July 1, 2025 • 31 mins
The predictable second round of Elon Musk’s feud with Donald Trump began over the weekend as the Tesla CEO took aim at the GOP’s massive tax-and-spend bill. Specifically irking Musk (along with efforts to gut incentives to buy his cars) is the amount of money the bill would add to the $37 trillion national debt ($3.3 trillion over a decade, according to a new estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office). Trump initially kept his replies to the richest man on Earth muted, but as the South Africa-native’s broadsides piled up, the notoriously thin-skinned Republican president could no longer help himself.
Trump blew up and not only threatened to withdraw government subsidies from Musk’s companies but said he would mull whether to try and “denaturalize” Musk and deport him. Meanwhile, Musk suggested he’d support primary challenges to any Republican lawmaker who supported the bill, and returned to the idea of starting a third party—called the America Party (of course).
To make sense of all the chaos, Bloomberg national correspondent Joshua Green joins David Papadopoulos on this week’s episode of Elon, Inc. Green argues that—despite Musk’s hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of social media followers (and bots)—there isn’t a huge constituency out there for a third party. Green also outlines the roots of a mini-campaign within Trump’s ultra-right wing base to get Musk deported, discusses Musk’s chances of actually convincing any lawmakers in the House (now that the Senate has passed the bill) to change their vote on Trump’s tax bill and predicts how many more rounds are left between him and his (one-time) biggest campaign donor.
Papadopoulos also calls up Musk reporter Dana Hull to talk about about fresh challenges for Tesla. With several recent high-profile leadership exits, a flawed robotaxi rollout and sagging sales, things aren’t looking rosy for the electric carmaker ahead of tomorrow’s quarterly sales numbers. “They might only sell like a million and a half units this year; that’s like a far cry from the 20 million that they once talked about” Hull notes.
Finally, Trump wasn’t the only subject of a Musk feuds this week. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum recently threatened legal action against SpaceX due to debris from a rocket explosion sweeping in across the border from Texas. Is Musk’s space technology company ready for a spat with one of the few world leaders who has managed to tame Trump? Bloomberg Executive Editor Crayton Harrison joins for the full story.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
A star is born.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
Utton Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
He is the.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 5 (00:22):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
they in four post.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
We're meant for great things in the United States of America,
and Elon reminds us of that.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I'm very disappointed in Elon.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, July First. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. The
fight is back on in one Donald J. Trump, in
the other Elon Musk, and over the past few days,
(01:08):
tensions between the two men have built and built to
the point that the barbs and threats are flying once again.
It's a quickly evolving situation. So we're beaming in from
DC Ace Bloomberg political reporter and fellow Cohn College alum
Josh Green to break it down for us. Hey, Josh,
go Camels go Camels. Later on Elon inks Stalwart, Denna
(01:32):
Hall and I will catch up on Tesla, where there's
something of a management shake up in the works that
comes just before we get a fresh look at the
sad state of the company's EV sales. And then we'll
talk briefly with an old pal of mine, our executive
editor for Latin America, Creighton Harrison, to go over a
new Musk feud brewing south of the border. Okay, so Josh,
(01:55):
for those out there who have missed round two of
the fight, bring them up to speed. It all seemed
to start on Saturday.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, so if we rewind about a month, you know,
the tweets were flying. Trump and Elon were going back
and forth. The whole world was sort of watching like
in drop jawed amazement. You know, we remember all these
personal attacks on Twitter and the Epstein files and that,
and essentially Elon's kind of friends just like held him
back like you do in.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
The school school yard play.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Oh well, Elon has broken containment and in the last
I guess twenty four hours forty eight hours, has started
tweeting like more and more hysterically about all the things
that are wrong with Trump's big, beautiful bill, mainly the
fact that they cut his ev green energy subsidies and
(02:45):
stand to cost his companies. I would assume, you know, tens,
not one, hundreds of millions of dollars. But he's become
critical of the bill. He's threatened Republicans to just support it.
First he said he's going to primary them. Then he
said he's going to start a centrist third party he
wants to call the American Party. And then he started
tweeting memes of Pinocchio and sort of shaming these guys
(03:05):
for grandiose levels of hypocrisy for saying that they want
to balance the budget while they're blowing.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
It wide open with this new Republican spending bill.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Well, we have to say that he has something of
a point. I mean, this bill will indeed absolutely add
to deficits in the debt. And of course, this is,
you know, something that's been going on for years and
years now from both sides of the aisle. Right now
it's the Republican's turn to do so again. And he
definitely seems to become a bit obsessed with the debt issue.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
You know, basically, Elon is belatedly discovering what anybody with
two eyes, and Washington already knows, which is that while
Republicans talk a big game about concern over the deficit,
at the same time, for decades, they happily vote for
bills that will increase the deficit. I think in this case,
the CBO, the Congregional Bushet Office, has said that it's
(03:56):
going to increase the deficit by something like three trillion dollars.
And it would be even worse if Republicans weren't clowing
back some of that money by zeroing out a lot
of these clean energy and ev subsidies that are costing
Elon as well. So, on the one hand, his whole
program of doge and finding all these cuts and balancing
the budget hasn't really worked out. Budget's going to get
(04:18):
much much much bigger the budget deficit is, and at
the same time it's going to cost Elon personally a
lot of his companies, and you know, judging from his
social media posts over the last few days, he just
seems to have gotten into one of those kind of
angry cycles where he's kind of mass tweeting to the
point that Trump took notice and at like one in
the morning the other night, sort of said like threateningly, well, look,
(04:42):
you know you, Elon, your companies are huge beneficiary of
these subsidies. Maybe we'll take a look at some of
your stuff. And I think even said this to reporters
and a gaggle, that he might want to want to
doze Elon Musk's own companies, the same way that Musk
doged the government when he was in there trying to
find I don't know, I know, he.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Might have to put doze on Elan. You know, you
know doj is dose is the monster that has that
might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that
be there? Bus For a while, it seemed like Trump
sort of like in round one, Trump was trying to
ignore Musk and hoping it would go away, and Musk
was just boxing against himself in the middle of the ring.
(05:25):
But at some point, indeed, as you're saying, Trump jumped
in sort of tepidly at first, and then he kind
of kept building momentum, the threatening to sick Doze, the
Doge kids, josh On, the Doge father man.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Yeah, I mean big balls.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Going after Elon would be like Luke going after Darth Vader,
you know, I mean, imagine imagine the showdown that.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
You must have been listening in to me and our
producer here, Magnus Hendricks in this morning, because I think
that's that reference came up. But any even it didn't
just stop at threatening to unleash the Doge kids on
the Doze. Father. Trump also raised the specter of deporting Musk,
which I don't know. I'm not sure about the legality
(06:09):
of such a move, but it seems to keep coming up.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Now, Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And as usual with a lot of things that kind
of burrow into Trump's brain, I think the genesis of
the deport Elon idea came from Trump's former chief strategist Steve.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Bannon, who is now a big media.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Personality on his podcast The War Room, somebody I've written
about quite a bit, talked to a lot. Bannon famously
feuded with Elon over the first you know, six months
of the Trump administration.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
I think ultimately kind of won that feud.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, you know, I will interrupt briefly say, Josh, it's
funny because initially, for a week, the first few weeks,
the first few months, it looked like not only was
Bannon losing, it looked like he was getting his head kicked.
