Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / EXCLUSIVE! Tesla board made Elon Musk post again Trump

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EXCLUSIVE! Tesla board made Elon Musk post again Trump · Elon Musk Podcast

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  Your ultimate authority for daily Elon Musk news.
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  Exploring the world's biggest ideas with your host Will
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  Walden. There's something new every day.
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  Elon Musk is shifting his tone on Donald Trump after weeks of
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  backlash triggered a rare internal warning from Tesla's
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  board of directors. Public criticism surged
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  following Musk's prominent role in Trump's second
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  administration, and for the first time in years, Tesla's
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  leadership told Musk directly that his political behavior was
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  damaging the company. Multiple people familiar with
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  that matter said the board told Musk he would need to walk back
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  his statements about Trump and fast or risk losing his position
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  at Tesla now. The shift began in late spring,
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  shortly after Musk stood next to Trump at a White House press
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  event and doubled down on the federal layoffs driven by Doge.
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  The Department of Government Efficiency and Musk had
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  personally overseen the cuts, defended them publicly and
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  celebrated his success at the Oval Office.
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  But inside Tesla, those moments created a different kind of
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  panic. Key customers began cancelling
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  orders. Sentiment on investor calls
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  turned hostile. Tesla stock dipped sharply in
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  the two weeks following Musk's highest profile political
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  appearances. Board members took notice as
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  well. Two directors, including one who
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  has worked with Musk since Tesla's earliest years, warned
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  that public association with Trump was becoming an
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  existential threat to the brand. They argued that Musk's recent
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  political comments were alienating core Tesla buyers,
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  many of whom lean liberal or identify with climate activism.
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  When director reportedly told him you can't sell clean energy
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  cars while backing someone tearing up the EPA.
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  Now Tesla's internal data team had already flagged concerning
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  trends. Social media sentiment analysts
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  showed Tesla's brand approval had dropped by double digits in
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  key markets like California and New York.
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  Suburban buyers wants a stable Tesla demographic.
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  We're voicing concerns about Musk's comments on LGBTQ rights
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  in his dismissive tone toward climate policy.
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  Now Tesla's PR team, which Musk had famously dismantled,
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  struggled to mount any kind of response.
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  Privately, Elon Musk started softening his language.
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  At a June meeting, he was asked about his role in Trump's second
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  term, and for the first time, he didn't answer with his usual
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  bravado. He said only that he believed in
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  efficiency and wanted what was best for the country.
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  He avoided using Trump's name entirely.
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  The silence wasn't random. Sources close to the board say
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  they told him that disassociating from Trump was
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  non negotiable if he wanted to maintain his leadership
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  position. The pressure came as Tesla faced
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  other vulnerabilities. Its market global share had
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  begun shrinking under intense competition from Chinese
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  electric vehicle makers, and the company also remained under
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  federal investigation for safety violations tied to Autopilot.
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  Any appearance of political favoritism risked drawing
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  unwanted attention to those cases, especially since Musk had
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  helped dismantle the regulatory agencies meant to oversee them.
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  That board members also raised concerns about brand consistency
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  for years. Test the market itself as a
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  clean tech leader, a climate first brand backed by
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  innovation. Musk's political rhetoric was
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  pulling the company into a completely different orbit.
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  When Musk echoed Trump's anti trans talking points and used
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  terms like woke mind virus, Tesla's legal and marketing
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  teams received a wave of emails from longtime customers
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  threatening to cancel orders. At the core of the board's
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  concern was shareholder trust, though.
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  After Musk's purchase of Twitter, Now X, many investors
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  question whether he could balance Tesla's needs with his
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  growing political ventures. The Trump alliance pushed those
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  concerns over the edge. Major institutional investors
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  warned that Musk's behavior was destabilizing the company's
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  value. Some quietly began trimming
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  their Tesla holdings. And the final breaking point
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  came when Tesla's customer satisfaction rating dropped
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  below 70% for the first time in the company's modern history.
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  Internal polling attributed the decline directly to Musk's
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  political activity and public persona.
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  One director told colleagues that our product didn't get
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  worse, our CEO did. And after the internal push,
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  Musk began a slow retreat. He has not publicly apologized
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  for his role in Trump's administration, but insiders say
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  he issued a private statement to test the board members,
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  acknowledging that he had let personal convictions interfere
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  with company responsibilities. That message wasn't released
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  publicly but was seen as the first step toward more visible
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  damage control. And the Musk's recent tweets
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  have also reflected this change. In early May, he posted praise
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  for renewable energy initiatives in Europe, shared a photo of
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  Tesla solar installation in Puerto Rico, and promoted an
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  LGBTQ friendly hiring campaign at a Tesla plant in Nevada.
