Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden. Elon Musk announced Saturday his intention to form the American Party targeting specific congressional seats to control swing votes on major legislation. The announcement triggered a 7% drop in Tesla stock price on Monday morning, pushing the EV maker toward its worst trading
day since June 5th of this year. Now, Tesla shareholders have grown increasingly frustrated with Elon Musk's political activities, doing them as distractions from the company score business challenges. Now, Elon outlined his vision for a third party of politics that would compete for just two or three Senate seats and eight to 10 House districts. The Musk believes these targeted races would give his party enough leverage to act as the deciding vote on contentious
legislation. He claims this strategy would ensure laws that serve the true will of the people. The announcement marks Musk's second major political initiative this year following his controversial involvement with Doe. The Tesla investors have expressed mounting concern about Musk's political ambitions affecting the company's performance and brand image. The automaker faces intense competition from Chinese manufacturers like who have captured significant market
share with lower priced EVs. And Tesla reported a 14% year over year decline in vehicle deliveries during the second quarter, missing analyst expectations. The company needs its CEO focused on product development and manufacturing efficiency rather than building a political movement. Now, if you have a podcast platform right now, if you're on one right now that has comments, I need you to leave a comment about this. Do you think Elon Musk is in the right here?
Should he be buying off senators and buying off people in politics to get his basically to get his way and it pushed through his agenda? Should we keep money out of politics? Should politics be pure? It's up to you to decide. Let's build this community
together now. I asked about a week ago for some help and I really meant it and I really do appreciate everybody who helped out when I asked for it because right now as it is, this podcast needs as much help as possible to continue doing what we do every single day. I produce a podcast every single day about Elon Musk and I've been doing it for the last four years, over 1000 episodes. And I'm dedicated to this and I will continue to be dedicated to this. But I absolutely need your help.
I'm going to like, I don't do this ever, really. I did it once before and that was last week. But I absolutely need your help. We're in dire straits here with the show might not continue on. And if you could help us out, the easy freeway to do that is to like this podcast in a way by subscribing or following the show, but also, you know, we need money to keep the lights on. So if you can, Venmo, Wil Dash, WALDON, any amount would be helpful. I greatly appreciated everybody
that did it last week. That was the best thing. Opening up my app in the afternoon after this episode dropped and seeing all of your support really did help me continue doing these shows. And you know, it's not free to do this. It takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of time. So in the equipment is expensive, etcetera. So thank you so much for all of
your support. But let's get back to Elon Musk and his America Party, and wow, it's it's wild that the Tesla stock dropped because of it. Now Dan Ives, who is the global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, captured investor sentiment on a Sunday research note.
I've stated that Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that Tesla investors and shareholders want him to take during this crucial period. For Tesla, it's a broader sense of exhaustion. For many Tesla investors, the Musk keeps heading down the political track. The Musk relationship with President Donald Trump has deteriorated significantly since
their initial collaboration. The Tesla CEO worked closely with Trump through DOGE in early 2025 before leaving in May. The partnership soured over disagreements about federal spending bills, with Musk arguing that Trump's proposals would dramatically increase America's debt burden. Now, he's particularly criticized cuts tax credits for solar energy, wind power and EVs. And President Trump responded in kind to Musk's announcement on Sunday by calling the new political party ridiculous.
Trump accused the test the CEO, of going completely off the rails and suggests this the move represented a personal vendetta rather than genuine political conviction. Now, the president's harsh reaction indicates the depth of their falling out after months of public disputes over energy policy and government spending. White House sources suggest Trump views Musk's party as a direct challenge to his
administration's agenda. Now, Elon Musk said he could be around and his party would be around for centuries. Donald Trump will only be around for about 3 more years because Elon Musk has billions of dollars to put behind this. If that's all he does is create a fund for this party. It will be around until long after we're all dead and after our kids are gone and their kids are gone and their kids are gone. And Elon Musk's legacy could live on through this America party.
The timing of this political announcement from Elon Musk creates additional pressure for Tesla during a critical period. Chinese competitors BYD Neo have expanded rapidly in international markets, which Elon Musk and Tesla are trying to take over. The companies benefit from lower manufacturing costs and government subsidies that allow aggressive pricing strategies. They're pushing Tesla out, and Tesla must defeat them in every market.
