Tesla can’t just hit ‘undo’ on Elon’s D.C. adventure
Elon Musk has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering. In the past decade, his sky-high predictions around everything from full self-driving Teslas to high-speed tunnels and manned missions to Mars have reliably failed to defy gravity. So it should come as no surprise that Musk’s just-announced departure from the Trump administration finds his DOGE project having saved a mere $175 billion of the $2 trillion in government spending he set his sights on. Musk’s exit from DOGE seems like it’s meant to signal another big promise, one loaded with similarly inflated expectations: a hard reset for Tesla. The company’s shares rose 1.3% on the Musk news Thursday morning, but they’re still down 25% from a December high. And those hoping public opinion on Tesla will swiftly revert all the way back to pre-2025 levels are bound to be just as disappointed as anyone who thinks an Optimus robot from Tesla will be mowing their lawn and babysitting their kids anytime soon. From trillion-dollar promises to a $175 billion retreat Whether he is actually leaving his position remains in dispute, but Musk’s tenure in Washington, D.C., was turbulent by any measure. The, uh, Roman salute he made during Trump’s inauguration was like a starter pistol kicking off a campaign of controversy and chaos. In short order, his DOGE team laid off thousands of government workers, sometimes indiscriminately; shuttered whole agencies; and decimated the amount of crucial medical aid the U.S. provides around the world. As he tormented remaining government workers and jeopardized all Americans’ personal data, Musk seemed to further enrich himself and thwart his competitors through government channels. Meanwhile, his outsize political influence, odd personal conduct, and tendency to make himself the main character of everything had the effect of taking a chainsaw to Tesla’s sales figures. Within a month of inauguration, the grassroots “Tesla Takedown” movement channeled public hostility toward Musk into his electric vehicle brand, and kept his rising global unpopularity in the headlines. When an April earnings call revealed Tesla’s profits had dropped a whopping 71% in the first quarter of 2025, it was obvious that something had to give. Now, it finally has. Clashing with Trump over Medicaid Though Musk had multiple public clashes with other high-ranking officials during his time as a special government employee, what appears to have expedited his exit is a conflict with Trump’s agenda. Musk had always claimed he didn’t plan to stay in the role all four years, but his exit announcement abruptly followed an interview he gave CBS earlier this week, during which he threw cold water on Trump’s big tax bill. Republicans recently pushed the legislation through the House, despite its controversial proposed cuts to Medicaid, only for Musk to denounce it as a “massive spending bill” during that CBS interview. Less than a day later, amid a string of subtweets from top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, Musk’s White House “off-boarding” began. If the former first buddy thinks the global car-buying community will simply forget the past four months ever happened, he’s in for a rude awakening. At some point after the White House’s bizarre Toyotathon for Tesla event and that disastrous earnings call in April, Musk seemed to stop spreading the conspiracy theory that paid protesters were fueling the Tesla Takedown. It’s an indication Musk either recognizes that the backlash is legitimate, or, more likely, that his defensive denials of its authenticity were doing him no favors. In any case, Tesla Takedown events are still on the books, including a #MuskMustFall Global Day of Celebration scheduled for his June 28 birthday. Reading between the lines, it seems like some of Tesla Takedown’s proponents have moved on from the goal of pushing Musk out of politics to punishing him for what he did while in politics. (“Elon Musk is done at DOGE, but we’re just getting started,” reads a headline on the dedicated website for that protest.) Even if all the protesters around the world were to stop putting up anti-Musk stickers tomorrow, Tesla still has other challenges ahead. “Musk’s departure from DOGE will improve market sentiment, but I see no real change for Tesla,” Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein told Reuters on Thursday. “Tesla’s deliveries decline shows its current product lineup is at market saturation and facing strong competition in all three key markets of the U.S., China, and Europe.” Market confidence may rise, but Tesla’s problems persist Tesla is going to have a harder time innovating its way out of these challenges as long as it’s yoked to Musk, who is inextricably associated with the company’s recent flop, the Cybertruck. The kind of reputational damage Musk has sustained in 2025 is not the kind that is easily laundered or naturally fades. By applying his trollish social media persona to a governm
Elon Musk has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering. In the past decade, his sky-high predictions around everything from full self-driving Teslas to high-speed tunnels and manned missions to Mars have reliably failed to defy gravity. So it should come as no surprise that Musk’s just-announced departure from the Trump administration finds his DOGE project having saved a mere $175 billion of the $2 trillion in government spending he set his sights on.
Musk’s exit from DOGE seems like it’s meant to signal another big promise, one loaded with similarly inflated expectations: a hard reset for Tesla.