But now you're absolutely right. Seems to look like not
only is he winning, he's winning in an enormous.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Way, Yeah, in an enormous way. And and once Elon
kind of fell out with Trump, something that Bannon helped
kind of spur and provoke. Bannon has done a kind
of danced on Elon's political grave, if you will, And
as Elon's criticism ramped up, I think Bannon was the
one who first called to deport Elon, which is which
is how I think reporters and Trump first got winto this.
(07:26):
But is the careful journalist that I am, Guys. I
actually texted Bannon right before the show to say, hey,
just checking my facts here, just in okay, this just
in like in the last three minutes. I said, did
you start the whole deport Elon push? I'm about to
do a podcast, Just want to check my facts. Bannon
(07:47):
just texted back, he said, quote me to port the
arrogance back to South Africa. So I take that as
a confirmation that bannonon was a genesis of all this.
And then reporters asked it to Trump and Trump said, yeah,
that's something that I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So well, there we are.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
It's a cycle of life, and like the Trump era
media narratives, this is how they begin and metastasize.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's also a note to sell that don't ever pick
a fight with Steve Benn. You know, for a while,
it looked like the thing, like I said, was an
absolute wipeout. You know, Musk was just dominating. He was
in the West wing all the time. You know, he
and Trump were bosom buddies. Bannon was on the outside
looking in and screaming at the top of his lungs
and getting nowhere. But I suppose he was playing a
(08:29):
bit of a long game and he is having his
moment now. As I said earlier, Josh, I don't know
about the legality of deporting a naturalized citizen, but this
administration has shown itself willing to unearth heterodox legal theories
to make things happen. So I suppose who the hell knows.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, and it's got a fairly compliance Supreme Court, So
if Trump wanted to make a stab at it. One
of the conspiracy theories Bannon has pushed is that is
that Musk himself was an illegal immigrant at some point,
and you know, if the government is sort of digging
up offenses from from decades ago as pretext. I poor people,
Why couldn't they deport Musk too? Now, we don't know
(09:09):
if there's any truth to that, And I will say,
as a veteran Trump observer, I don't really take his
threat too seriously because Trump never rules anything out. Like
if a reporter asks him, you know, mister President, or
will you consider you think about deporting Elon Musk? He'll
say something, well, we're going to take a look at that. Well,
Trump will take a look at anything you want to
(09:30):
ask him about. That doesn't necessarily mean he's going to
follow through on it. So if I were Elon, I'd
be a little bit nervous, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't
necessarily be a lot nervous.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Understood Now, Elon on his end, is not letting up.
He keeps banging the drum. As you said, he initially
was threatening to primary any embers of the Senate and
perhaps of the House as well, who backed these tax
cuts in this bill, the big beautiful bill. He's talking
about forming a new party, as you said, the America Party.
(10:02):
Let's start with the primarying threat does he have at
this point in time, the ability through threats and money
and coercion and so on and so forth, to change
any votes on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
You know, I really don't think he does.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I think Elon thinks that that money and tweets are
the most powerful form of political currency. But anyone with
any level of sophistication in US politics knows that, at
least when it comes to Republican politics, it's Trump's endorsement
that matters. That's ninety eight percent of the ballgame. Elon's
(10:40):
money might be the other two percent. I think what
finally provoked Trump into attacking Elon this second time around
was that, you know, he's in the middle of trying
to pass his big, beautiful bill. There are a lot
of Republican holdouts. It's going to be a very tight
vote either way, and I think Trump began to worry
that Elon's threats of dumping money into these primary races
(11:02):
might give some swing voter's cold feet and in perils bill.
That's why he kind of issued the threats. But as
far as Elon Musk on his own being able to
recruit and fund dozens, presumably of candidates to challenge Republican incumbents,
I think is just folly. I mean, he doesn't have
(11:24):
that kind of political power. I don't think he has
the attention span to follow through on any of this
for a minute, and I think if he did, it
would be an expensive boondoggle because in a lot of ways,
as influential as Elon Musk has been in American politics
over the last year or so, in some ways he
strikes me as one of the most naive people I
have ever encountered at a high level of national politics,
(11:46):
because he fundamentally really doesn't understand what the levels of
power are and how they work. If you are a
conspiracy theorist prone to living your life on social media
the way that Musk is, you think that money and
backroom deals are kind of how things happen and how
Washington operates, but they're really not. Politicians deal with pressure
(12:08):
from their constituents and from the people above them. And
right now in the Republican Party, Donald Trump is one
hundred million times more important than Elon Musk, and a
lot of these Republicans don't want to get crosswise with
Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So you're very dubious that Musk manages to put together
a slate of candidates to primary those who back to Bill.
I suppose then by extension, you're even more dubious of
the creation and the sustainability of the Great American Party.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Look, the idea of a rich guy forming a centrist
third party is such like a tired, cliched idea that
so many rich people and kind of gadfly political figures
have had before that it's sort of astonishing to me
(12:59):
that he's just sort of stumbling on for the first
you know, onto this idea for the first time.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I had an epiphany.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
He's making the same mental mistake that every one of
these rich guys makes. That I the rich guy, I
am not happy with Republican accesses or Democratic excesses. I
want something right in the middle. I want a political
party that agrees with every single one of my views.
I think there's a huge constituency out for that, And
if there isn't, I'll take my money and just buy one.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
That's just not the way American politics works. So he could.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Drop, you know what, he spent three hundred million dollars
back in Trump. He could drop three hundred million dollars
starting an American Party, centrist party. And I don't think
he would manage to get one electoral vote or win
one seat in the House or Senate. I mean, if
there's you say I'm dubious, if there is there a
word beyond dubious.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Like, I mean, yeah, I feel like during our time
at Connecticut College, they must have told taught us.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
You know, yeah, I was an English majorld I should
know this stuff. But yeah, I think everybody viewsed this
as sour grapes and empty threats from Elin.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I guess okay, now I need a prediction from you
as we wrap up here this first segment. You may
be familiar or you may not. With an acronym Max
Chapkin launched a couple weeks back mamoot Josh mamoot, which
is m a m u w T. Musk always makes
(14:19):
up with Trump. This was a riff on taco. You know,
Trump always chickens out. Yeah, y decided to come up
with their own, and so then these listeners, or one
listener in particular, came up with a bunch of you know,
Mexican dish acronyms and chillada and burrito that all essentially
said the same thing. Musk, who has a lot more
to lose than Trump, always makes up with Trump. So
(14:41):
I ask you, is this the second of many rounds
between the two of them? Is it a second of two?
