WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0With Elon Musk facing escalating political blowback and financial troubles, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would buy a Tesla vehicle from his company, an unusual show of support from the president to his most powerful adviser. It was the latest example of how Trump has demonstrated loyalty to Musk, who spent heavily on his comeback campaign last year and has been a key figure in his second administration. The Republican president announced early Tuesday that he was going to buy a new Tesla as “a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.\u201d Musk’s electric vehicle company is being battered by sagging sales and plunging stock prices. He continues to run the automaker \u2014 as well as the social media platform X and the rocket manufacturer SpaceX \u2014 while also serving as Trump’s adviser on overhauling and downsizing the federal government. \u201cElon Musk is \u2018putting it on the line\u2019 in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!” Trump wrote on social media. “But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World\u2019s great automakers, and Elon\u2019s \u2018baby,\u2019 in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for.\u201d The White House did not immediately elaborate on Trump’s plans, such as how the purchase would be handled or where the car would be kept. Presidents almost never drive for security reasons. Joe Biden got behind the wheel of an electric truck while promoting domestic manufacturing, and Barack Obama took a spin with Jerry Seinfeld in the White House driveway for a comedy show. But regardless of the practicality of Trump’s purchase, his overnight announcement about buying a Tesla represented another step in how the president has blurred lines by bringing Musk into his administration. Musk is the world’s richest person, with billions of dollars in government contracts. He’s also exerting sweeping influence over Trump’s administration through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and traveling frequently with the president. During an interview with the Fox Business Network on Monday, host Larry Kudlow asked Musk \u201chow are you running your other businesses\u201d while also advising Trump. \u201cWith great difficulty,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there\u2019s no turning back, you say?\u201d Kudlow responded. \u201cI\u2019m just here trying to make government more efficient, eliminate waste and fraud,\u201d Musk said. Tesla has recently faced protests and vandalism. Police are investigating gunshots fired at a dealership in Oregon, and fire officials are examining a blaze that destroyed four Cybertrucks at a Tesla lot in Seattle. At times, the White House has needed to play cleanup for Musk, who had never worked in public service before and has admitted that he’ll make mistakes along the way. For example, Musk presented inflated estimates of fraud in government benefits such as Social Security on Monday, leading Democrats to argue that he was planning cuts to the popular programs. \u201cMost of the federal spending is entitlements,\u201d Musk said in the interview. \u201cThat\u2019s the big one to eliminate.\u201d The next morning, a White House account on X criticized news organizations as \u201clying hacks\u201d and told Democrats to \u201cspare us the fake outrage” about reducing benefits. \u201cHe was clearly talking about the WASTE in the programs,” the White House posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0With Elon Musk facing escalating political blowback and financial troubles, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would buy a Tesla vehicle from his company, an unusual show of support from the president to his most powerful adviser. It was the latest example of how Trump has demonstrated loyalty to Musk, who spent heavily on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":29763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}