Summary

Elon Musk gave Donald Trump a scripted sales pitch during a White House event where Trump inspected Teslas.

Photographers captured Trump holding notes with phrases like “SAFEST car” and “affordable.” The stunt followed a 15% drop in Tesla’s stock, linked to backlash over Musk’s involvement in DOGE.

Trump defended Musk on Truth Social, blaming the decline on a “Radical Left” boycott.

Meanwhile, Musk’s other ventures, including X and SpaceX, are struggling with outages and test failures.

  • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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    1 hour ago

    Tesla stockholders should file a class action suit against Skum for tanking the stock price. Being openly sociopathic, and reveling in firing American citizens, and destroying the government from the inside has easily predictable negative consequences on the company image and sales, and as a “genius” CEO, he should have known that. He should have kept his loyalties to his own company, instead of partnering up with the loudest anti-EV voice on the planet, and helping destroy the market for EVs.

    Now those Tesla stockholders are down 40%, representing millions, perhaps billions, in lost value. That equates to true, actionable damages, which are directly attributable to his reckless and negligent behavior.

  • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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    5 hours ago

    All cars have Full Self Driving. Except “Full Self Driving” is just a brand name as Tesla explained it to the judge. They are in fact SAE Level 2, which is not wat a regular person would expect hearing that name. Musk has been shouting they will have level 3, 4 or even 5 this year for years now.

    Other brands have Level 3 cars for sale now. But all the dumb car “tech” sites still claim Tesla is the best. But in fact it’s only their marketing that’s best.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Wait that picture was real? I thought it was a joke.

    Elon’s handwriting is his only good quality.

    • Tencho@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I didn’t expect to compliment him, but damn space hitler really does have good hand writing.

      • NotLemming@lemm.ee
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        3 hours ago

        I was gonna say that my handwriting analysis says - moron. Are you American by any chance? English kids learn better handwriting by age 7.

  • redlemace@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Only in the USA … the president is doing product advertisement. In a democracy the president would be sent home and banned for life from any government function. How much more before the USA citizens notice something is very wrong with having him as POTUS

    • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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      1 hour ago

      The Premiere of our province did a quick plug for Tim Hortons breakfast sandwiches and we just elected him into his third straight majority government.

      And now he’s flying down to Washington to negotiate tariffs witx this guy. I’m sure it’ll go great for us.

    • Lemmist@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      Is there any country nowadays where people can send the idiot back home without a revolution?

      • superkret@feddit.org
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        8 minutes ago

        Chile got rid of their dictator without a revolution, in a typically Chilean way.

        Pinochet came to power in a military coup, which broke a decades-long tradition of stable democracy that was unique in South America at the time.
        It was a proper bloody South American coup, including a bombardment of the presidential palace, the death of the elected sitting president, and backing from the USA, of course.
        Pinochet then abolished the separation of powers, disappeared his political opponents and completely dismantled the democracy.
        He also enacted neoliberal hyper-capitalist reforms and privatized everything, which is why the USA backed him.
        He had a commission draft an entirely new constitution and pushed through a vote to get it approved.

        But as a fig leaf of international legitimacy, there was a clause in it saying his power was transitory and must be confirmed in a referendum after 8 years.

        After 8 years of brutal dictatorship, he lost the referendum and simply had to step down.

      • Soup@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        South Korea just did this. Lad tried to start a coup to hide from consequences and got eaten alive.

        • Lemmist@lemm.ee
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          5 hours ago

          I was talking about people. You’re talking about royalty being able to replace the king :)

          Or maybe we have some country where people can send an idiot parliamentarian home without a revolution?

          • alienzx@feddit.nl
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            1 hour ago

            Look up concepts like snap elections and direct democracy.

            Even California has recalled governors and had special elections.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      In a democracy the president would be sent home and banned for life from any government function.

      I had a problem when Biden was shilling for Ford too…

      https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-floors-electric-ford-truck-test-drive-pushes/story?id=77764009

      More so when we “loaned” Ford 9.2 billion to build battery factories in SK only for them to do massive layoffs of American workers later.