How does the fight end? Do we indeed get mam
moot or does it end with big Balls taking out
Musk at Trump's behest?
Speaker 5 (15:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I think there's sort of a half life to these things.
You know, the first fight was big and sort of
powerful and exciting, and this one's a little bit less so.
And I think ultimately Musk is going to wind up,
as so many people on Twitter or x do, is
just you know, a guy kind of complaining into the
void who hasn't really listened to anymore. I think that
if Musk's companies are explicitly threatened, someone will prevail on
(15:25):
him to kind of quiet down and smooth things over
with Trump temporarily. It's hard for me to ever imagine
that he'll fully recover his status in Trump's universe. Guy
who just re parachute into mar A Lago, sit at
the President's dinner table and get all sorts of things
that he wanted to. I think that ship has sailed.
But you know, at the end of the day, Musk
needs Trump more than Trump needs Musk, and so he's
(15:48):
going to have to kind of bow down and kiss
the ring, or at least quiet down, if he wants
to stop Trump from going after a lot of his companies.
I mean, one danger that Elon and his investors certainly
must be aware of is that Trump is a vindictive guy,
and he has focused his entire second term on retribution.
And you know, if Elon falls in the crosshairs, he
(16:08):
has an awful lot to lose. And I don't think
that Trump necessarily does. Trump is gonna run for office again,
so he doesn't need another three hundred million dollars from Elon.
All he needs from Elon is to not screw up
the passage of his big beautiful Bill, which I think
he's probably accomplished, and after that, Elon can complain all
he wants. But I don't think he's going to get
back into Trump's good graces. And there's certainly a core
group of MAGA Trump supporters, led by people like Steve Bannon,
(16:32):
who absolutely loathe Elon and want to stab him in
the back anyway they can, whether that's canceling NASA contracts
or zeroing out EV subsidies or what have you.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I actually don't think they want to stab him in
the back. The sense I have is they want to stab.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
Them well, they want to stab him the front. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Okay, right, mister Green, thank you so much as a pleasure.
Oh and as it turns out, the Senate just this
second passed the big beautiful bill, sending it now back
to the house. Okay, let's talk Tesla now. Lots going
on there, and we have Dana to bring us up
(17:10):
to speed on it all.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Dana, Hello, Hey David, good to be back.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
So, Dana, you had be in the scoop machine. You
are a terrific scoop last week that everyone followed, and
you followed it up yourself with another scoop. A gentleman
by the name of Omaed af Shar left Tesla as
part of what seems like maybe a bit of a bigger,
broader shake up there. Tell us about it.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Yeah, so this was wild. I mean, oh Mead joined
Tesla in twenty seventeen basically as an assistant. He worked
for Sam Teller, who was Elon's chief of staff, and
then through the Model three ramp and as time went on,
like oh Meed consolidated power and really was Elon Musk's
right hand man. Four years he oversaw the construction of
(17:55):
the gigafactory in Texas. He often traveled with Elon. He
was like sort of front and center, as like the
right hand guy. And if you ask people within Tesla,
like where does the power lie, it was always with
oh Mead. So the fact that O Mead is now
out is really stunning for Tesla watchers. I mean, Oh
Mead has been the key for a really long time,
(18:17):
and it's just sort of goes to show that, you know,
even Elon's closest confidence don't always last. I just never
thought i'd see the day that Omed himself would be ousted.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
You use that term ousted, it is your sense in
your reporting that he indeed was ousted and did not
opt to leave himself correct.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
And it's tricky, you know, we don't use the word
fired because frankly, I don't know. I mean, sometimes people
are strongly encouraged to resign. Sometimes the writing is on
the wall. I mean, ousted seems fair. But you know,
I wasn't in the meeting when this happened, so we
had to be a little bit careful about the language.
Other outlets have said fired. We said, has exited.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I believe got it.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Now, his departure does come on the heels. I don't
necessarily know, like in the immediate aftermath of some of
these other departures, but it is one now of several
in recent months, right, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Listen, Tesla has turnover in the executive ranks, and there
have been some high profile departures this year of Milan Kovak,
who oversaw the Optimist spot, David Lao, who was the
VP of vehicle software. So yeah, there have been some departures.
I think that one thing I want to make clear is,
you know, a lot of people are blaming this on sales,
but that doesn't totally make sense to me because Obeid
(19:35):
was really the person who oversaw manufacturing in the gigafactory
in Texas, and then the sales directors reported to him.
But like, I feel like this must be about something
larger than just the bad quarter. I mean, something else
must have happened. That is my instinct.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Now, when you say the bad quarter in sales, you
mean the first quarter. You mean the quarter that's about
to end or that did just end yesterday, and that
we're going to get I believe figures on tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, I mean, I'm speaking about the second quarter. So
all indications are that Tesla's going to see another pretty
drastic year over year decline. You know, in the second
quarter of twenty twenty four, Tesla delivered four hundred and
forty four thousand vehicles. You know, this quarter, You've got
some analysts like Ryan Brinkman as low as three sixty k.
(20:25):
You know, Musk has always said that people don't like
to buy cars in the winter, but I mean it's
quite possible that they also don't like to buy cars
in the spring, in the summer. So you know, we
won't know until we get the figures tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Right now when it comes to Tesla, as it seems
like they don't like to buy them indeed in the winter,
the spring, the summer, in the fall unfortunately.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
So the other thing that's happening is that now you know,
Elon always focuses his on tension on the are the
parts of the company where there are issues. So as
we just reported today, now the head of North American sales,
Troy Jones, who used to work to OMEED, is now
reporting directly to Elon. So Elon is taking a more
active role in overseeing the sales operation in both the
(21:07):
US and Europe.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I did read that this morning, and as you said,
indeed another great scoop from you and the crew. It
made me laugh just a little, because, of course, it
feels like overwhelmingly much of the sales issues that Tesla
has are have been created by Mosk. So and now
he has tasked himself with fixing the problems that he himself,
(21:32):
through his political endeavors, has created. And as you often
point out, Dan, he pulls things off like this all
the time. He's got a pretty big task ahead of
me here, though.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Yeah, I mean I think you know, look, it's not
just Elon's politics, it's the vehicle lineup. I mean, you
had people inside the company pushing Musk to make a
more affordable, truly mass market twenty five thousand dollars car,
and Elon didn't go for that, and he instead we
have the cyber truck, which has like a weird cult
(22:04):
following in some quarters, but by all accounts is like
a bit of a dud in terms of being a
high volume mover. I mean, it has been subject to
scores of recalls.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
So right, so there have been scores of cyber truck recalls,
and you says right, it has this a little bit
of a cult falling, but it's broadly speaking been a dot.
