Treasury Secretary Bessent Sees Musk The Same Way I Do

As I did yesterday, I keep saying that Elon Musk's main problem is with the boards of directors for each of his companies. With everything he's done since November, he's been digging himself a deeper and deeper hole. Yesterday in an interview with Dana Bash, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said,

BASH: He (Musk) announced this weekend that he is starting a new political party. Does this worry the Trump Administration?

BESSENT: Look, the principles of DOGE were popular. If you looked at the polling, Elon was not. The Boards of Directors at his various companies wanted him to come back and run his companies, which he is better at than anyone.

So, I imagine those Board of Directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities,

It's worth revisiting a story from a month ago that reported a physical altercation between Musk and Bessent:

According to [Trump insider Steve] Bannon, Bessent dared to say that the billionaire's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was a failure, since Musk didn't root out the $1 trillion in wasteful and fraudulent federal spending he promised he would.

'Scott said, "You’re a fraud. You’re a total fraud,"' Bannon said.

That's when Musk body-checked Bessent, who hit the world's richest man right back, according to Bannon.

Reaction from the financial world to Musk's announcement of a new third party was immediate:

Azoria—a prominent investment firm with deep ties to tech and AI innovation—has yanked its support from Tesla ahead of a planned ETF launch, citing CEO Elon Musk’s surprise announcement that he is launching a new national political party, “The America Party.”

The Azoria Tesla Convexity ETF, which was set to go public next week, would have offered investors a strategic vehicle for exposure to Tesla’s high-growth potential.

But that plan is now shelved indefinitely. According to Azoria CEO James T. Fishback, the abrupt decision was made in “direct response” to Musk’s political pivot, which Fishback says undermines confidence in Musk’s leadership at Tesla.

Fishback also released a formal letter addressed to Robyn Denholm, Chair of Tesla’s Board of Directors, calling on the board to immediately evaluate Musk’s political ambitions and whether they are compatible with his duties as Tesla’s CEO.

The letter, dated July 5, bluntly states that a ‘political party not only fails to complement Tesla’s mission—it actively undermines it.’

Last week I noted that Tesla owners have several choices of bumper sticker they can put on their cars to tell potential vandals that although they'd bought a Tesla, they don't support Musk -- but this is hardly a sure remedy. The best option is not to buy a Tesla and expose it to the risk.

I first saw a Rivian more than a year ago, in the Kaiser parking lot. It was headed to the physicians' parking area, and that struck me as about right, a Rivian is a doctor's high-end electric car. Since then, I've seen very few Rivians on the street, but a fair number of Teslas. All of a sudden, just yesterday, we saw two Rivians on our way to mass, but no Teslas.

It stands to reason that people in the market for a new high-end electric car are going to get a Rivian, not a Tesla. Musk has done more for the Rivian brand thsn any conventional endorser. The Tesla board must be painfully aware of this. As usual, Trump shows insight:

I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely “off the rails,” essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks.

. . . No more EV Mandate. I have campaigned on this for two years and, quite honestly, when Elon gave me his total and unquestioned Endorsement, I asked him whether or not he knew that I was going to terminate the EV Mandate – It was in every speech I made, and in every conversation I had. He said he had no problems with that – I was very surprised!

I suspect Secretary Bessent has had Musk's number from the start -- he's a fraud. I've always had a sense that the other things we know about Musk -- his really weird sex life involving farming in vitro embryos with his various wives and girlfriends out to surrogate mothers, with at least 14 children he's acknowledged and apparently many more he hasn't, plus his unworkable crackpot ideas of colonizing and terraforming Mars, simply aren't compatible with the mindset of a responsible business manager, much less a political leader.

I can only think Secretary Bessent was being nice when he said Musk was "better. . . than anyone" at running his companies. We have the case of Musk spending a quarter billion supporting Trump, whose policies are bad for Tesla's business model, and expecting things somehow to work out in the end. But on top of that, he's a businessman who's suddently become a controversial publicity hound, when someone at his level should be staying out of the news, not making it. The last guy like that in the auto business was John DeLorean.

I think that's about where Musk will wind up, and actually pretty quickly.