Posting on X Musk—the CEO of the EV-maker—wrote: “Just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock.”
Bezos rapidly returned: “Nope. 100% not true.”
Musk replied sincerely or sarcastically: “Well, then, I stand corrected,” with a crying laughing face.
Nicely, then, I stand corrected 😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2024
The hyperlinks between this 12 months’s presidential election end result and the relative prosperity of Musk-owned entities are clear.
Firstly, the Tesla CEO personally pumped tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} into Trump’s presidential marketing campaign—incomes himself a newly-created authorities division consequently.
A shut private relationship additionally appears to be forming between President-elect Trump and X proprietor Musk, with the world’s richest man even showing in Trump’s household photograph on election night time.
Trump can be throwing his weight behind a few of Musk’s enterprise endeavors, touring to Texas this week to observe a Area X rocket launch.
And whereas the previous president additionally beforehand held unfavorable views on electrical autos (saying EV drivers are “[destroying] our once great USA” and may “rot in hell), he modified his tune following Musk’s endorsement.
“I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump informed supporters on the marketing campaign path.
At a later rally, he added: “I’ve driven them, and they are incredible, but they’re not for everybody.”
The Republican candidate’s backing led to an enormous rally in Tesla inventory following the election: Within the week following, the corporate’s share worth soared roughly 40% and is up 53% for the month on the time of writing.
Whereas the stakes had been excessive for Musk—who admitted he would have been “f*cked” if Trump had misplaced the election—the wager has paid off.
In the meantime, different enterprise leaders had been conscious of backing one candidate or the opposite—aware that in the event that they spoke out towards a victorious Trump, it might bode badly for them throughout his time period.
Bezos didn’t endorse both Vice President Harris or President-elect Trump personally or by way of his companies.
Whereas he confronted backlash after blocking his newspaper, The Washington Publish, from publishing its historic endorsement of 1 candidate or the opposite, he doubled down: “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election.
“What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
Musk vs Bezos rivalry
This isn’t the primary time the pair—and area exploration rivals—have butted heads.
Certainly, the rivalry goes so deep that Amazon shareholders cited it in a contest lawsuit.
In 2022, Amazon introduced the most important rocket deal within the historical past of the business area sector.
Amazon was providing contracts for Challenge Kuiper, which was an opportunity to launch low-Earth orbit satellites that might be used for web providers.
Amazon confirmed it could make investments $10 billion within the venture and promptly signed up three contractors—the United Launch Alliance (ULA), a three way partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin; European firm Arianespace; and Blue Origin, a non-public enterprise based by Bezos himself.
However lacking from the lineup was Musk-founded SpaceX, which has reportedly already launched roughly 5,000 web satellites since 2019 for its personal rival service, Starlink.
Amazon shareholders blamed Musk and Bezos’s rivalry for this resolution, and based on CNBC, executives had “excluded the most obvious and affordable launch provider, SpaceX, from its procurement process because of Bezos’s personal rivalry with Musk.”
Musk additionally beforehand taunted Bezos that he had “retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX” and later jibed that the Amazon founder can’t “sue [his] way to the moon.”
