DeSantis DOGE fundraising pitch trips into the middle of Trump-Musk blowup
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' latest DOGE-centered fundraising pitch landed right in the middle of the fierce meltdown of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's relationship.
The president and Musk have traded sharp barbs over the last day, accelerating their breakup over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act via social media. Amid it all, a DeSantis political committee blasted out a text and email urging supporters to 'help elect real conservatives who will finish the job' of the Department of Government Efficiency efforts, and highlighting how Musk 'stood tall and took the hits.'
The fundraising message raised eyebrows among the MAGA faithful and other Republicans who saw him as taking sides, though DeSantis didn't mention Trump in the donation appeal and had been pressuring Congress to enact the DOGE cuts last week.
By Thursday afternoon, DeSantis' fundraising pitch got amplified over X by conservative activist Laura Loomer, who saw the email as an attack against Trump. She further questioned whether Musk would help to fund a gubernatorial run for Florida first lady Casey DeSantis, who's been considering a bid to replace her term-limited husband in 2026.
'Hard to imagine two people with more checkered national reputations among MAGA base than Musk and DeSantis,' said one longtime GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly, upon seeing the fundraising text. 'Both Musk and DeSantis have put themselves on opposite sides of Trump. And both have failed in their last two campaigns: Musk in Wisconsin and DeSantis in last year's GOP primary. If they are trying to form a more traditionally conservative populist coalition, good luck with that.'
But Taryn Fenske, a spokesperson for the governor's political operation, said the fundraising language was approved May 29 — the day before Trump prepared to extol Musk during a friendly send-off at the White House.
A fundraising text and email received by POLITICO went out Wednesday morning, and around the time the email was amplified Thursday, the feud had devolved into Trump threatening to remove government subsidies from Musk's companies and accusations from the world's richest man that Trump was included in the files of Jeffrey Epstein, a reference to the records of the investigation into the late convicted sex offender. (Fenske provided POLITICO with a screenshot proving the political committee's messages had gone out Wednesday, not Thursday when the fight grew especially heated.)
The blasts marked the clearest sign yet that term-limited DeSantis has been planning to get involved in the 2026 primary and general elections. The political committee DeSantis is using, called Restore Our Nation, was retooled after his unsuccessful presidential campaign. DeSantis has in the past proven himself to be a prodigious fundraiser, though his political future is murky with Republican strife in Florida and a bench of plenty of Trump-adjacent candidates in 2028.
The governor has worked to repair his relationship with Trump after challenging him for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Florida has enacted White House priorities on the state level, from strict immigration policy to purging fluoride from Florida's drinking water.
His relationship with Congress is a different story, however. While he hasn't talked about his position on the GOP megabill that Musk wants to throttle, the governor has complained about Congress' spending for years, even as a former member of the House himself.
'We have a Republican Congress,' DeSantis complained last week in Apopka, Florida, 'and to this day, we're in the end of May — past Memorial Day — and not one cent in DOGE cuts have been implemented by the Congress.'
DeSantis also has long made it clear how influential he believes Musk to be, even launching his 2024 presidential campaign over X Spaces and foregoing the typical in-person rally.
While some members of Congress have faced constituent backlash at town halls over their support for Musk, DeSantis has leaned in and publicized the fact that Florida worked with DOGE to return hundreds of millions of federal dollars in February, though it was mostly for two federal programs the state hadn't requested to be a part of. One of his favorite talking points when traveling the state is that Florida was 'DOGE before DOGE was cool.'
It's not clear that DeSantis will be able to toe the line of both the Musk and Trump relationships, given that the CEO of Tesla is now on the outs with the White House. A text shared with POLITICO between two Republican donors raised concerns that the decision to fundraise off DOGE would "piss off Trump."
DeSantis has bucked Trump's endorsements and positions in the past. The governor hasn't endorsed Trump's choice of GOP Rep. Byron Donalds to be his successor — and instead has criticized his conservative bona fides. DeSantis also selected his own ally, former state Attorney General Ashley Moody, for the U.S. Senate seat vacated after Trump brought in Marco Rubio to lead the State Department.