      It’s good people are upset at how intertwined capitalism and politics are, but shit isn’t going to get better when we only criticize it when we don’t like the letter by the politician’s name.

      When neoliberals are just less corrupt Republicans, it makes it to easy for people to say both are bad even though ones clearly worse.

      But I just cant take anyone seriously who says that stuff is unrelated to Ford’s support of Dems. They don’t give a fuck about policy or helping people. They’re scratching each other’s back just like trump and Elmo do.

      Just way less obvious and we excuse a lot of it because “at least they’re not Republicans”.

      • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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        7 hours ago

        Honestly? I think a lot of us has no idea Biden even did this (I sure didn’t and I’m terminally online/read way too much news). Clearly it wasn’t very good advertising lol

        But yes I agree, no one should do this

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          What?

          He did it on TV, there was a shit ton of articles about it…

          https://duckduckgo.com/?q=biden+f150

          It was a 100% a big deal, just because he decided to drive it against Secret Service’s wishes… You don’t have to be “terminally online” to have heard about this, at the time it was everywhere…

          Like, every late night show, every news/politics media, every bit of media touching the automotive or even investing world talked about it.

          If you can’t remember 4 years ago, just say you can’t remember it. Don’t pull a trump and claim no one ever knew about it because you just got reminded it happened.

          I’m so fucking tired of this shit being normalized.

          Just say you forgot, don’t try to rewrite history as a knee jerk reaction without thinking. It’s not a big deal, no one remembers everything.

          But don’t act like if you forget something, no one else every knew it

          • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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            7 hours ago

            I don’t have cable/watch talk shows. I don’t see LITERALLY everything. I legitimately did not see this and many others probably did not either. We all have blindspots, I’m sure you missed even bigger news events. Calm down.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              I legitimately did not see this and many others probably did not either

              What is difficult to understand here?

              You may have not seen it.

              But that doesn’t mean most people didn’t.

              That point is bigger than any one news story.

              But I don’t think anything I say will get you to understand that at this point.

              And it’s fucking depressing

              • kingofras@lemmy.world
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                7 hours ago

                Take a break dude. You’re getting downvoted because you’re attacking instead of conversing, and you’re point has a distant smell of whataboutism and bothsideism. One is authoritarian fascism, the other is democratic corporate sponsored genocide. Both terrible options, but one can be voted away and the other can’t.

                • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  Both terrible options, but one can be voted away and the other can’t.

                  How can you vote out “democratic corporate sponsored genocide” if that leaves you with “authoritarian fascism”?

                  How can you call one group “democratic” after a sham of a primary where NH has their delegates yanked because the state party wouldn’t violate NH state law at the behest of Biden and the DNC?

                  Especially when you factor in NH had went for the progressive in prior primaries?

                  The situation has been a lot worse than you’re presenting it.

                  and you’re point has a distant smell of whataboutism and bothsideism.

                  If that’s what was going on I’d say it’s fine trump is doing it because Biden did it.

                  What I’m saying is that it’s fucked trump is doing it, and it’s fucked Biden did it and people didn’t give a shit and it was routed as a positive by everyone at the time including Faux News.

                  I want both sides held to the same higher standard.

                  If someone has a problem with that, they’re the actual problem. Because enabling that behavior in primaries is how Dems lose in the general.

          • gibmiser@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            Guys, we all know the truth is that we get certain news promoted more in our feeds based on our activities or where we get our news.

            I totally believe this happened and I didn’t notice because my bubble was more worried about trump bullshit.

            We must be aware of the fact that polarized social media and algorithms can cause us to miss certain news.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              Guys, we all know the truth is that we get certain news promoted more in our feeds

              Are people legitimately only getting their news from social media?

              Like, you never just go to a news website?

              That wasn’t needed with this because it was everywhere and unavoidable at the time, but only getting your news from social media (even tho this was all over social media) is a much bigger issue…

              • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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                1 hour ago

                Yes. In an era of expert skepticism and distrust of institutions people turn to “relatable“ personalities for their information. That is a big part of how Trump became president. There are plenty of studies showingthat people get most of their information from social media, whether it’s accountable news outlets or just some jabroni with a TikTok following

              • gibmiser@lemmy.world
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                4 hours ago

                I probably only go to news websites directly when I am curious about specific coverage of a specific event. That only happens once a month or so.