And we have the cyber truck and we don't have
that cheap, mass model.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Veh and now we have enormous policy uncertainty with the
federal government and all of the incentives that Tesla has
greatly benefited from through you know, tax credits for electric
vehicle purchases and the Inflation Reduction Actor are you know,
potentially on the shopping block here, depending on what happens
with the Senate bill today. So you know, Tesla is
(22:45):
in a bad spot, and you know, I don't see
how they're going to turn around sales. I mean, and
that's why you're seeing Musk. You know, the focus for
him is all about the Robotaxi because that's going to
be their next big thing. And Elon is always about
the next big thing.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now I have seen Dan some of these new model
Whys trickling out. I've seen them out in the wild.
Not a cause for optimism of any kind. The Why refresh, I.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
Mean, I think it's a great refresh, but it's a refresh,
it's not a new model. And then when you get
back to the issue of Musk's politics, you know here
in the Bay Area at all, over California and probably
much of the world right now, you know, you see
these Tesla cars that have the sticker that say I
bought this before Elon went crazy. If you bought a
refreshed model, why that means that you actually made the
(23:33):
decision to buy the vehicle, even knowing what Musk has
done politically. So it just has not been this huge
boost to sales that people were hoping for.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Okay, on sales, one last question there we of course,
through the winter in the early spring, we just saw
some absolutely brutal numbers, especially out of Europe, like in
some countries year over year down sixty down seventy percent,
just mind boggling number. As bad as this second quarter
is now apparently shaping up. Any signs though, that there's
(24:07):
at least a bottoming out of that collapse in sales.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
I don't know, frankly how bad it can get. I mean, like,
what is Tesla doing to woo back the customers that
it lost in you know, blue states like California. I
don't know if they're doing anything. I mean, I have
not seen a big robust effort to kind of turn
that around. And you know, Musk on the last earnings
call was sort of like, oh, you know, they're seeing
(24:31):
like a bump in sales and Red States. That's like
a trend line that I'm curious to see how much
it pans out. But there's widespread economic uncertainty right now
in the United States. Interest rates are still very high.
There's a lot of questions about everything, and so cars
are a really big purchase. I mean, I think you're
seeing sort of softening in the auto market in general.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Well, I think if there was any bump in Tesla
sales in Red States that is probably disappearing pretty quickly.
You keep fighting and with with Trump, and you're gonna
you're gonna put a bullet into into any kind of
momentum you may have had there. Dan As, We'll let
you go. I'll just say it's funny because of course
Musk does love to point investors at how they should
(25:15):
forget about the cars and forget about you know, the
Y and the X and the three and all that.
It's all we're an AI company, and we're optimists, and
we're the robotax and all that and all that's fantastic,
but man, in the meantime, before you get to that vision,
you have to move some metal here, right, yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Because I mean that's their revenue is still largely selling cars.
But you know, in the future, I mean, as Musk
has said many times, like owning a car is going
to be like riding a horse, David, I mean the
future that like Elon sees this pivot to you know,
driving as a service and a luxury. And like I
have to remember, like Tesla you said, talk about how
(25:53):
they were gonna build twenty million cars a year by
twenty thirty. They've completely backed off from that claim, Like
they are not in the business of really building that
many cars anymore. And so I think you're just going
to see a lot of Domino's search of all, there's
going to be an overcapacity problem, and you know, they
might only sell like a million and a half units
this year. That's like a far cry from the twenty
(26:14):
million that they once talked about.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
All right, Dan, we will see how those numbers come
out tomorrow and we will see you next week. Sounds good, Okay.
I'm now joined by our kawdido in Latin America Executive
editor for the region, Creighton Harrison Creighton, Hello, Hello, Hi,
(26:37):
good Vida, and it's terrific having you now create. The
last segment of the show is often a feud.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
We do feud.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Watch Max, who's not here this week, Max chaff and
he loves to bring all these feud ideas, and this
one seems to be low key, low simmering, certainly not
at the level of Trump v. Musk, but interesting nonetheless.
Started last week down there in Mexico City. Tell us
about it.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, sure, So there was a rocket that blew up.
I think you guys have talked about that. I think
it was Starship thirty six. Is that the right number.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
There's been a lot of it seems like I think
the fourth explosion in short order, I believe.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
And when this one happened, there was some debris that
was discovered shortly after in the state of Tunnel Epas
right across the border from Starbase, like literally, you know what,
I think, like a ten minute drive from starbas to
get across the border in New Mexico. And there were
some environmentalists who started raising again the question of what
(27:37):
to do with the debris that was falling from these
rocket launches, because they have discovered what trash that they
have attributed to the rocket launches in the past, including
in the path of the sea turtles that they release.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum brings this up last week
in one of her weekly daily news conferences and says
what exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
So she didn't bring it up, but she was prepared
for an answer. A reporter asked about the space debris
from SpaceX, and what President Shambam said was, we are
looking into these launches, and we're looking into what laws
may have been violated, right, and then we will take
action to sort of the word she used would sort
(28:20):
of imply legal action as we see fit at the
conclusion of our investigation.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
To which SpaceX says.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
What so.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
SpaceX says a day later on Twitter on their official account, says,
we are, of course interested in talking to the Mexican
government about any debris that may have fallen in their territory.
We are trying to cooperate with them. It would be
really helpful if they could give us that debris back
because that's our property.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So your sense, though, is watch this space. More to
come from Cloudia Scheinbaum in the Mexican government in Shinbaum,
assuming this does continue to build into something, which of
course we don't know that to be the case, but
if it were to what kind of opponent does Elon
have here in the Mexican.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
President Well, President Shameebum has obviously had sort of gotten
a reputation in the early she's relatively knew in her
presidency she was just elected last year, but of course
early in the Trump presidency as well as a relatively
smart negotiator with Trump, she has you know, been able
to sort of keep him at bay at times when
(29:24):
he has started threatening various actions against Mexico.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
So Jesus, so Cretin. Maybe Musk needs to take some
advice from her and how to handle Trump.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, I mean there's something to that, but I bring
Trump up because at the end of the day, with
you know, according to some we have a great reporter
on this, Amy still Man, with some of the legal
experts that she's talked to this if there's legal action
that's going to be against the US, not against SpaceX right,
and that's because of the way that's because of the
way international space law works. There are three d's over
(29:55):
this sort of thing, and it's pretty unambiguous in international
space law that if your junk drops in someone else's country,
you are responsible for it and for any damage it causes.
