President Donald Trump is suddenly a huge fan of electric vehicles — primarily Teslas.
Trump posed for photos Tuesday alongside his “special government employee” Elon Musk and not only paraded the Tesla CEO’s electric vehicles around the White House grounds but called the cars “a great product” — and bought one before the event was over.
Social media users quickly pointed out that Trump sang a different tune before Musk spent a quarter-billion dollars to help him get reelected.
One clip, in particular, is going viral on Musk’s own social media platform, X, formerly Twitter.
“They have so many electric vehicles, nobody wants to buy them,” Trump told Sean Hannity in a 2023 Fox News town hall interview. “They’re expensive, although you probably get them for cheap now. Nobody wants to buy them!”
Trump was specifically slamming the Inflation Reduction Act, which former President Joe Biden signed in 2022 to incentivize automakers to retool their factories to produce more electric vehicles, among other things.
On his Truth Social platform in 2023, Trump decried America’s “Electric Car Lunacy.”
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Yet on Tuesday at the White House, Trump climbed into a Tesla to show his support for Musk’s company — and showed off a handwritten note containing the names and prices of various Tesla models.
Some social media users were irate at the spectacle of a U.S. president hawking luxury cars for the world’s richest man. Tennessee election commissioner Chris D. Jackson wrote on X: “Democrats should investigate. No doubt Musk wrote this, which is all a clear ethical violation.”
One user wrote: “Trump just stood on national television, at the goddamn White House, holding a handwritten fucking Tesla pricing sheet like a desperate car salesman who just got told he needs to sell three more Cybertrucks or he’s losing his job at the dealership.”
Tesla stocks have tumbled by 40% since December, with cars and charging stations being vandalized, damaged or destroyed in apparent protest against Musk — who is dismantling federal agencies under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump not only claimed Tuesday that the wealthiest man on Earth is being “treated very unfairly,” but floated the idea of charging those who vandalize Tesla property or assault company employees as domestic terrorists — an idea Musk later endorsed on X.
Trump’s seeming change of heart and brazen photo-op inspired strong condemnation across X.
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