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• 00:00I think it’s always dicey with Elon Musk. I mean, to count him out of anything, including the Trump administration to the point of Carolyn Leavitt, this has been something we basically knew about as a special government employee. That’s Elon Musk’s status. He can only work for the White House for something like 130 days. So what’s that like about a little over four months? So we knew there would be some change in status at some point. That said, this Politico story and you know, it’s source two as as often is the case with reports coming out of the White House sourced, you know, anonymous Trump world sources, people are in the room, but not necessarily putting their names on it. You have to think that the results in Wisconsin, which, as you said, are are a terrible rebuke to Elon Musk. I mean, this he he he put in a ton of money, a ton of time. He told everyone that, you know, the future of humanity depended on this race and the fact that, you know, the Republicans did much worse than they did, you know, back in November, despite all that money or maybe even because of it, you know, does give you a sense that, okay, maybe Elon Musk is starting to create some kind of drag on on the White House and that there would be more sort of incentive for people around Trump who maybe for a long time have not been thrilled about Elon Musk proximity of the president to start speaking out. So I think I think this is real in the sense that there are forces at play, although I don’t expect Elon Musk’s influence to just disappear overnight either. Okay. So I want to talk about that influence in just a minute. But before that, I want to talk about the effect that this could have on his businesses. This is something that you report on and have been reporting on for years. You co-host the Elon podcast. If he does leave Doge, what does it mean for his businesses? So it’s so funny because remember, you rewind to November and the stock went up like crazy. You know, it basically doubled or more than that. I can’t remember the exact amount. I’m talking about Tesla specifically Tesla stock, sorry. And the explanation was that he had, you know, great proximity to the president and that investors were feeling like that was going to be worth a lot of money. We’re seeing, obviously, the exact opposite phenomenon here. I think, of course, part of the part of it is that the euphoria, the sort of post-election euphoria has worn off. But we’ve also seen that Tesla customers have not responded very well to Elon Musk’s antics in Washington. Right. These are this is a customer base that tends to lean left. And Elon Musk, of course, has not just embraced Donald Trump, has not just embraced the Republican Party, but has embraced some of the most provocative parts of the Trump agenda. You know, saying he’s going to destroy USAID or the CFP or lay off huge numbers of federal workers. So we’ve seen that play out in the sales and the stock is going up at the moment. My assumption is people reading this political report and thinking, okay, look, he’s going to have influence in Washington. It’s going to be hard to like totally untangle Elon Musk from Donald Trump. But if he’s not in the White House on a day to day basis, that’s got to help Tesla a little bit, both because Elon Musk is going to be less distracted and perhaps because he won’t suffer the brand penalty as much. So maybe it helps Tesla, but does it hurt Space X? So I my view on this and I don’t think we really know the answer, but my instinct is that having Elon Musk inside of the Trump administration running Doge effectively as he is today, in certain ways, that makes it harder for some of his companies to get the kinds of government handouts that Elon Musk is so good at getting right. Even outside of the the Trump the Trump presidency. This is a guy who is really, really good at getting government contractors contracts, finding ways to get the government to do his bidding. I think it gets harder. While you were when you were asking for money from the government and at the same time, for instance, talking about how, you know, how the the budget deficit is existential or we need to drastically reduce the budget of the Social Security Administration or a million other things. I think that that that was creating political problems. So I’m not sure this really changes the calculus for a company like SpaceX, which of course, still is going to want things from the Trump administration. And I wouldn’t expect Elon Musk to leave those or leave the White House on bad terms with Donald Trump. If anything, he’s probably going to declare victory and he will continue to be an important ally for Donald Trump. As we look ahead to the midterms. And my guess is, is that, you know, it’ll cut both ways. Musk will continue to be supportive of Trump, and Trump will continue to be a fan of Elon Musk. Right. You’ve talked about that, that actually President Trump likes kind of having Elon around the world’s richest guy, really successful, whether you like him or not. I mean, it’s hard to ignore the businesses that he has built. Going back to Tesla, though, Max can repair it. Can he bring it back? I mean, is there damage done? Consumers are often forgiving. Sometimes they’re not. I mean, how do you see it? Well, I mean, look, Elon Musk’s electric cars are, by most accounts, you know, really great products, right? A lot of customers like them. You know, there’s a reason you’re seeing people putting the bumper stickers on their cars saying, you know, I bought this before Elon was crazy. Went crazy, which is one of the slogans that you see from from Tesla customers who maybe feel ambivalent about Musk’s political turn. They’re not necessarily like trading those cars in because they still like the cars. So, of course, there’s potential for him to bring it back. That said, this is a company with problems, problems that go beyond branding. They have not released a new car in years, a truly new car in years. The Cybertruck, the most recent product that that we’ve seen, has basically been a flop. And that’s what we see in the in the in the data that’s coming out. In terms of the deliveries, something like 12,000 vehicles last quarter that were not model Y or model three the to the to big seller. So that’s not very many trucks that are being sold. And that was the that was the next product that was supposed to help this company get to the next level. Right now, Elon Musk is betting on Robotaxi because we’re seeing innovations in robo taxis from lots of other companies, particularly a bunch of Chinese companies. So this is a company that face faces tons of competition that has a stable product pipeline. And then you swirl the branding issue in there and that becomes that starts to become something close, I think, to a perfect storm. Now, again, there are ways to get to to dig out of this. I think Elon Musk is a very resourceful guy, and that’s part of the reason you’re seeing investors, for the most part, stick with this company and not panic.