The only question around this is whether it's going to
be legally treated as space debris because this rocket was
(30:16):
not going to space. It was actually inter orbit, right,
I mean, or inter official space. That is going to
be a legal question that I'm sure Claudia Shane Baum's
crack legal team is going over right now. But at
the end of the day, these tend to when we
talk about international space law, these tend to be country
(30:36):
to country and not country to company. Now, you know, again,
we can't rule out that they'll do something else that
I'm sure they have very creative way or to looking
at every lid of this. But Musk may end up
being in the middle of yet another point of contention
between the US and Mexico.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, that would be pretty pretty ironic if it ultimately
wound up being the three of them some way, somehow quarreling.
All right, mister Harrison, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Good to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by
Annamasi Rakas. Blake Maple's handles Engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks.
Our supervising producers Magnus henricson. The Elon Inc. Theme is
written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Brendan
Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is
the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always
(31:32):
to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos.
If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
it'll help other listeners find us. See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
A star is born.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
Utton Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
He is the.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 5 (00:22):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
they in four post.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
We're meant for great things in the United States of America,
and Elon reminds us of that.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I'm very disappointed in Elon.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Welcome to Elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, July First. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. The
fight is back on in one Donald J. Trump, in
the other Elon Musk, and over the past few days,
(01:08):
tensions between the two men have built and built to
the point that the barbs and threats are flying once again.
It's a quickly evolving situation. So we're beaming in from
DC Ace Bloomberg political reporter and fellow Cohn College alum
Josh Green to break it down for us. Hey, Josh,
go Camels go Camels. Later on Elon inks Stalwart, Denna
(01:32):
Hall and I will catch up on Tesla, where there's
something of a management shake up in the works that
comes just before we get a fresh look at the
sad state of the company's EV sales. And then we'll
talk briefly with an old pal of mine, our executive
editor for Latin America, Creighton Harrison, to go over a
new Musk feud brewing south of the border. Okay, so Josh,
(01:55):
for those out there who have missed round two of
the fight, bring them up to speed. It all seemed
to start on Saturday.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, so if we rewind about a month, you know,
the tweets were flying. Trump and Elon were going back
and forth. The whole world was sort of watching like
in drop jawed amazement. You know, we remember all these
personal attacks on Twitter and the Epstein files and that,
and essentially Elon's kind of friends just like held him
back like you do in.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
The school school yard play.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Oh well, Elon has broken containment and in the last
I guess twenty four hours forty eight hours, has started
tweeting like more and more hysterically about all the things
that are wrong with Trump's big, beautiful bill, mainly the
fact that they cut his ev green energy subsidies and
(02:45):
stand to cost his companies. I would assume, you know, tens,
not one, hundreds of millions of dollars. But he's become
critical of the bill. He's threatened Republicans to just support it.
First he said he's going to primary them. Then he
said he's going to start a centrist third party he
wants to call the American Party. And then he started
tweeting memes of Pinocchio and sort of shaming these guys
(03:05):
for grandiose levels of hypocrisy for saying that they want
to balance the budget while they're blowing.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
It wide open with this new Republican spending bill.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Well, we have to say that he has something of
a point. I mean, this bill will indeed absolutely add
to deficits in the debt. And of course, this is,
you know, something that's been going on for years and
years now from both sides of the aisle. Right now
it's the Republican's turn to do so again. And he
definitely seems to become a bit obsessed with the debt issue.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
You know, basically, Elon is belatedly discovering what anybody with
two eyes, and Washington already knows, which is that while
Republicans talk a big game about concern over the deficit,
at the same time, for decades, they happily vote for
bills that will increase the deficit. I think in this case,
the CBO, the Congregional Bushet Office, has said that it's
(03:56):
going to increase the deficit by something like three trillion dollars.
And it would be even worse if Republicans weren't clowing
back some of that money by zeroing out a lot
of these clean energy and ev subsidies that are costing
Elon as well. So, on the one hand, his whole
program of doge and finding all these cuts and balancing
the budget hasn't really worked out. Budget's going to get
(04:18):
much much much bigger the budget deficit is, and at
the same time it's going to cost Elon personally a
lot of his companies, and you know, judging from his
social media posts over the last few days, he just
seems to have gotten into one of those kind of
angry cycles where he's kind of mass tweeting to the
point that Trump took notice and at like one in
the morning the other night, sort of said like threateningly, well, look,
(04:42):
you know you, Elon, your companies are huge beneficiary of
these subsidies. Maybe we'll take a look at some of
your stuff. And I think even said this to reporters
and a gaggle, that he might want to want to
doze Elon Musk's own companies, the same way that Musk
doged the government when he was in there trying to
find I don't know, I know, he.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Might have to put doze on Elan. You know, you
know doj is dose is the monster that has that
might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that
be there? Bus For a while, it seemed like Trump
sort of like in round one, Trump was trying to
ignore Musk and hoping it would go away, and Musk
was just boxing against himself in the middle of the ring.
(05:25):
But at some point, indeed, as you're saying, Trump jumped
in sort of tepidly at first, and then he kind
of kept building momentum, the threatening to sick Doze, the
Doge kids, josh On, the Doge father man.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Yeah, I mean big balls.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Going after Elon would be like Luke going after Darth Vader,
you know, I mean, imagine imagine the showdown that.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
You must have been listening in to me and our
producer here, Magnus Hendricks in this morning, because I think
that's that reference came up. But any even it didn't
just stop at threatening to unleash the Doge kids on
the Doze. Father. Trump also raised the specter of deporting Musk,
which I don't know. I'm not sure about the legality
(06:09):
of such a move, but it seems to keep coming up.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Now, Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And as usual with a lot of things that kind
of burrow into Trump's brain, I think the genesis of
the deport Elon idea came from Trump's former chief strategist Steve.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Bannon, who is now a big media.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Personality on his podcast The War Room, somebody I've written
about quite a bit, talked to a lot. Bannon famously
feuded with Elon over the first you know, six months
of the Trump administration.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
I think ultimately kind of won that feud.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, you know, I will interrupt briefly say, Josh, it's
funny because initially, for a week, the first few weeks,
the first few months, it looked like not only was
Bannon losing, it looked like he was getting his head kicked.
But now you're absolutely right. Seems to look like not
only is he winning, he's winning in an enormous.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Way, Yeah, in an enormous way. And and once Elon
kind of fell out with Trump, something that Bannon helped
kind of spur and provoke. Bannon has done a kind
of danced on Elon's political grave, if you will, And
as Elon's criticism ramped up, I think Bannon was the
one who first called to deport Elon, which is which
is how I think reporters and Trump first got winto this.
