Rick Wilson has now been suspended from from Twitter/X for one month and possibly longer, because Elon Musk is reacting to an article Wilson published this morning, entitled, “Kill Tesla, Save the Country.” You may recall Trump having a similar reaction to the Lincoln Project when they did a video called “Mourning In America,” and Trump forthwith dubbed them “The Losers Project.” Evidently the same chord was struck in Elon’s being today. Here is some of what Wilson wrote.
Tesla is no longer just a car company; it’s a bank for fascists, a goose-stepping hedge fund bankrolling the political fever dreams of Elon Musk and his DOGE dreams of controlling the ruins of the American government as he becomes Earth’s first trillionaire and then the Emperor of Mars.
Musk’s power and wealth are inseparable from Tesla’s absurdly inflated stock price. If the Tesla bubble pops, so does Elon’s ability to keep throwing money around like a drunken Russian oligarch in a Macao casino.
Need proof?
Look no further than how Musk leveraged his Tesla shares to snap up Twitter (bless its heart) and bankroll Republican electoral operations with zero regard for the carnage he’s leaving in his wake.
Silicon Valley once cast him as Tony Stark, the plucky genius saving humanity. Reality check: he’s more of a ketamine-juiced Gordon Gekko, hopped up on shitlord memes and waging a culture war from the comfort of his hollowed-out volcano lair.
That does rather take the bloom off of Elon’s rose. Musk is very upset these days by the demonstrations against him and by the vandalism of his cars. Plus the Tesla that blew up all by itself in front of the Trump Hotel in Vegas a few months ago didn’t exactly burnish Musk’s image nor Tesla’s image.
Wilson went on rather savagely but the fact is that Elon can only repress Wilson’s voice so much. There is Bluesky and Wilson wrote this piece on Substack and Musk has zero control over either of those platforms. Twitter/X is not the main game in town to the extent it used to be. Musk’s suspension of Wilson is feckless and impotent, like the man himself. (And Musk can ban this site on TwitX whenever he wants. We have a much bigger following on Bluesky.)
Here’s the political physics of it all: Pressure on Tesla is pressure on Musk. Break Tesla’s stock, and you start to break Elon’s ability to bankroll authoritarian fantasies…and if that kneecaps Trump in the process, well, boo-hoo.
Corporate pressure campaigns generally work when a company still cares about rational brand management, market cap, and sales. Tesla is about to learn to care.
I’ve forced major firms to tuck tail and change their ways with campaigns that directly hit their brands, including Toyota, AT&T, and others who shall remain unmentioned because of NDAs.
If you can capture the right cultural moment and reshape their precious image and brand, you can carve them up, or if they behave, let them keep their image intact.
And guess what? The cultural moment for Tesla has arrived. Why?
- Tesla’s Stock Is Perched on a Cliff
Tesla was once the darling of Wall Street, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the FAANG gods in their prime. The stock soared to record highs in December 2024, right after Elon helped Trump secure the White House.Now, it’s flirting with that big red “ABANDON HOPE ALL YE INVESTED HERE” sign.
Tesla’s stock is in the toilet. Musk has inadvisedly damaged his own brand with the Nazi symbolism, minimizing the Holocaust when speaking in Germany and dancing around visibly impaired, wielding a chainsaw at CPAC. Couple that with the people who got laid off in government and who are now battling to get rehired, and other people wondering if their Medicare or Social Security will get complicated or canceled outright, and you have a toxic public image.
Musk can ban or suspend whomever he wishes. Wilson is just the messenger. We’re all just the messengers. Musk is the one who has taken these actions and we only post articles recording them or speculating about what they mean.
If/when Tesla goes under, it will be because its owner decided to run it into the ground. No other reason. Suspend and ban away, Elon. Soon it will become a badge of honor.
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Zoomers, if you can hunt through the sofa cushions for spare change, we could use it. We are in month five of depressed traffic while a depressed nation tunes out. I have every belief that the disenchanted will tune back in and some point and return to the fight but until that happens, the bills keep coming and we need help. Thank you. Ursula
Because it’s seen, somehow, as a ‘tech’ stock, it has been ludicrously overvalued.
In a sane world would a carmaker with the increasingly dated, badly built small range of vehicles Tesla makes be worth as much?
In the days a short time ago when it’s ‘value’ peaked, it was theoretically worth as much as Toyota + Volkswagen + Stellantis, (Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, PeugeotCitroen, Fiat, Lancia, Alfa Romeo) + Ford + GM + NissanRenaultMitsubishi + Mercedes Benz + BMW + Honda + HyundaiKia, or pretty much the entire rest of the ‘western’ world automotive manufacturers put together. Obviously that’s stupid.
It doesn’t seem to do anything else other than make cars, (badly), trade carbon credits and a bit of crypto on the side.
On that basis there is still quite a long way for the share value to drop to give a price/earnings ratio that matches, say, Toyota.
Toyota has a value of $820 billion and sales of $410 billion/annum on sales of 10 million per year, it’s shares currently trade at about $20.00.
That’s what the world’s largest and most profitable, (it has never made a loss) vehicle manufacturing company is worth.
Why would Tesla, making far fewer vehicles be worth more?
In a sane world it wouldn’t.
The current value of Tesla shares should really be $20.00ish or less, rather than it’s current $230.00-$240.00, so it’s still at least ten times overvalued.
Plenty more room for the value to fall further, and make Mr Musk a mere billionaire rather than the trillionaire he aspires to be.
Of course if that happens then his other companies whose values are backed up by the ‘percieved’ value of Tesla stock will be worth less too.
Maybe his whole house of cards would collapse?
And Tesla’s quality problems, here’s that well known far left untrustworthy media company, Reuters report…
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/
Having cars explode or suddenly having the self-driving component suddenly taking control of the cat and causing accidents, doesn’t help.
I.’ll.stick with my Camry.
oh, and the flying pieces of steel that come off at highway speeds, risking other driver’s lives.
Gotta love the Muskrat’s odd take on what it means to be a “free speech absolutist.”
Then again, no one (with a functioning brain cell, at least) believed that stance for a second.
He’s not suspended, idiot.
That’s right. He’s banned, “idiot.”
Did you watch the embedded video, “idiot?” Wilson’s PERSONAL account has been “suspended” but the video is from the Lincoln Project (Wilson is one of the contributors to the Lincoln Project). A person can be banned (via a personal account) without it affecting another account (especially one that is not *just* that person).
It’s such a shame that rich people are so dependent on their money. It’s the only thing that gives them the illusion of power. Yes it’s unfortunate that other people give them that power because they’re rich, but once that money goes away, so does the power and the people.
I would love to see how many people adore musk when he’s at the pawn shop bargaining to sell something so he can eat.
I know it’s just a dream, but I relish the thought
Yeesh, we all know you hate Elon but that Tesla didn’t “blow up by itself”, there was a homemade bomb inside that went off and the whole incident has mostly been memoryholed now.
You don’t have to spread stupid lies just because you’re a hater.
And you support Trump? Talk about 50,000 ‘stupid lies’!!!! You pissants are clueless.
“Its okay to make up blatant lies because somebody somewhere else in the world lied too!”
What are you, six? Thats literally a toddlers argument.