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  Those posts are part of what some inside the company to
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  describe as a coordinated effort to rebalance his image.
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  Still, Tesla employees remain skeptical.
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  Several said that unless Musk offers a direct public apology
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  or makes a clean break from Trump, the damage may already be
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  done. Others within the company fear
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  that Musk's political ambitions will resurface after the
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  immediate backlash fades. And at a June meeting, one
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  director proposed setting up a formal political conduct clause
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  in Musk's executive agreement, an unprecedented move at Tesla,
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  and that proposal has not yet been approved.
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  But its existence signals just how seriously the company now
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  views the situation. And for Elon Musk, the tension
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  between personal freedom and corporate leadership is becoming
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  harder to manage. Built Tesla on the back of a
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  progressive consumer base and that finds themselves at odds
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  with much of his user base. That same community that built
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  Tesla and made him so rich, they feel like he has turned his back
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  on them. And now he's on a public
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  campaign to wash away everything that he did with Donald Trump,
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  all the negative things that he said about the community,
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  everything he said about people. He's trying to wash that all
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  away. That's what these people think.
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  And it's public turn toward hard right politics alienated a
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  segment of the market that I made Tesla one of the most
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  admired brands in the entire world.
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  Now, if Musk doesn't make a more explicit public correction, the
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  company may face deeper problems.
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  Now, we all know if you've been following this, that Elon Musk
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  had broken ties with Trump on X, therefore he thinks that does
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  the company well. I'm sure the shareholders found
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  that good and people inside the company were impressed by that.
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  But he also just said I may have taken things too far.
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  He didn't say he disagreed or he's completely cutting ties
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  with President Donald Trump. He's just said that he may have
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  taken his actions a little bit too far, which if you know the
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  policies in Tesla right now and what they're looking to put on
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  his executive contract in the future.
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  I think political leanings for Elon Musk or any CEO that may be
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  replacing him, which isn't the case at this point, But anybody
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  that may be replacing Elon Musk in the future, I think they
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  should be held accountable for any political damage that they
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  do to the brand. My own personal opinion, I think
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  Elon Musk went wild for a little bit there on X and he's pulled
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  back, He's apologized and for most of the people that used to
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  support Elon Musk, they believe this is APR campaign.
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  He doesn't really feel this way. Elon Musk is just posting these
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  things on X. They even think the break from
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  Donald Trump. Some people think the break from
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  Donald Trump. Even internal people on the
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  board think the break from Donald Trump or know that the
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  break from Donald Trump is actually just APR stunt to
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  convince just enough people from left-leaning policies, those
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  kind of people to buy Teslas again.
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  The stock is dipping, the sales are going away, and if you could
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  get even a small margin of those people back by pretending to be
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  done with Trump, because Trump, as was stated last week by
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  Donald Trump on True Social and on X, that the easiest way to
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  save money was to cut Elon Musk's contracts with Tesla and
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  SpaceX and Neuralink and all of his companies.
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  Donald Trump said that and then immediately Elon Musk blew up at
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  him and said they're going to stop doing the Dragon
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  spacecraft. That's the spacecraft that sends
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  humans to the International Space Station into space.
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  They're going to cut all of that funding and stop making new
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  versions of the Dragon. They plan that anyway.
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  Elon Musk in SpaceX has been planning that for years.
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  They were going to decommission the older Dragon spacecrafts and
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  just use the new versions. They can't get rid of the Dragon
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  spacecraft. They have contracts with NASA,
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  they have contracts with the government, they have private
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  contracts that sends people to space.
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  They can't decommission the whole thing right away, but they
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  are planning to decommission the Dragon spacecraft when Starship
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  comes fully online, when they can send people to space, to low
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  Earth orbit and to the Moon and Mars, etcetera.
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  With Starship, they're going to decommission that anyway.
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  So the plan was there to decommission it.
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  Elon Musk's didn't state a time frame.
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  He said immediately, but who knows what crafts he was talking
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  about. And this is because I have
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  covered SpaceX for the last five years and know the insurance and
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  outs of the company. And you know what they're what
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  they're briefing briefings are and what has been talked about
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  the Dragon spacecraft, the newer versions will stick around.
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  The older versions decommissioned.
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  So maybe Elon Musk was talking about that.
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  And maybe this was what some people feel internally at Tesla.
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  They feel that this was all smoke and mirrors to get Elon's
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  companies back on track. Let me know what you think in
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