“He is going to be viewing a Tesla that is making its way to the White House complex now, I can confirm,” she said. “Perhaps the press pool today will have an opportunity to witness this very exciting moment later this afternoon, but a Tesla is on its way here now and we’ll see if the president likes it when he checks it out.”
Shortly afterward, a fleet of Teslas appeared, magicked by electricity to the White House, for the car salesmen—President Trump and Musk—to do a photo op. “I’m gonna buy a car,” Trump told surrounding press, adding that Margo Martin on his White House communications staff could drive it. Reason? In part because, even though Trump has trashed electric vehicles at numerous points, Teslas are suddenly “good.” And also because Musk “has been treated very unfairly by a small group of people.”
Just for fun, since Musk does love his napkin math, let’s examine Trump’s alleged purchase of a MAGA-red Model S, which carries a base price of around $80,000.* After all, he’s doing this to put a few bucks in his guy’s pocket, right? $29 billion, the amount Musk’s net worth dropped Monday, divided by $80,000 is… 362,500. So Musk lost more than 360,000 base-model Model S Teslas worth of money yesterday.
Perhaps the optics worked out for Musk? Perhaps not. Tesla stock opened Tuesday at $225 a share, below its 52-week average. And even though Trump put on his Tesla parade long before the markets closed, Tesla barely moved, inching up around $235 during the show, then closing the day at $230/share—far, far short of its $480 post-election high. Maybe all of the Trump voters who aren’t currently worried about their 401ks, housing prices, a recession, or the price of groceries and eggs will buy some Teslas, and help make it up to their very own government overlords.
In an interview Monday on Fox Business, Musk again appeared to be having some feelings about DOGE’s impact on his other businesses, several of which have made headlines in the last week or so: SpaceX had the explosion—ugh, there I go again, I mean rapid unscheduled disassembly, X had widespread downtime Monday due to what the company said was a targeted cyberattack, Teslas are being vandalized, and Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis announced that she and Musk have welcomed another human baby.
Asked how he’s running his private businesses while working his unpaid gig in the government, Musk had a wry response: “With great difficulty.” He chuckled and appended a sort of verbal shrug. “Yeah, I mean.”
Yeah, I mean, indeed.
(*Asked whether Trump paid full price; whether he bought it personally or under the taxpayer-funded auspices of government; and indeed, whether he’d bought it, for real, at all, The White House told Vanity Fair to “Refer to the President’s comments.”)