The company’s shares rose 1.3% on the Musk news Thursday morning, but they’re still down 25% from a December high. And those hoping public opinion on Tesla will swiftly revert all the way back to pre-2025 levels are bound to be just as disappointed as anyone who thinks an Optimus robot from Tesla will be mowing their lawn and babysitting their kids anytime soon.
From trillion-dollar promises to a $175 billion retreat
Whether he is actually leaving his position remains in dispute, but Musk’s tenure in Washington, D.C., was turbulent by any measure. The, uh, Roman salute he made during Trump’s inauguration was like a starter pistol kicking off a campaign of controversy and chaos.
In short order, his DOGE team laid off thousands of government workers, sometimes indiscriminately; shuttered whole agencies; and decimated the amount of crucial medical aid the U.S. provides around the world. As he tormented remaining government workers and jeopardized all Americans’ personal data, Musk seemed to further enrich himself and thwart his competitors through government channels.
Meanwhile, his outsize political influence, odd personal conduct, and tendency to make himself the main character of everything had the effect of taking a chainsaw to Tesla’s sales figures. Within a month of inauguration, the grassroots “Tesla Takedown” movement channeled public hostility toward Musk into his electric vehicle brand, and kept his rising global unpopularity in the headlines. When an April earnings call revealed Tesla’s profits had dropped a whopping 71% in the first quarter of 2025, it was obvious that something had to give. Now, it finally has.
Clashing with Trump over Medicaid
Though Musk had multiple public clashes with other high-ranking officials during his time as a special government employee, what appears to have expedited his exit is a conflict with Trump’s agenda. Musk had always claimed he didn’t plan to stay in the role all four years, but his exit announcement abruptly followed an interview he gave CBS earlier this week, during which he threw cold water on Trump’s big tax bill.
Republicans recently pushed the legislation through the House, despite its controversial proposed cuts to Medicaid, only for Musk to denounce it as a “massive spending bill” during that CBS interview. Less than a day later, amid a string of subtweets from top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, Musk’s White House “off-boarding” began.
If the former first buddy thinks the global car-buying community will simply forget the past four months ever happened, he’s in for a rude awakening.
At some point after the White House’s bizarre Toyotathon for Tesla event and that disastrous earnings call in April, Musk seemed to stop spreading the conspiracy theory that paid protesters were fueling the Tesla Takedown. It’s an indication Musk either recognizes that the backlash is legitimate, or, more likely, that his defensive denials of its authenticity were doing him no favors.
In any case, Tesla Takedown events are still on the books, including a #MuskMustFall Global Day of Celebration scheduled for his June 28 birthday. Reading between the lines, it seems like some of Tesla Takedown’s proponents have moved on from the goal of pushing Musk out of politics to punishing him for what he did while in politics. (“Elon Musk is done at DOGE, but we’re just getting started,” reads a headline on the dedicated website for that protest.)
Even if all the protesters around the world were to stop putting up anti-Musk stickers tomorrow, Tesla still has other challenges ahead.
“Musk’s departure from DOGE will improve market sentiment, but I see no real change for Tesla,” Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein told Reuters on Thursday. “Tesla’s deliveries decline shows its current product lineup is at market saturation and facing strong competition in all three key markets of the U.S., China, and Europe.”
Market confidence may rise, but Tesla’s problems persist
Tesla is going to have a harder time innovating its way out of these challenges as long as it’s yoked to Musk, who is inextricably associated with the company’s recent flop, the Cybertruck. The kind of reputational damage Musk has sustained in 2025 is not the kind that is easily laundered or naturally fades.
By applying his trollish social media persona to a government role that had a devastating impact on countless lives, he has lost something he can never recover: the ability to be received as a neutral tech CEO. No matter how much he curbs his aggressive political posting online, he will never be able to unring the DOGE bell for the rest of his career.
Musk may hope to revitalize his reputation in much the same way Trump has done since January 6, 2021, but he is ill-equipped for the task. Trump’s supporters are singularly willing to forgive and forget. Some of them may occasionally get upset by, say, his meme coin, or his pardoning of violent January 6 offenders, but they always tend to boomerang back in droves.
It makes sense that someone who has spent as much time working to elect Trump as Musk, and then working with him, would assume some of that invulnerability and public amnesia would rub off on him. But Trump’s reputational resilience is neither contagious nor duplicable.
Without it, Musk is about to find out the hard way how little overlap there is between the MAGA superfans he cavorts with on X and the worldwide electric car-buying community.
