Elon Musk Freaks Out Over Report Tesla Is Trying to Force Him Out
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Tesla's board of directors had begun the process of finding a new CEO to replace the billionaire bureaucrat who was galavanting around Washington with a chain saw, people familiar with the discussions told the paper. The board reached out to several executive search firms, and was ultimately able to narrow its efforts to one major firm, the outlet reported.
Following an initial spike after Musk had effectively bought Donald Trump the White House, the electric vehicle-maker spent the first three months of the year watching its value deflate and its brand curdle as its CEO spent more time cozying up to the increasingly unpopular president.
It's unclear whether Musk, who stepped down as the chairman of the board of directors in 2018, was aware that the company was beginning to look for new leadership. As the board of directors first embarked on their search about a month ago, they warned the CEO that he needed to spend more time at the company, and Musk didn't argue.
In a furious post on X Thursday, Musk claimed that the report was a complete fiction.
'It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!' he wrote.
Robyn Denholm, the chairman of Tesla's board of directors, flat-out denied the reporting.
'Earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company. This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published),' Denholm said in a statement Thursday. 'The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.'
Last week, in a humiliating first-quarter earnings report, Tesla said that profits had crashed by a whopping 71 percent, falling to a mere $409 million, compared with $1.39 billion from the same quarter last year. The drop was a direct result of Musk's entanglement with Trump's administration.
Tesla has become a symbol of the Department of Government Efficiency's likely unconstitutional government overhaul and extreme cost-cutting measures that have led to sweeping layoffs and essential services being gutted. Teslas have quickly become the target of widespread protests against the administration.
Trump's embrace of a sweeping 'reciprocal tariff' policy, and steep tariffs on imported cars and auto parts, also rocked the industry, hurting Musk's value personally. In Trump's first 100 days in office, Musk lost a whopping 25 percent of his total personal wealth.
Following the earnings report last week, Musk told investors that he planned to cut down his time in Washington to two days a week, but said that he would likely continue working with the Trump administration until the end of the president's term.
Musk insisted that he would continue to advocate for lower tariffs but said that the decision was 'entirely up to the president of the United States.'
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