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Ire from the Trump administration could influence everything from future regulation, investigations and government support for Tesla, to decisions on tariff exemptions the company has been seeking in order to purchase Chinese-made manufacturing equipment. Tesla shares were badly underperforming the broader market before the Musk-Trump breakup. Revenue slid 9% in the first quarter from a year earlier, with auto revenue plummeting 20%, due to the combination of increased competition from lower-cost EV makers in China and a consumer backlash to Trump's political activities and rhetoric. It's certainly not what Tesla shareholders were expecting, when they sent the stock up about 30% in the days following Trump's election victory in November. After spending close to $300 million to return Trump to the White House, Musk was poised to have a major role in the administration and be in position to push through regulatory changes in ways that benefited his companies. Instead, his company has suffered, and Musk's behavior is largely to blame. One of his most divisive actions in leading the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was the dismantling of USAID, which previously delivered billions of dollars of food and medicine to more than 100 countries. Beyond the U.S., Musk has endorsed Germany's far-right extremist party AfD, and gave a gesture that many viewed as a Nazi salute at an inauguration rally. In response, in recent months, there were numerous cases of vandalism or arson of Tesla facilities or vehicles in the U.S., as well as waves of peaceful protests at Tesla stores and service centers in North America and Europe. Advertisements in protest of Musk have appeared in New York's Times Square, and at bus shelters in London, urging people to boycott Tesla, some labeling the company's EVs as "swasticars." 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New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said on Thursday in s statement to CNBC that the "schoolyard fight" between Trump and Musk highlights how "Tesla's weak accountability measures and poor governance threaten not only the company's financial stability and shareholder value, but also the future of homegrown EV production." Brooke Lierman, comptroller of Maryland, told CNBC in an email that the company's board "is not doing its job to ensure that there is a CEO at Tesla who is putting the company's interests first." Since Musk's name is synonymous with Tesla, the board needs to ensure that Tesla can stand on its own regardless of who's leading the company, she added. "Musk's behavior continues to threaten the future of Tesla," Lierman said. "As long as Tesla is identified with Elon Musk and he continues to be a polarizing figure, he will continue to damage the brand which is a huge part of Tesla's value." Musk didn't respond to a request for comment. CNBC also reached out for comment to board chair Robyn Denholm and directors and executives who work in government relations and in the office of the CEO. None of them responded as of the time of publication. Tesla investors focused on business fundamentals are justified in their skepticism. The company has failed to roll out innovative and affordable new model EVs, while Chinese competitors like BYD have flooded the market, particularly in Europe. Analysts at Goldman Sachs on Thursday lowered their price target on Tesla mostly due to the outlook for 2025. Deliveries this quarter are tracking lower for the U.S., the analysts noted, while European sales saw a 50% year-over-year decline in April and another double-digit drop in May. China sales from those two months were down about 20% from a year earlier. Quality is also a problem. Tesla has announced eight voluntary recalls of the Cybertruck in 15 months due to a range of issues including software bugs and sticking accelerator pedals. Musk is urging investors to largely ignore the core business and look to the future, which he says is all about autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. But even there, Tesla is behind. In AVs the company has ceded ground to Alphabet's Waymo, which is operating commercial robotaxi services in several U.S. markets. After a decade of missed deadlines, Musk has promised a small launch of a Tesla driverless ride-hailing service in Austin this month. The Austin robotaxi service will operate in a geofenced area, Musk said in a recent interview with CNBC's David Faber, and will begin with a small fleet of just 10 to 20 Model Y vehicles with Full Self-Driving (FSD) Unsupervised technology installed. If all goes well, Musk has said, Tesla will try to rapidly expand its driverless offerings to other markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles. What consumers won't be seeing anytime soon are the Cybercab and Robovan vehicles that Tesla touted at its "We, Robot" event last year to drum up customer and investor enthusiasm. On Friday, Milan Kovac, Tesla's vice president of Optimus robotics, announced he was leaving after joining the company in 2016. Musk thanked him for his "outstanding contribution" in a post on X. Still, there are plenty Tesla bulls and Musk fanboys who are believers in the CEO's vision. The stock's 4% rebound on Friday is a sign that some saw an opportunity to buy the dip. "I think the real story here is the investor base of Tesla literally doesn't care about anything," Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and CNBC PRO contributor, told CNBC's "Halftime Report" Friday. "This is still a nothing matters stock." FundStrat's Tom Lee said the Tesla selloff was "overdone." Tesla's market cap, which is dramatically inflated relative to every other U.S. car maker, is built on Musk's vision of Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots doing factory work and babysitting our children, while self-driving Cybercabs and Robovans make money carting around passengers. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas wrote in a note this week that, "Tesla still holds so many valuable cards that are largely apolitical," pointing to what he sees as the company's "AI leadership, autonomy/robotics, manufacturing, supply chain re-architecture, renewable power, [and] critical infrastructure." In terms of Tesla's existing business, the most immediate impact from what's happening in Washington D.C., is the rollback of EV credits in the current budget bill that Musk loudly opposes and that's struggling to find sufficient support in the Senate. There's also the matter of the tariffs and whether Tesla is able to get preferred treatment, a proposition that seems increasingly unlikely with the Musk-Trump fallout. Matthew LaBrot, a former Tesla staff program manager, told CNBC that he's not surprised that Musk blew up his relationship with the president. LaBrot was terminated earlier this year after sending an open letter in protest of Musk's divisive political activity. "I am devastated for the country and the climate, though Elon only has himself to blame," LaBrot said in an interview. "Back a loose canon, expect stray canon fire." Tesla investors can't know at the moment how much of Musk's energy and time will now return to his lone public company, and the business responsible for the vast majority of his wealth. Even without politics, he still has SpaceX, AI startup xAI and brain tech startup Neuralink, among other businesses. As of Thursday, Musk still had a West Wing office that hadn't been cleaned out, two administration officials told NBC News. The space will likely be packed up in the coming days, one of the officials said. And while his time in the Trump camp may be over, Musk has called on his followers to form a new party in the U.S. "Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?" he wrote on X on Thursday, in a post that's now pinned at the top of his page. According to the post, 80% of 5.6 million respondents to the unofficial poll said "yes." Musk's actions this week may have caused a permanent rift with the president. But one thing is clear — his company can't get away from the White House.
