“What’s good for Tesla is good for the country.” Actually, not necessarily so and an ostentatious display of a selection of five new electric vehicles parked in front of the South Portico of the White House improperly mixed the fortunes of Elon Musk and his auto manufacturer with the government. President Trump and his slash and burn sidekick Musk aren’t even trying to keep separate the interests of the world’s richest man and those of Uncle Sam.
Trump can say buy American-built cars, but he shouldn’t be shilling for a single car company, whose leader he handed authority over just about everything to the extent that his even slavishly loyal cabinet secretaries are complaining.
Musk rampaging through the federal workforce firing thousands without any sense has made him very disliked and vandals are taking out their anger on the wholly innocent owners of his vehicles and his Tesla showrooms. Damaging cars or dealership property is a crime and the perpetrators should be arrested, but this is not domestic terrorism as Trump claims.
If people want to boycott Musk products to register their displeasure with his political and governmental activities, that is a lawful response instead of smashing windows.
Tesla’s stock closed yesterday at $248 a share, almost off 50% from its peak in mid-December before the very unpopular DOGE cuts started, costing Musk billions. But the stock price is back to the very same price, $248, where it was when Musk first endorsed Trump on July 13, moments after Trump survived the assassination attempt at the Pennsylvania campaign rally.
Musk, who says he voted against Trump in 2016 and 2020, went all in when he switched sides, spending more than quarter of a billion dollars on behalf of Trump last year. And Trump has rewarded him with DOGE and now, with the Teslas lined up on the South Lawn driveway.
Imagine the outcry 100 years ago of a president handing the government over to Henry Ford, or more fittingly the CEO of the biggest of the car makers: General Motors.
That wasn’t exactly the case in 1953, when the newly elected Dwight Eisenhower nominated the CEO of GM, Engine Charlie Wilson, to be the secretary of defense. Wilson had been GM CEO for 11 years, during WWII, when GM factories poured out trucks and tanks. He was taking a big pay cut from $600,000 a year to just $22,500 a year. Adjusted for inflation those numbers would be $7.2 million and $269,900. While $7.2 million is a fraction of what today’s GM CEO makes, the current cabinet salary is $246,400.
Wilson was also keeping about 40,000 shares of GM, with a value back then of $2.5 million.
New Jersey Republican Sen. Robert Hendrickson asked Wilson: “If a situation did arise where you had to make a decision extremely adverse to the company in the interest of the United States government, could you make that decision?”
Wilson replied: “Yes sir, I could. I cannot conceive of one because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”
What would be Musk’s reply to Hendrickson’s inquiry, would he put the U.S. over Tesla? Wilson said yes, subordinating his old company and his personal wealth. We don’t think that Musk would take the same tack.