Musk Calls Biden ‘A Damp Sock Puppet’ As Tesla Shares Tank

US billionaire Elon Musk slammed US President Joe Biden after he dropped Tesla's name in a post talking about the future of electric vehicles in America.

Tesla's CEO, Musk, was apparently angered after the US president dropped the electric vehicle maker's name in a Twitter post where he said, "Companies like GM and Ford are making more electric vehicles here than ever before. 

"Responding to Biden's Twitter post on future electric vehicles in the US, Musk wrote the name "Tesla" in all capital letters. In another tweet, he said, "Biden is a Damp Socks puppet in human form."


The awkward, but often amusing, beef between the Biden administration and Elon Musk's company Tesla took another turn on Thursday.

President Joe Biden praised General Motors (ticker: GM) as the electric-vehicle leader again in a video with GM CEO Mary Barra. Musk responded - on Twitter, of course.

elon musk vs bidden


The current issues between Tesla (TSLA) and the administration date back to August, when the president announced his goal of having 50% of new car sales in the US all-electric by 2030 at a White House event.The three largest employers of the United Auto Workers union—GM, Ford Motor (F), and Stelantis (STLA)—were in attendance. Tesla—the world's largest maker of all-electric vehicles and the most valuable auto maker globally—was not invited. Tesla, however, is not unionized, which White House press secretary Jen Psaki later suggested as the reason for the snub.

It seems to have gotten under Musk's skin. In September, he suggested in some tweets that Biden was out of touch with the current EV situation and was more interested in unions than vehicle electrification.

So Musk spelled the company’s name out in a subsequent tweet. “Starts with a T, Ends with an A, has ESL in the middle,” Musk explained.

elon musk vs bidden


Musk has a point. It is obviously strange that Tesla, a US company, has not been mentioned by the White House, which has not responded to multiple requests for comment about the issue. Ford and GM in 2021 Sold around 27,000 and 25,000 EVs in the U.S. Tesla sold around 361,000 and more than 936,000 worldwide last year. Tesla and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

For now the situation is of theater only. But the Biden agenda has the potential to influence Tesla stock. Biden's Build Back Better bill had additional buying incentives for EVs made from unionized labor. This could have put Tesla at a disadvantage compared to Ford and GM. Additional discounts can range from 5% to 10% of the EV. However, the bill did not pass when Sen. Joe Manchin said he would not vote for it.

Tesla stock is down for the second day after the company's fourth-quarter earnings report. Shares slipped 1.6% to about $816 in premarket trading, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are down 0.8% and 0.9%, respectively.

However, the Twitter kerfuffle isn't affecting Tesla stock this week. Investors' expectations are high right now in Tesla's earnings report. Tesla beat Wall Street's estimates by about 8%, but investors, apparently, wanted to hear more about the new vehicle model on the company's earnings conference call. Musk said no new models would be introduced in 2022 as the company's sole focus is to ramp up production at its manufacturing plants.

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