“Your stock is way down, you’ve been criticized left and right,” said Larry Kudlow of the Fox Business Network in a Monday interview with headline-magnet multi-billionaire Elon Musk.
“But look on the bright side,” laughed Musk. “Always look on the bright side!”
Axios noted that this is a reference to the closing song of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”. The outlet said that Musk’s losses Monday amount to $16 billion – more than most Americans make in a lifetime.
Musk, known as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the owner of X (his re-branding of Twitter) and founder of the Boring Company, has recently taken the helm of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). President Donald Trump created the new department shortly after taking office in January.
DOGE’s efforts have included controversial mass layoffs. Its website claims that the department has saved the country an estimated $105 billion. However, that claim has been disputed by multiple outlets, including NPR and ABC News. While Musk has been working on DOGE, electric car manufacturer Tesla’s shares plummeted this Monday, according to The New York Times.
Per the outlet, the shares hit “their lowest point since before Election Day, as investors registered the impact of falling sales and increasing protests over the high-profile political role,” Musk has taken on. At the close of trading Monday, Tesla shares were down more than 15% for the day and more than 50% compared to a mid-December peak.
“Tesla is becoming a political symbol of Trump and DOGE, and that is a bad thing for the brand,” said Wedbush Securities financial analyst Dan Ives, according to the Associated Press. “You think it’s helping, but it’s actually hurting.”
During the Monday interview, Kudlow asked Musk: “Why are you doing this?”
“I think we’re doing the right thing here,” Musk said eventually. He noted government waste and fraud identified by the Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office – though Audacy noted that he did also share “debunked theories” about the Social Security Administration. In 2022, the GAO identified ways to save a half a trillion dollars in government spending.
As for his Tesla stocks, Musk said in a Monday X post that: “It will be fine long-term.”
Trump said in a Truth Social post that Musk is doing a “FANTASTIC JOB!” and criticized “Radical Left Lunatics,” for 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.”
Audacy reported Tuesday that the stock market overall has been on a downward trend in recent weeks in part due to uncertainty over Trump’s policies, including a tariff war with our main trading partners.