In a Truth Social post overnight, Donald Trump vowed to buy a new Tesla car as a gesture of support for Elon Musk amid Tesla’s plummeting stock price. He went on to allege, ludicrously, that boycotting Tesla is illegal.
Then, in true Trump fashion, the president held a White House event to mark the occasion, adorned with Teslas.
According to NBC News, the president saw it fit to “turn the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom” at an event that was naturally streamed on X. Musk appeared with Trump at the event, which appeared to obliterate any established standards or rules regarding government and conflicts of interest.
“Tesla delivered five of its vehicles to the White House and parked them on a driveway for Trump to personally inspect, hours after he said in a post on his app Truth Social that he planned to buy a Tesla to demonstrate his support for Musk,” NBC said.
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Trump also called the cars “beautiful,” and “As soon as I saw it, I said, ‘That is the coolest design.'”
NBC noted, “because of ethical restraints it is extremely rare for a senior government official, let alone a sitting president, to endorse a consumer product so explicitly.”
Trump also announced that he would pay by check for the car.
The development shows once again just how scrambled the politics of electric vehicles have gotten. For much of the history of the technology, the act of buying an electric vehicle was seen as a pursuit of liberal environmentalists, the sort of people often accused of smugness and “virtue signaling,” as seen in 2006’s South Park episode “Smug Alert,” which aimed at self-satisfied Prius owners. Democratic administrations have often pushed electric vehicle mandates and subsidies, with Republicans more skeptical of such efforts.
However, now that Elon Musk appears to have switched sides, we have Trump, who, for years, was critical of electric vehicles and policies meant to encourage them, now making a show of buying his own Tesla. Meanwhile, Tesla’s former target audience seems to have thoroughly turned against the company, to the point where its stock price has nosedived, and there have even been reports of vandalized Tesla cars and dealerships in various cities.
Then again, Trump has made this pivot about his feelings on electric cars, even though, as a president, he does not ever drive himself anywhere.
Photo courtesy of YouTube screenshot.