                And before you are a dick about it, this is what works for me.

              • Tiger@sh.itjust.works
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                6 hours ago

                It wasn’t as big of deal because Biden isn’t super closely related to Ford in particular like Trump is with Musk and by extension Tesla.

                • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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                  6 hours ago

                  And it was related to a policy initiative, and he didn’t have price notes and feature lists.

                  “Business that benefits from policy initiative let’s president use their stuff for a photo op during pitch tour” has a very different connotation than “president tries to sell people the car of his backer from the Whitehouse lawn”.

                • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  And if we’d have made a big deal about the president doing advertisements for cars back then, Trump might not have done the more crass version.

                  It’s not just about that.

                  Biden did things he shouldn’t, to the point of even going around Congress to provide arms to a country that would reasonably be used in a genocide in direct violation of US and international law, but no Dems in office would hold him accountable because the letter by their name matches

                  Now trump is gonna do a whole lot worse, and Republicans won’t hold him accountable because the letter by their name matches…

                  Do you not see how this is unsustainable and indicative of a larger issue?

                  I fully understand everyone is disagreeing with me. I don’t care about down votes.

                  But does no one honestly understand that this is why 1/3 of the country didn’t vote and Trump is currently president?

                  We can’t fix shit if we don’t learn the lesson. And I’m tired of class punishment because some of the kids won’t learn the lesson.

  • xyzzy@lemm.ee
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    7 hours ago

    Jesus, Trump is really in deep with Musk.

    Also, the 15% stock drop is nothing compared to the decline in actual sales. The P/E ratio is still way too high, but the stock will drop eventually if this decline continues. Keep up the Tesla dealership protests too.

    • IHeartBadCode@fedia.io
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      7 hours ago

      You know, set aside the boycott for a second, everyone knew Tesla was way, way, way over valued.

      Like don’t get me wrong, dude is a slimy rat and he’s getting everything he deserves. But even way back in 2018/2019 I remember everyone saying Tesla was over priced by ten/fifteen fold.

      So even ignore the whole boycott and a massive correction was bound to happen. It is so stupid Musk getting on TV and turning on crocodile tears because everyone is being mean to him. Dude, your company has been over valued for, at least as long as I remember, over half a decade.

      This shit was bound to crash hard. That’s how it works. Fly high, fall fast. Such a fucking bitch boy he is. Take your fucking correction just like everyone else.

      • Tiger@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        Yeah, it was valued at more than multiple handfuls of other car companies combined - like all other US car companies combined, for example, ridiculous. Many investors have pointed out it’s an overvalued meme stock for years, that it’s just banking on Musk pulling more rabbits out of hats.

    • rhombus@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      It’s got me worried why. Yeah, Musk pretty much bankrolled his campaign, but is that really all takes to make a lapdog out of Trump? The man who has shown zero loyalty to anyone but himself? I guess he seems pretty loyal to Russia, but that’s a different story.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        52 minutes ago

        All it takes did include him becoming richer and a “celebrity” that likely can’t be prosecuted for any of his crimes for the rest of his life.

        Payback all his family loans to Russian Oligarchs , done. I mean not long ago he couldn’t find financers to pay his legal bills because all his properties had money owed on them. His own son had said they didn’t need U.S. banks because their funding came from Russia. Cutting off enforcement of sanctions on Russian Oligarchs likely got him some of what he needed to pay off those debts, while asking Congress to get rid of them will likely clear more.

  • ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 hours ago

    as angry customers revolt against the CEO’s involvement in a chaotic restructuring of the federal government.

    That and his Nazism.

  • vegeta@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Elmo thinks this will help sales? Maybe among MAGA, but overall, I think this would accelerate the decline. Maybe RFK jr lent him a brain worm.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      I find the idea of Elon trying to pitch his cars to Trump’s cult so fucking funny, because these are the exact same people who roll coal in their pickups and intentionally block electric chargers just to stick it to anyone who likes having a habitable planet. They’ve made hating electric cars part of their identity.

