Elon Musk took a swipe at President Joe Biden on Thursday after Biden left Tesla out of a discussion about domestic electric-vehicle production.
(Business Insider).- “I meant it when I said the future was going to be made right here in America. Companies like GM and Ford are building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before,” Biden tweeted on Wednesday. The tweet included a video of him speaking with Mary Barra, the chair and CEO of General Motors, who discussed the company’s $7 billion investment into manufacturing electric vehicles and battery cells in Michigan.
Musk first commented on the post, “Starts with a T, Ends with an A, ESL in the middle.”
Later, a Twitter user commented on Biden’s video, “Madness has taken national proportions … Shame on Joe Biden and Mary Barra for this lie, it’s so insignificant to be like that.” In response, Musk tweeted, “Biden is a damp sock puppet in human form,” using the sock emoji.
As for GM, Musk took a dig at the company on Wednesday when a Twitter user posted a screenshot of a CNBC report on GM’s bid to overtake Tesla in EV sales by 2025 despite having sold only 26 electric vehicles last quarter.
“They appear to have some room for improvement,” Musk tweeted in response.
Musk is not new to criticizing Biden. He’s torched the centerpiece of the president’s domestic agenda, a climate and spending plan known as Build Back Better, mused that Biden was “controlled by unions,” and joked that Biden was “still sleeping” when the White House didn’t remark on Space X’s historic private spaceflight.
It wasn’t always this way. Just after Biden was inaugurated, Musk gushed to Fortune that he was “super fired up that the new administration is focused on climate.” But he has lamented America’s de facto gerontocracy, calling for an age limit “just below 70” that would have disqualified Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The world’s richest man was clear when he disagreed with Trump, too. He called out Trump’s character in 2016, saying he wasn’t fit to be president. Musk, like many in Silicon Valley and the broader business community, was also outraged over the Trump administration’s decision to exit the Paris climate accords.
But he also defended Trump at times, too.
“It may be controversial, but I actually like the idea,” Musk said in 2018 of Trump’s later successful push to create Space Force, a new military branch focused on space.
