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Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of X (formerly Twitter) says his opposition to President Biden in his re-election bid is mainly due to his bitterness over a White House snub in 2021.
During a 90-minute appearance at the New York Times DealBook Summit, Musk’s profane taunts of advertisers made headlines, but his views on Biden also were noteworthy given his vast resources and influence.
Musk said his issue with Biden can be traced back to the White House excluding Tesla from an event on electric vehicles it hosted a few months after Biden took office. The president also later added “insult to injury” by praising General Motors as the company leading the “electric car revolution,” the exec recalled.
“Without doing anything to provoke the Biden administration, they held an electrical vehicle summit at the White House and specifically refused to let Tesla attend,” Musk said. “This was in the first six months of the administration. We inquired. ‘We literally make more electric cars than everyone else combined. Why are we not allowed?’”
Musk added, “This was in the same quarter that Tesla made 300,000 electric cars and GM made 26. Does that seem fair to you?”
He also said that he hasn’t endorsed any candidate for president, even though he went to an event for Vivek Ramaswamy, who is seeking the GOP nomination. “I think I would not vote for Biden,” Musk said. “I am not saying I would vote for Trump but, I mean … this is definitely a difficult choice here.” He also dismissed Republican hopeful Nikki Haley as a “pro-censorship candidate,” citing her proposal that users of social media be required to be verified with their true identities.
Moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin observed that Musk has “moved decidedly to the right” politically over the past two to three years. “Have I?” the exec replied. Sorkin explained that he often espouses and promoted a number of anti-Biden, pro-Republican sentiments.
“I had a great relationship with Obama,” Musk volunteered, recalling having once waited in line for six hours to shake hands with the two-term Democratic president.
Sorkin told Musk he could “see it on your face” how much he was hurt by Biden’s moves. “And it hurt the company, too,” Musk said. “Tesla has 140,000 employees, more than half of them in the United States. Tesla has created more manufacturing jobs than anyone else combined.”
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