(07:26):
But is the careful journalist that I am, Guys. I
actually texted Bannon right before the show to say, hey,
just checking my facts here, just in okay, this just
in like in the last three minutes. I said, did
you start the whole deport Elon push? I'm about to
do a podcast, Just want to check my facts. Bannon
(07:47):
just texted back, he said, quote me to port the
arrogance back to South Africa. So I take that as
a confirmation that bannonon was a genesis of all this.
And then reporters asked it to Trump and Trump said, yeah,
that's something that I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So well, there we are.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
It's a cycle of life, and like the Trump era
media narratives, this is how they begin and metastasize.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's also a note to sell that don't ever pick
a fight with Steve Benn. You know, for a while,
it looked like the thing, like I said, was an
absolute wipeout. You know, Musk was just dominating. He was
in the West wing all the time. You know, he
and Trump were bosom buddies. Bannon was on the outside
looking in and screaming at the top of his lungs
and getting nowhere. But I suppose he was playing a
(08:29):
bit of a long game and he is having his
moment now. As I said earlier, Josh, I don't know
about the legality of deporting a naturalized citizen, but this
administration has shown itself willing to unearth heterodox legal theories
to make things happen. So I suppose who the hell knows.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, and it's got a fairly compliance Supreme Court, So
if Trump wanted to make a stab at it. One
of the conspiracy theories Bannon has pushed is that is
that Musk himself was an illegal immigrant at some point,
and you know, if the government is sort of digging
up offenses from from decades ago as pretext. I poor people,
Why couldn't they deport Musk too? Now, we don't know
(09:09):
if there's any truth to that, And I will say,
as a veteran Trump observer, I don't really take his
threat too seriously because Trump never rules anything out. Like
if a reporter asks him, you know, mister President, or
will you consider you think about deporting Elon Musk? He'll
say something, well, we're going to take a look at that. Well,
Trump will take a look at anything you want to
(09:30):
ask him about. That doesn't necessarily mean he's going to
follow through on it. So if I were Elon, I'd
be a little bit nervous, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't
necessarily be a lot nervous.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Understood Now, Elon on his end, is not letting up.
He keeps banging the drum. As you said, he initially
was threatening to primary any embers of the Senate and
perhaps of the House as well, who backed these tax
cuts in this bill, the big beautiful bill. He's talking
about forming a new party, as you said, the America Party.
(10:02):
Let's start with the primarying threat does he have at
this point in time, the ability through threats and money
and coercion and so on and so forth, to change
any votes on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
You know, I really don't think he does.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
I think Elon thinks that that money and tweets are
the most powerful form of political currency. But anyone with
any level of sophistication in US politics knows that, at
least when it comes to Republican politics, it's Trump's endorsement
that matters. That's ninety eight percent of the ballgame. Elon's
(10:40):
money might be the other two percent. I think what
finally provoked Trump into attacking Elon this second time around
was that, you know, he's in the middle of trying
to pass his big, beautiful bill. There are a lot
of Republican holdouts. It's going to be a very tight
vote either way, and I think Trump began to worry
that Elon's threats of dumping money into these primary races
(11:02):
might give some swing voter's cold feet and in perils bill.
That's why he kind of issued the threats. But as
far as Elon Musk on his own being able to
recruit and fund dozens, presumably of candidates to challenge Republican incumbents,
I think is just folly. I mean, he doesn't have
(11:24):
that kind of political power. I don't think he has
the attention span to follow through on any of this
for a minute, and I think if he did, it
would be an expensive boondoggle because in a lot of ways,
as influential as Elon Musk has been in American politics
over the last year or so, in some ways he
strikes me as one of the most naive people I
have ever encountered at a high level of national politics,
(11:46):
because he fundamentally really doesn't understand what the levels of
power are and how they work. If you are a
conspiracy theorist prone to living your life on social media
the way that Musk is, you think that money and
backroom deals are kind of how things happen and how
Washington operates, but they're really not. Politicians deal with pressure
(12:08):
from their constituents and from the people above them. And
right now in the Republican Party, Donald Trump is one
hundred million times more important than Elon Musk, and a
lot of these Republicans don't want to get crosswise with
Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So you're very dubious that Musk manages to put together
a slate of candidates to primary those who back to Bill.
I suppose then by extension, you're even more dubious of
the creation and the sustainability of the Great American Party.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Look, the idea of a rich guy forming a centrist
third party is such like a tired, cliched idea that
so many rich people and kind of gadfly political figures
have had before that it's sort of astonishing to me
(12:59):
that he's just sort of stumbling on for the first
you know, onto this idea for the first time.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I had an epiphany.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
He's making the same mental mistake that every one of
these rich guys makes. That I the rich guy, I
am not happy with Republican accesses or Democratic excesses. I
want something right in the middle. I want a political
party that agrees with every single one of my views.
I think there's a huge constituency out for that, And
if there isn't, I'll take my money and just buy one.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
That's just not the way American politics works. So he could.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Drop, you know what, he spent three hundred million dollars
back in Trump. He could drop three hundred million dollars
starting an American Party, centrist party. And I don't think
he would manage to get one electoral vote or win
one seat in the House or Senate. I mean, if
there's you say I'm dubious, if there is there a
word beyond dubious.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Like, I mean, yeah, I feel like during our time
at Connecticut College, they must have told taught us.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
You know, yeah, I was an English majorld I should
know this stuff. But yeah, I think everybody viewsed this
as sour grapes and empty threats from Elin.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I guess okay, now I need a prediction from you
as we wrap up here this first segment. You may
be familiar or you may not. With an acronym Max
Chapkin launched a couple weeks back mamoot Josh mamoot, which
is m a m u w T. Musk always makes
(14:19):
up with Trump. This was a riff on taco. You know,
Trump always chickens out. Yeah, y decided to come up
with their own, and so then these listeners, or one
listener in particular, came up with a bunch of you know,
Mexican dish acronyms and chillada and burrito that all essentially
said the same thing. Musk, who has a lot more
to lose than Trump, always makes up with Trump. So
(14:41):
I ask you, is this the second of many rounds
between the two of them? Is it a second of two?
How does the fight end? Do we indeed get mam
moot or does it end with big Balls taking out
Musk at Trump's behest?
Speaker 5 (15:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I think there's sort of a half life to these things.
You know, the first fight was big and sort of
powerful and exciting, and this one's a little bit less so.
And I think ultimately Musk is going to wind up,
as so many people on Twitter or x do, is
just you know, a guy kind of complaining into the
void who hasn't really listened to anymore. I think that
if Musk's companies are explicitly threatened, someone will prevail on
(15:25):
him to kind of quiet down and smooth things over
with Trump temporarily. It's hard for me to ever imagine
that he'll fully recover his status in Trump's universe. Guy
who just re parachute into mar A Lago, sit at
the President's dinner table and get all sorts of things
that he wanted to. I think that ship has sailed.
