Analysis: Pitchman president drives Americans to their corners
At the White House this week, there are events to pump up Tesla and cryptocurrency, as President Donald Trump pushes products and investments close to the hearts of his backers.
Outside the White House there is backlash, particularly against Tesla, and Americans are showing an interest in boycotts.
Left-leaning Tesla owners are turning against their electric cars as a protest against Elon Musk, who has evolved from backing Tesla to address climate change to helping elect a president promising to refocus on hydrocarbons and 'drill, baby drill.'
Musk needed the free advertising of a Tesla-only White House driveway show to halt the tanking of the company's stock price. It was the least Trump could do after Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to get him elected, according to FEC reports, and plans to pour $100 million more into Trump's political operation, according to the New York Times.
Musk and Trump's mutual endorsements now taint Tesla in the eyes of many Americans — as does the fact that Trump has let Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency cronies run wild with cuts across the federal government and little transparency about what they're doing.
Another White House event has the potential to turn into a commercial on Friday, when cryptocurrency executives who backed Trump's campaign take place in a crypto 'summit.' The president recently promised to build up a strategic reserve of bitcoin and other currencies, which some have referred to as a 'bitcoin bailout' for assets that have fallen in value after a post-election surge.
Washington Post subscribers, who signed up to support a paper that changed its motto to 'Democracy dies in Darkness' during the first Trump administration, are canceling subscriptions in droves, fearing that darkness has descended on the Post. First, Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos scrapped a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris; now, he has said the paper's opinion section will focus on 'personal liberties and free markets.' Maybe that ends up being an ACLU-style opinion page, but maybe it means a shift to placate Trump at a time when he is attempting to stifle dissent.
Amazon also paid homage to Trump by acquiring streaming rights to the first seven seasons of 'The Apprentice,' it announced Monday. In January, it paid a premium – $40 million, according to the Wall Street Journal – to license a Melania Trump-produced documentary about Melania Trump.
That cozying up to Trump did not drive the weeklong anti-corporate and relatively unorganized 'economic blackout' movement targeting Amazon and other major corporations this month, but frustration at corporate America is clearly festering.
There's a campaign to give up Target for Lent, part of a coordinated effort to punish the retailer for retreating from its programs to promote diversity in its hiring practices.
From CNN's report:
Target is one of dozens of Fortune 500 companies that have backtracked on DEI in response to conservative court decisions, pressure from activists and right-wing legal groups, and, more recently, the Trump administration's threats to investigate what it characterizes as 'illegal DEI,' including potential criminal cases against companies. Companies are caught between pursuing efforts to increase diversity and avoiding a conservative legal crackdown. But no company has faced as fierce a blowback from DEI supporters as Target. Customers online have protested the decision and Anne and Lucy Dayton, the daughters of one of Target's co-founders, called the company's actions 'a betrayal.'
The fact that Target is facing backlash for responding to backlash to its DEI efforts demonstrates how complicated it is to appeal to all Americans.
Donald Trump Jr., is part of an investment firm made up of like-minded MAGA conservatives looking to monetize their politics in a sort of 'parallel economy.' The firm, 1789 Capital, got the opportunity to invest in Musk-owned companies, according to a Bloomberg profile. Trump Jr. said he has turned his back on opportunities where he doesn't like the politics.
'I've turned down major deals where the ethoses don't align…There are people who have become MAGA more recently – and I don't know they actually believe,' Trump Jr., told Bloomberg, which reported that since Inauguration Day, the firm has raised $500 million. Bloomberg reported that 1789 Capital will market itself to public pension plans in red states.
1789 Capital describes itself as advocating an EIG investment strategy, short for entrepreneurship, investment and growth.
It's a play on ESG investing, which aims to prioritize investing in companies that care about the environment, social justice and open corporate governance. A conservative judge in Texas recently ruled against 26 red states and in favor of a Biden-era rule that allowed public pension plans to choose such a socially conscious investing strategy.
Musk's evolution from California-based liberal concerned about climate change to Texas-based libertarian coughing up serious coin for Trump and quietly slashing federal regulations tracks with a change in Tesla's brand.
A Columbia Business School study compares the politics and brand affinity of people according to their social media habits. In February of 2017, before Musk's transformation, the study found Tesla to be more associated with people who followed Democrats on social media. By 2022, after he had moved Tesla and SpaceX to Texas as a form of protest against California, but before he had gone all in for Trump, the situation was reversed and Tesla was more associated with people who followed Republicans. It stands to reason that the transformation of Musk's X to an echo chamber for conservatives has further impacted the Tesla brand.
There is some indication that Americans on both sides of the aisle are frustrated by the access and power of people like Musk and the perception that their politics plays into their business interests.
Musk is less popular than Trump in a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS. From CNN's report by Ariel Edwards-Levy:
Just 35% of Americans express a positive view of Musk, with 53% rating him negatively and 11% offering no opinion. … Roughly 6 in 10 Americans say that Musk has neither the right experience nor the right judgment to make changes to the way the government works. There is uneasiness about Musk even among some of the president's supporters: 28% of those who see Trump's changes to the government as necessary doubt the tech billionaire has the judgment to carry them out.
Meanwhile, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom talked to right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon on a podcast Wednesday.
Bannon argued to Newsom that California created Musk, something Newsom agreed with, pointing to Tesla's use of carbon credits, among other things, to help its bottom line.
'It was our regulatory process and our subsidies to create this market, you're 100% right,' Newsom said.
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