 8:57
  affordability of an EV. The cheese hat debacle.
• 9:00
  It was goofy. It is supposed to core
• 9:02
  misunderstanding Musk seems to have about influence.
• 9:06
  Money buys access, but it doesn't buy legitimacy and it
• 9:10
  certainly doesn't buy votes. Wisconsin voters rejected not
• 9:14
  only the candidate Musk backed, but the motion that a
• 9:18
  billionaire with a goofy ass hat and a blank check could hijack
• 9:23
  their democratic process. Then came the legal cloud.
• 9:28
  Musk's $2,000,000 handout to rally goers raised eyebrows
• 9:31
  across legal circles, and that prompted questions about
• 9:36
  electioneering and the legality of such blatant financial
• 9:39
  incentives during an active race.
• 9:42
  The episode sparked an investigation into whether the
• 9:45
  checks violated campaign finance laws.
• 9:49
  Now, whether that's these, the consequences or not, the optics
• 9:53
  are already damning. The backlash hasn't just come
• 9:55
  from Democrats or the usual Musk skeptics.
• 9:58
  Even inside the Trump camp, the cracks are visible.
• 10:01
  Now. Musk's erratic behavior has
• 10:03
  divided Trump's inner circle, too.
• 10:05
  Some AIDS view him as a valuable disruptor.
• 10:08
  Others see him as a volatile liability.
• 10:11
  The internal conflict has reportedly LED some senior
• 10:15
  officials to resign themselves to simply managing Musk's
• 10:20
  presence until his time runs out at Doge.
• 10:24
  Elon Musk's credibility is wearing thin with the EV crowd.
• 10:28
  Promises of a $25,000 Tesla model meant to be a game changer
• 10:33
  remain unfulfilled for years. Manufacturing delays, recalls
• 10:37
  and half launch features have become the new normal for Tesla.
• 10:41
  While early adopters once forgave delays because they
• 10:44
  believed in the vision, many now feel strung along by empty
• 10:48
  timelines and broken pledges by Elon.
• 10:52
  The bottom line is that Musk's political stunt work and
• 10:56
  ideological shift haven't saved Tesla.
• 10:58
  They've heard it. And while he may still be the
• 11:01
  richest person alive, his influence is showing sign of
• 11:05
  real erosion. Even Trump seems to recognize
• 11:08
  that the Musk brand, once it adds that may now be a
• 11:11
  liability. Elon Musk's political
• 11:14
  misventures, corporate distractions and failing bets if
• 11:18
  finally caught up to him. Let me know what you think about
• 11:21
  this in the comments down below. And while you're there, hit the
• 11:24
  like button. Let's make a deal.
• 11:26
  If you hit the like button, leave a comment and also
• 11:30
  subscribe to the channel. I'm going to guarantee you 10
• 11:34
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• 11:37
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• 11:46
  do my part for you to yours. Thanks so much.
• 11:49
  Take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you next
• 11:51
  time.