But you know, at the end of the day, Musk
needs Trump more than Trump needs Musk, and so he's
(15:48):
going to have to kind of bow down and kiss
the ring, or at least quiet down, if he wants
to stop Trump from going after a lot of his companies.
I mean, one danger that Elon and his investors certainly
must be aware of is that Trump is a vindictive guy,
and he has focused his entire second term on retribution.
And you know, if Elon falls in the crosshairs, he
(16:08):
has an awful lot to lose. And I don't think
that Trump necessarily does. Trump is gonna run for office again,
so he doesn't need another three hundred million dollars from Elon.
All he needs from Elon is to not screw up
the passage of his big beautiful Bill, which I think
he's probably accomplished, and after that, Elon can complain all
he wants. But I don't think he's going to get
back into Trump's good graces. And there's certainly a core
group of MAGA Trump supporters, led by people like Steve Bannon,
(16:32):
who absolutely loathe Elon and want to stab him in
the back anyway they can, whether that's canceling NASA contracts
or zeroing out EV subsidies or what have you.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I actually don't think they want to stab him in
the back. The sense I have is they want to stab.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
Them well, they want to stab him the front. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Okay, right, mister Green, thank you so much as a pleasure.
Oh and as it turns out, the Senate just this
second passed the big beautiful bill, sending it now back
to the house. Okay, let's talk Tesla now. Lots going
on there, and we have Dana to bring us up
(17:10):
to speed on it all.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Dana, Hello, Hey David, good to be back.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
So, Dana, you had be in the scoop machine. You
are a terrific scoop last week that everyone followed, and
you followed it up yourself with another scoop. A gentleman
by the name of Omaed af Shar left Tesla as
part of what seems like maybe a bit of a bigger,
broader shake up there. Tell us about it.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Yeah, so this was wild. I mean, oh Mead joined
Tesla in twenty seventeen basically as an assistant. He worked
for Sam Teller, who was Elon's chief of staff, and
then through the Model three ramp and as time went on,
like oh Meed consolidated power and really was Elon Musk's
right hand man. Four years he oversaw the construction of
(17:55):
the gigafactory in Texas. He often traveled with Elon. He
was like sort of front and center, as like the
right hand guy. And if you ask people within Tesla,
like where does the power lie, it was always with
oh Mead. So the fact that O Mead is now
out is really stunning for Tesla watchers. I mean, Oh
Mead has been the key for a really long time,
(18:17):
and it's just sort of goes to show that, you know,
even Elon's closest confidence don't always last. I just never
thought i'd see the day that Omed himself would be ousted.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
You use that term ousted, it is your sense in
your reporting that he indeed was ousted and did not
opt to leave himself correct.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
And it's tricky, you know, we don't use the word
fired because frankly, I don't know. I mean, sometimes people
are strongly encouraged to resign. Sometimes the writing is on
the wall. I mean, ousted seems fair. But you know,
I wasn't in the meeting when this happened, so we
had to be a little bit careful about the language.
Other outlets have said fired. We said, has exited.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I believe got it.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Now, his departure does come on the heels. I don't
necessarily know, like in the immediate aftermath of some of
these other departures, but it is one now of several
in recent months, right, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Listen, Tesla has turnover in the executive ranks, and there
have been some high profile departures this year of Milan Kovak,
who oversaw the Optimist spot, David Lao, who was the
VP of vehicle software. So yeah, there have been some departures.
I think that one thing I want to make clear is,
you know, a lot of people are blaming this on sales,
but that doesn't totally make sense to me because Obeid
(19:35):
was really the person who oversaw manufacturing in the gigafactory
in Texas, and then the sales directors reported to him.
But like, I feel like this must be about something
larger than just the bad quarter. I mean, something else
must have happened. That is my instinct.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Now, when you say the bad quarter in sales, you
mean the first quarter. You mean the quarter that's about
to end or that did just end yesterday, and that
we're going to get I believe figures on tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, I mean, I'm speaking about the second quarter. So
all indications are that Tesla's going to see another pretty
drastic year over year decline. You know, in the second
quarter of twenty twenty four, Tesla delivered four hundred and
forty four thousand vehicles. You know, this quarter, You've got
some analysts like Ryan Brinkman as low as three sixty k.
(20:25):
You know, Musk has always said that people don't like
to buy cars in the winter, but I mean it's
quite possible that they also don't like to buy cars
in the spring, in the summer. So you know, we
won't know until we get the figures tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Right now when it comes to Tesla, as it seems
like they don't like to buy them indeed in the winter,
the spring, the summer, in the fall unfortunately.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
So the other thing that's happening is that now you know,
Elon always focuses his on tension on the are the
parts of the company where there are issues. So as
we just reported today, now the head of North American sales,
Troy Jones, who used to work to OMEED, is now
reporting directly to Elon. So Elon is taking a more
active role in overseeing the sales operation in both the
(21:07):
US and Europe.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I did read that this morning, and as you said,
indeed another great scoop from you and the crew. It
made me laugh just a little, because, of course, it
feels like overwhelmingly much of the sales issues that Tesla
has are have been created by Mosk. So and now
he has tasked himself with fixing the problems that he himself,
(21:32):
through his political endeavors, has created. And as you often
point out, Dan, he pulls things off like this all
the time. He's got a pretty big task ahead of
me here, though.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Yeah, I mean I think you know, look, it's not
just Elon's politics, it's the vehicle lineup. I mean, you
had people inside the company pushing Musk to make a
more affordable, truly mass market twenty five thousand dollars car,
and Elon didn't go for that, and he instead we
have the cyber truck, which has like a weird cult
(22:04):
following in some quarters, but by all accounts is like
a bit of a dud in terms of being a
high volume mover. I mean, it has been subject to
scores of recalls.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
So right, so there have been scores of cyber truck recalls,
and you says right, it has this a little bit
of a cult falling, but it's broadly speaking been a dot.
And we have the cyber truck and we don't have
that cheap, mass model.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Veh and now we have enormous policy uncertainty with the
federal government and all of the incentives that Tesla has
greatly benefited from through you know, tax credits for electric
vehicle purchases and the Inflation Reduction Actor are you know,
potentially on the shopping block here, depending on what happens
with the Senate bill today. So you know, Tesla is
(22:45):
in a bad spot, and you know, I don't see
how they're going to turn around sales. I mean, and
that's why you're seeing Musk. You know, the focus for
him is all about the Robotaxi because that's going to
be their next big thing. And Elon is always about
the next big thing.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now I have seen Dan some of these new model
Whys trickling out. I've seen them out in the wild.
