From last month’s friendly parting of the ways to Monday’s social media slugfest, US President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk sure know how to level up a fight. The battle has now entered Clash of the Titans territory, with Tesla’s brand reputation caught right in between. It must be difficult to sell electric cars with all this going on, but it’s a safe bet Musk has a trick up his sleeve. After all, he’s been pulling rabbits out of his hat for years.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk Pokes The Bear
The recent misfortunes of the global auto industry’s leading EV maker are well known. In the runup to tomorrow’s Q2 report, Tesla has run into a perfect storm of competition from other automakers alongside Musk’s growing role — some would say meddling — in public affairs both domestic and international.
Both of these circumstances undermine Tesla’s reputation as the premier EV on the market, but those are only two things. A perfect storm needs three things to come together all at once. If you have any thoughts about what that third thing could be, share in the comment thread.
For my money, it’s Trump’s temper. Musk stirred up a hornet’s next last month when he began criticizing the President’s pet tax bill, aka the “Big Beautiful Bill.” That was right around the time Musk reportedly left his White House role as head of “DOGE,” leading one to assume that the parting was not so friendly after all.
Tempers cooled somewhat during the first weeks of June only to flare up again this week. Now we’re into July and Trump started off the month with a bang.
“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!,” Trump wrote on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, in the early hours of today, July 1.
Mission Creep Comes Back To Haunt Tesla and SpaceX
That was only part of Trump’s message and there’s a lot to unpack, but what really sticks out is the reference to DOGE, the “Department of Government Efficiency.” DOGE is a new name, but the office has existed since 2014. It was created during the Obama administration in an effort to help federal agencies modernize their systems for the digital age under the title of US Digital Service.
Trump and Musk changed the name and the mission of DOGE upon taking office in January. As the head of DOGE, Musk is credited with summarily tossing tens of thousands of federal workers out off their jobs, in effect single-handedly ripping up federal agencies from the inside out.
Now Trump is threatening to turn DOGE against its own former boss, including SpaceX along with Tesla. It’s unclear how that would work out, exactly. However, having creeped the mission of the former US Digital Service far beyond its original intent, anything is possible.
Who’s Investigating Whom?
Besides, why should Trump stop at siccing DOGE on Musk? While head of DOGE, Musk reportedly fired federal investigators tasked with looking into alleged misdeeds at SpaceX and X as well as Tesla. Trump could just as easily order the teams to be reassembled.
Trump would not be the first one to call for an investigation of Musk’s various activities, including his activities as head of DOGE. Back on March 21, for example, US Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey’s District 11 wrote to the inspectors general of eight different federal agencies, requesting them to open investigations into conflicts of interest between Musk’s public role at DOGE and his interests at Tesla and other ventures.
“Elon Musk is not only the world’s richest man but also one of the federal government’s largest contractors — handing the keys of our government over to him reeks of corruption and vast conflicts of interest,” Rep. Sherrill stated in a press release.
“He is working to cut Social Security and Medicare, strip funding from our public schools, and fire the government employees who keep our food, roads, and skies safe — all while his own companies get sweetheart deals,” she added (Sherrill is now the Democratic nominee running for Governor of New Jersey).
Washington Post Weighs In, Just In Time For The Tesla Q2 Report
That thing about sweetheart deals is just the tip of the DOGE iceberg. On Monday, the Washington Post reported on a whole ‘nother can of worms:
“For months, Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service plumbed the federal government’s information systems, scouring arcane internal records that the billionaire said were guiding his hunt for waste. Now that Musk has stepped away from his government role, some of that data could be valuable in another way — by giving the world’s richest man a competitive advantage over his rivals in the private sector.”
The report cited “records that contain competitors’ trade secrets, nonpublic details about government contracts, and sensitive regulatory actions or other information.”
The Post clarifies that it did not find evidence that Musk’s ventures are actually using the information to their own benefit. However, the newspaper is inviting anyone with inside information about DOGE to contact its reporters by email or the encrypted message service Signal, so stay tuned for more on that.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s Q2 report is forthcoming and the previews are as dismal, as one would expect following five straight months of sales declines. How dismal? Many EV buyers in the company’s own home state of California, one of the biggest and most EV-friendly auto markets in the world, have been turning away from the Tesla brand.
Also, things must be pretty dismal if the heads of senior executives are rolling. On June 26, Forbes reported that Musk fired the head of Tesla’s North America business, Omead Afshar, described as “one of Tesla’s most senior executives.”
“Equity analysts are anticipating a decline in Tesla’s EV deliveries of at least 10% worldwide in the quarter that ends on June 30, to about 392,800 units compared with 443,956 a year ago,” Forbes noted.
Ouch!
For the record, Musk capped off the month of June without explaining how he plans to reverse the fortunes of his car company. Instead, he lobbed more social media brickbats at Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. He also threatened to throw his money around during the next primary election cycle, putting up opponents against any Republican in Congress who votes in favor of the bill.
Musk only needs to peel off a few Republican votes to tank the bill, whenever it finally comes up for a final vote in the House of Representatives, which explains why Trump pulled the DOGE card in the wee hours of this morning.
Apropos of nothing, does anybody here remember that time when Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight?
Photo: Via CleanTechnica archive.
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