Crossed Wires: The Incredible Shrinking Musk … or not

It can’t have been a fun week for Musk. He got whumped upside the head no less than three times: the Wisconsin Supreme Court loss for Republicans, the slump of 13% in Tesla sales for the quarter, and well-placed rumours of his not-so-gentle push out of the Trump political limelight.

These are all related on a very basic level — he is simply not likable. And he doesn’t seem to care much, happily pissing off anyone he feels like, whenever he feels like it.

The Tesla story is probably the most remarkable. EVs have traditionally appealed to the left-of-centre consumer, what with their climate change credentials and all. There may well have been other reasons to have bought a Tesla in its first few years, but the big draw was that it didn’t use fossil fuels; its energy was pure green. Its appeal lay front and centre of affluent liberal concerns.

When Musk decided to cozy up to Trump (with a swag bag of $250-million), we assume that he must have known that his natural buying constituency would get a tad tetchy. Perhaps not. There are two possible explanations. One of them, proposed by a Musk-loving friend of mine, is that Musk is such a stand-up guy, such a selfless altruist, that he was prepared to lose customers to stand up for his beliefs.

Right.

The second, more likely, explanation is that he thought he was so well-loved (a common trait of narcissists) that his attachment to Trump’s causes would cause hardly a ripple amongst his admirers. He still had his markets in Europe and China, and the few malcontents who got hot and bothered and shed their Teslas would be barely noticeable. Besides, he would have a new Maga market to mine. But then came the shock of Trump — the executive orders, the cuts, the threats, the deportations, the dissing of allies and the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) — culminating with the image of Musk, pupils dilated, grinning like a maniac, wielding a chainsaw on stage.

And right there he lost his chance of regaining the US market. Or even a small piece of it. Resale values have plummeted, insurance rates have soared, and crazies are attacking Tesla dealerships and keying cars. It’s the same in Europe. And now, with Trump’s new tariffs, the Chinese market has evaporated — which would have happened anyway because China’s top EV company, BYD, makes a better product at a much lower price.

Which led to this headline I read on a Substack post this morning: “Is Tesla the new BlackBerry?” Ouch.

Then there’s Wisconsin. Presumably directed by Trump and the GOP grandees, Musk was dispatched to the state to dispense his cash (reportedly $25-million) to upend the liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court. Trump won the state in 2024, so this seemed like an easy one. Musk was cocksure enough to make the absurd claim that the “destiny of humanity” and the “future of civilisation” rested on the conservative candidate winning.

The voters did not agree. The liberal candidate, Susan Crawford, won by 10 points, which in elections is a country mile. The significance of this should not be underestimated. Just six months ago the GOP romped through the state. Then Musk arrived, armed with cash, influence, celebrity nonpareil and a cringy cheese-themed hat, and the voters told him and his candidate to take a hike. Either they were turning away from Trump or were so offended by Musk that they would not touch anything he recommended. A bit of both perhaps, and a resounding shot across the bows of GOP overconfidence.

And then, finally (and most humiliatingly), there have been multiple reports and rumours of seething Trump advisers and GOP congresspeople chafed by Musk’s special access to the president. Their cozy whisper sessions, the family photos at Mar-a-Lago, his attendance at critical national security meetings and conversations with world leaders in the Oval Office. It was bound to end badly. With the Wisconsin Supreme Court lost to the left, perhaps his erstwhile best friend has decided that Musk is a political liability and should be sent back to Texas (yeah, he moved).

All very humiliating for Musk, who could do no wrong for the past 20 years.

But wait. With apologies to Dylan Thomas, Musk is not going gentle into that good night, and nor is there likely to be any dying of the light. Musk has just used the bloated value of his artificial intelligence company, xAI, to finance the acquisition of the tainted and unprofitable X/Twitter at a price far exceeding the company’s fundamentals. This was an ingenious business transaction by any metric. His irksome X/Twitter obligations to its banks and investors are retired, and X/Twitter is now attached to his hot new AI company — feeding it billions of proprietary tweets per year to train it. A great deal for Musk, investors, X/Twitter and xAI.

Yes, Tesla is going to get badly mauled, maybe even fail, although it is more likely that Musk will pull a smart move and sell it (or its IP) to a deep-pocketed buyer so that it can be reborn as an untainted brand while continuing to feed its voluminous real-time sensor data stream to xAI (which would probably be a precondition of any sale).

Musk will get to blame the liberals for Tesla’s demise while continuing to advertise his deserved status as the uber-pioneer of the EV industry.

So, is he the Incredible Shrinking Musk? No. He will shrink a bit here and grow a bit there. And his outsized ego, no doubt a little dinged right now, is tough enough to absorb this all without cracking.

Mind you, I rather hope that his passion for politics will be dimmed, and that he will return to doing what he is best at. DM 

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS at the University of Johannesburg, columnist-at-large for Daily Maverick, and partner at Bridge Capital. His new book, It’s Mine: How the Crypto Industry Is Redefining Ownership, is published by Maverick451 in South Africa and Legend Times Group in Europe/UK.