Trump, who doesn’t drive, says he will buy a Tesla to support Elon Musk

President Trump announced that he will buy a new Tesla vehicle this morning to support Elon Musk amid Tesla’s stock crashing and protests against the company.

Amid Tesla boycotts and protests and the stock crashing 15% yesterday, the President took to Truth Social, his social media platform that competes with Elon Musk’s X, to show support for his biggest political donor: Musk.

In the post, Trump said that he plans to buy a Tesla today to show support for Musk:

To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is “putting it on the line” in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s “baby,” in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for. They tried to do it to me at the 2024 Presidential Ballot Box, but how did that work out? In any event, I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American. Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???

Musk had to screenshot this post from Truth Social to post it on his own social media platform to thank the President for his support.

Trump calls Tesla boycotts “illegal”, but political boycotts are protected under the First Amendment in the US.

It’s also worth noting that Trump buying a Tesla vehicle isn’t the most significant endorsement ever since he doesn’t even drive these days, and it’s not like he hadn’t already given his seal of approval to Musk.

The endorsement could help encourage a few sales for Tesla in the US, where the automaker has already pulled all the demand levers with discounted financing.

However, this is not Tesla’s biggest problem.

Most analysts actually expected a slight year-over-year improvement in Tesla’s US deliveries this quarter. The main bottleneck was Model Y production amid the design changeover rather than demand.

The real problems are in Europe, where Tesla’s sales are falling off a cliff and Trump’s endorsement won’t help.

China is Tesla’s most important market, and this quarter is also not looking good. With only a few weeks left in the quarter, it is currently tracking about 7,000 units behind Q1 2024.

Between data from Europe and China, Tesla is tracking about 25,000 units down year-over-year despite Q1 2024 already being a pretty bad quarter, with more than 100,000 vehicle deliveries below what Tesla delivered last quarter.

Electrek’s Take

I doubt that this will help Tesla at all, but I do like it. As we have often reported, Trump has been one of the biggest pushers of misinformation about electric vehicles in the US.

If this can result in his supporters, who have been consuming this misinformation, getting themselves interested in electric vehicles and correcting the course, I’m all for it.

But Tesla’s problems won’t be solved by a few MAGA hat owners buying a few Tesla vehicles.