It seems Elon Musk tanking Tesla's brand value may lead to some very bad consequences for him and for the car company he pretends to run:
Donald Trump transformed the White House into a car dealership to save Elon Musk’s floundering Tesla stock—to keep him from defaulting on his massive loans.
Trump took a shot at being a shady car salesman Tuesday during a press event for Tesla at the White House. The president posed for photos behind the wheel of a Tesla he apparently can’t drive with a grinning Musk, remarked with astonishment that “everything’s computer” in the futuristic vehicles, and even read from what appeared to be a sales pitch sheet listing prices for different Tesla models.
Trump’s rather unpresidential measures to boost Tesla’s floundering stock could serve a greater purpose: keeping the not-so liquid Musk from defaulting on his loans.
In a 2024 SEC filing, Musk was listed as holding a whopping 238,441,261 shares of Tesla stock that were “pledged as collateral to secure certain personal indebtedness.” At the time, he held 715,022,706 shares in total, according to the filing, meaning that roughly one third of Musk’s shares were serving as collateral for his loans.
The Daily Show had a ball with this.
In all seriousness, though, it highlights Musk's crashing lack of qualifications for the job—any job, really. Two SpaceX rockets blew up in quick succession this year, Xitter is destroyed, and who even thinks about the Boring Company anymore?
Musk is the greatest living advertisement for a real inheritance tax we have had since the House of Bourbon.