Tesla investors furious at stock’s plunge turn tables on CEO Elon Musk
Tesla shareholders want Elon Musk to get a taste of his own DOGE medicine.
Trump’s government efficiency czar sparked a backlash this past week when he demanded civil servants justify their paycheck by listing five things they accomplished in a week—a tactic he first used to thin the ranks at
Twitter
.
With
Tesla
shares down heavily since the start of this year, however, investors are now turning the tables on their CEO. They have taken to Musk’s own social media site X to ask what he’s done for them lately.
“Please share five things you did for Tesla shareholders this week,” celebrity photographer Jerry Avenaim
posted
on Wednesday, with a graph showing the poor performance of the stock. “Or are you working remotely? Asking for all of us.”
Shares on Thursday dipped for the sixth straight session, falling 1.4% as of press time to once again underperform the
Nasdaq
tech index.
Tesla did not respond to
Fortune’
s request for comment.
Musk’s missive to federal employees
The gibe stems from an ultimatum Musk sent this past Saturday: All federal employees were asked to explain what they accomplished last week. It ended with: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
While he was certainly entitled to do that at
Twitter
, a company he owns, it rubbed U.S. government employees and the public the wrong way. Musk cannot be ordered to appear before Congress since he has no official role, but that also means his only authority is what the president affords him.
Cabinet secretaries
chafed
at Musk’s intrusion and
instructed employees
not to answer, forcing the Tesla CEO to backpedal. First he said his expectations were
very low
(“The passing grade is literally just ‘Can you send an email with words that make any sense at all?’”) before then clarifying it merely sought to ensure
basic bodily functions
(“pulse and two working neurons”).
On Wednesday, Trump sought to mend fences by openly
praising
Musk’s efforts to shave $1 trillion off the government budget in front of his senior officials.
Model Y refresh celebrates launch in China
On the one hand, Tesla shareholders have little to complain about. Their stock is still 14% higher than on the day of Trump’s election, despite news emerging that its auto business is
under severe pressure
.
On the other hand, though, they can argue with some justification that Musk has contributed to all of that. Their CEO has comported himself poorly of late, even excluding his notorious salute at the inauguration. The market is also waking up to the risk that the
first quarter
at least will almost certainly disappoint.
Recently the family values champion
ignored
ex-partner Grimes’s plea for help with a sick child of theirs even as he
paraded
their son around to her discontent. Then, alt-right influencer Ashley St. Clair published text messages in which he allegedly told her to
keep quiet
about their baby. Finally, he sought the
early destruction
of the International Space Station after trading barbs with an astronaut and former
ISS
commander.
Shareholders can at least take some consolation that a refreshed version of the five-year-old Model Y finally celebrated its
debut
in China, according to a
post
on its official
Weibo
social media account. The vehicle accounts for two-thirds of all Teslas sold worldwide.