Not a cause for optimism of any kind. The Why refresh, I.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
Mean, I think it's a great refresh, but it's a refresh,
it's not a new model. And then when you get
back to the issue of Musk's politics, you know here
in the Bay Area at all, over California and probably
much of the world right now, you know, you see
these Tesla cars that have the sticker that say I
bought this before Elon went crazy. If you bought a
refreshed model, why that means that you actually made the
(23:33):
decision to buy the vehicle, even knowing what Musk has
done politically. So it just has not been this huge
boost to sales that people were hoping for.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Okay, on sales, one last question there we of course,
through the winter in the early spring, we just saw
some absolutely brutal numbers, especially out of Europe, like in
some countries year over year down sixty down seventy percent,
just mind boggling number. As bad as this second quarter
is now apparently shaping up. Any signs though, that there's
(24:07):
at least a bottoming out of that collapse in sales.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
I don't know, frankly how bad it can get. I mean, like,
what is Tesla doing to woo back the customers that
it lost in you know, blue states like California. I
don't know if they're doing anything. I mean, I have
not seen a big robust effort to kind of turn
that around. And you know, Musk on the last earnings
call was sort of like, oh, you know, they're seeing
(24:31):
like a bump in sales and Red States. That's like
a trend line that I'm curious to see how much
it pans out. But there's widespread economic uncertainty right now
in the United States. Interest rates are still very high.
There's a lot of questions about everything, and so cars
are a really big purchase. I mean, I think you're
seeing sort of softening in the auto market in general.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Well, I think if there was any bump in Tesla
sales in Red States that is probably disappearing pretty quickly.
You keep fighting and with with Trump, and you're gonna
you're gonna put a bullet into into any kind of
momentum you may have had there. Dan As, We'll let
you go. I'll just say it's funny because of course
Musk does love to point investors at how they should
(25:15):
forget about the cars and forget about you know, the
Y and the X and the three and all that.
It's all we're an AI company, and we're optimists, and
we're the robotax and all that and all that's fantastic,
but man, in the meantime, before you get to that vision,
you have to move some metal here, right, yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Because I mean that's their revenue is still largely selling cars.
But you know, in the future, I mean, as Musk
has said many times, like owning a car is going
to be like riding a horse, David, I mean the
future that like Elon sees this pivot to you know,
driving as a service and a luxury. And like I
have to remember, like Tesla you said, talk about how
(25:53):
they were gonna build twenty million cars a year by
twenty thirty. They've completely backed off from that claim, Like
they are not in the business of really building that
many cars anymore. And so I think you're just going
to see a lot of Domino's search of all, there's
going to be an overcapacity problem, and you know, they
might only sell like a million and a half units
this year. That's like a far cry from the twenty
(26:14):
million that they once talked about.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
All right, Dan, we will see how those numbers come
out tomorrow and we will see you next week. Sounds good, Okay.
I'm now joined by our kawdido in Latin America Executive
editor for the region, Creighton Harrison Creighton, Hello, Hello, Hi,
(26:37):
good Vida, and it's terrific having you now create. The
last segment of the show is often a feud.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
We do feud.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Watch Max, who's not here this week, Max chaff and
he loves to bring all these feud ideas, and this
one seems to be low key, low simmering, certainly not
at the level of Trump v. Musk, but interesting nonetheless.
Started last week down there in Mexico City. Tell us
about it.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, sure, So there was a rocket that blew up.
I think you guys have talked about that. I think
it was Starship thirty six. Is that the right number.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
There's been a lot of it seems like I think
the fourth explosion in short order, I believe.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
And when this one happened, there was some debris that
was discovered shortly after in the state of Tunnel Epas
right across the border from Starbase, like literally, you know what,
I think, like a ten minute drive from starbas to
get across the border in New Mexico. And there were
some environmentalists who started raising again the question of what
(27:37):
to do with the debris that was falling from these
rocket launches, because they have discovered what trash that they
have attributed to the rocket launches in the past, including
in the path of the sea turtles that they release.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum brings this up last week
in one of her weekly daily news conferences and says
what exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
So she didn't bring it up, but she was prepared
for an answer. A reporter asked about the space debris
from SpaceX, and what President Shambam said was, we are
looking into these launches, and we're looking into what laws
may have been violated, right, and then we will take
action to sort of the word she used would sort
(28:20):
of imply legal action as we see fit at the
conclusion of our investigation.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
To which SpaceX says.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
What so.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
SpaceX says a day later on Twitter on their official account, says,
we are, of course interested in talking to the Mexican
government about any debris that may have fallen in their territory.
We are trying to cooperate with them. It would be
really helpful if they could give us that debris back
because that's our property.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So your sense, though, is watch this space. More to
come from Cloudia Scheinbaum in the Mexican government in Shinbaum,
assuming this does continue to build into something, which of
course we don't know that to be the case, but
if it were to what kind of opponent does Elon
have here in the Mexican.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
President Well, President Shameebum has obviously had sort of gotten
a reputation in the early she's relatively knew in her
presidency she was just elected last year, but of course
early in the Trump presidency as well as a relatively
smart negotiator with Trump, she has you know, been able
to sort of keep him at bay at times when
(29:24):
he has started threatening various actions against Mexico.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
So Jesus, so Cretin. Maybe Musk needs to take some
advice from her and how to handle Trump.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, I mean there's something to that, but I bring
Trump up because at the end of the day, with
you know, according to some we have a great reporter
on this, Amy still Man, with some of the legal
experts that she's talked to this if there's legal action
that's going to be against the US, not against SpaceX right,
and that's because of the way that's because of the
way international space law works. There are three d's over
(29:55):
this sort of thing, and it's pretty unambiguous in international
space law that if your junk drops in someone else's country,
you are responsible for it and for any damage it causes.
The only question around this is whether it's going to
be legally treated as space debris because this rocket was
(30:16):
not going to space. It was actually inter orbit, right,
I mean, or inter official space. That is going to
be a legal question that I'm sure Claudia Shane Baum's
crack legal team is going over right now. But at
the end of the day, these tend to when we
talk about international space law, these tend to be country
(30:36):
to country and not country to company. Now, you know, again,
we can't rule out that they'll do something else that
I'm sure they have very creative way or to looking
at every lid of this. But Musk may end up
being in the middle of yet another point of contention
between the US and Mexico.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, that would be pretty pretty ironic if it ultimately
wound up being the three of them some way, somehow quarreling.
All right, mister Harrison, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Good to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by
Annamasi Rakas. Blake Maple's handles Engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks.
Our supervising producers Magnus henricson. The Elon Inc. Theme is
written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura. Brendan
Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is
the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always
(31:32):
to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos.
If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
it'll help other listeners find us. See you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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