      Which means there’s two possible outcomes here, and both are amazing:

      1. This whole sales pitch falls dead flat against the wall of anti-environment propaganda these assholes have willingly swallowed whole. Elon continues to piss off the only people who were ever going to buy his products in order to pander to the only people who were never going to buy his products and Tesla collapses completely, taking most of Musk’s fortune with it.

      2. The MAGA cult download the software update en masse and suddenly decide they love electric cars now, resulting in a massive expansion in electric vehicle use, huge amounts of additional electric vehicle infrastructure, and a withering away of traditional gas vehicle infrastructure in a change that will ultimately become very hard to reverse even after Musk inevitably falls out of Trump’s favour.

      There’s also option 2b, which is that MAGA refuses to go electric, so Trump is forced to switch out every government car to a Tesla, which results in government departments installing huge amounts of supporting equipment to manage this new electric car fleet, to the point where switching back would become a ridiculous notion. The whole US government now uses electric cars.

      I want to see Elon face plant so bad, but even if he doesn’t, the mass electric car-ification of America is a pretty fucking cool alternative.

      • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        I’m also curious to see if Trump’s cult leader power can overcome decades of oil and gas brainwashing. Conservatives have proven they’ll quickly throw away their beliefs when Trump tells them to, but it’s not always reliable.

        For example, in 2020 conservatives were all for Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” to find a COVID vaccine. But as soon as Biden won and the vaccines rolled out in 2021, many conservatives took an antivax stance. Later, Trump got booed at one of his rallies for suggesting that people get vaccinated.

        So he can steer the cult agenda, but not always successfully. I guess we’ll see how this plays out.

        • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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          2 hours ago

          Yeah, my feeling is this one will fail. While they can paint the backlash against Tesla as the “radical left”, the adoption of electric cars more broadly is still very much seen as a lefty, pro-environment kind of thing. Since they’re still very much against all those things, I think it’ll be hard to square that with the idea that Teslas are suddenly great.

          Plus, even his base don’t really seem to love Elon all that much.

          • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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            2 hours ago

            Looks like TSLA is up 8% today. So seems to have solved Elon’s immediate problem of the stock tanking.

      • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Considering they adapt to tesla. A problem I see is them removing any need to have a common infrastructure to support all electrical vehicles. And just have charging stations and such that only work with tesla. So people are semi forced to buy it because government made infrastructure for it and other electric car companies can’t use that and can’t build all that for their cars. Don’t be that optimistic when they are literally there only for their benefits

        • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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          5 hours ago

          Sure, this defacto would make Tesla the standard electric car for the US. But I’ll note that the rest of the car world is already adopting the Tesla plug as their physical standard, so a future government (assuming you guys have any) could just pass a law that says Tesla cannot restrict the use of their charging stations, or add any extra fees for non-Tesla vehicles.

          And either way, the mass conversion of the US to electric vehicles is still a good consolation prize, even if it locks in a regional monopoly for Tesla. Sometimes you take the wins where you can get them.

      • Tiger@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        I imagine many MAGA diehards have been bled broke already buying all of Trump’s scam items from watches, sneakers, bibles, meme coins and whatnot.

    • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Maybe among MAGA, but overall, I think this would accelerate the decline.

      Let’s not forget that most of MAGA stand behind Trump because they can’t afford eggs and they think he’s going to fix it.
      Most of them can’t afford a brand new $50k Silverado, there’s no way they’ll pass a credit check for an $80k Cybertruck.

  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    If your sales decline is because of a boycott by the “radical left”, doesn’t that mean that your product mostly appeals to … The “radical left”?

  • notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    This is actually a good thing. Now tesla isn’t only attached to musk but to MAGA and trump too. It ensures that these vehicles will become the literal object of people’s anger. It’s sorta similar to people getting riled up over the price of eggs, but here, it’s seeing a tesla will remind people of their anger and with this new MAGA badge on this car, this anger won’t dissipate even after musk is thrown under the bus (because that’s the plan).

    Make Teslas Uninsurable