They must defend its market position while simultaneously investing billions in new battery tech and autonomous driving and capabilities. No, we have to worry about political activities, and it'll consume the time and attention of Musk. That's the attention that he needs to dedicate to Tesla's operational challenges. The company faces production bottlenecks at its newer facilities in Texas and Germany. Supply line disruptions continue to affect battery cell availability and semiconductor
procurement. Tesla's engineering teams require executive leadership to make crucial decisions about next generation vehicle platforms and manufacturing processes. And if Elon Musk is out there doing other things politically, he can't be with the Tesla employees. Think about it, for a while when he was at DOGE, there were some Tesla employees that just said
we want Elon back. You know, we're here because we believe in Elon, we believe in Tesla, but more so, we believe in Elon Musk and his vision for the future of Tesla. We love the technology ourselves. We build the technology every day. We want to continue working here, but without Elon. Elon's the spark that keeps this place going, and that's how they feel about this, too. The formation of this new political party requires substantial financial resources.
They get organizational infrastructure. And if Musk would need to recruit new candidates for this, it's going to take the time away from Tesla and his other companies like SpaceX, Boring Company, Neuron, like it's going to take all the time away from them just so he can dip his toe into politics again. Political consultants estimate that competitive congressional races typically require millions of dollars in campaign spending. Could he hire people to do these jobs for him? Of course.
But it's going to take him time in order to hire these people. His involvement in this would likely trigger scrutiny from federal election regulators, of course, because he's their opposition. Now, there's two parties, which pretty much they all talk to each other. They're all buddy, buddy. If you've ever seen any videos, the left and the right, Donald Trump hangs out with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, you know, Hillary Clinton too.
You'd see them all together. It's kind of funny how they pretend that there's two sides, but they're all the same thing almost. I'm an American. I've been an American my whole life. I was born here and it's pretty blatantly obvious. Blatantly obvious if you look at it from up on high. These people are in it together and it's all a dog and pony
show, man. And I'm just saying this as a person who looks at things from a different perspective, as somebody who I don't affiliate myself with the party, affiliate myself with people who are good people. And everybody that's a politician that I've seen recently, they just, they're in it for themselves, They're in it for their team. And if their team wins, that's
great, right? So Elon has his own team now, his third party and the formation of this new party, it's going to take a lot of resources. Tesla shareholder holders don't want to lose Elon. They remember the negative impact of Musk's previous political ventures on the company's brand of the sales. His association with Doge alienated customers.
They started burning down his facilities and his Tesla showrooms because they didn't want him to be ripping apart the government and the subsidies for people that need it. There were protests everywhere. Millions of people marched against Elon Musk just months ago to get him out of the White House and get him away from Trump. And now is this just smoke and mirrors by Elon? Think about it for a minute. Elon and Trump, they're both egotistical. You have to know that.
If you don't know that, if you don't think Elon is egotistical, you don't think he has sociopathic means. I mean, he's said himself that empathy is a shortcoming. He doesn't hire people with empathy. He doesn't want people with empathy next to him. He doesn't want people to use their feelings. He wants them to just crank out work. So him himself, himself, does he have some empathy? He might, but he's a savage in business. Absolute savage. Shareholders don't want him to
go away. Shareholders don't want him to use the same time that he used for DOGE for this new party. They want their money. If you're a shareholder in Tesla, you want to cash out. You don't want anything to get in your way of getting that big paycheck because 1, you aren't building Teslas, you aren't building the company. You put your money into it and you gambled on Elon. You put $100,000 on Elon years ago, maybe you have $1,000,000
now. Maybe you want that $1,000,000 to go to 4,000,005 million, 6,000,007 million because fully autonomous car service, fully autonomous Uber style cyber cabs. Who wouldn't want to do that? That's a continuous stream of money 24/7. That's you just making bank all the time. Uber, think about the money that Uber makes. Add that to the Tesla portfolio and also add in the way MO money, add in the Lyft money all around the world and then you
don't pay the drivers either. So you get a ride and you don't pay the drivers. You just have a car. Think about all that money. And then also the robotics, not just the Tesla robot, but the robotics that Tesla could eventually build in the AI that they can license self driving technology, proprietary self self driving technology that they could license to other competitors.
But if you have some money into Tesla, you want that money to continue to grow over your lifetime or over next few years or so. And if Elon is out doing things in politics, you don't think he's paying attention to Tesla, do you? Can he do everything? I don't know. SpaceX is having a tough time. SpaceX is blowing up rockets left and right down to Starbase. 3 or 4 Starships have blown up mid air because there weren't protocols in place for them to fix the issues how they thought
they fixed the issues. Of course it's a listen, it's a it's a prototype. We all know it's a prototype. Starship is a prototype. Things like this will happen but not the same thing repeatedly. And that's why there's an investigation on Starship right now and why it's exploding not just from Elon and SpaceX, but also from the government. Yes, I think the shareholders are correct in assuming that Elon Musk will be taking attention away from his Tesla
duties. But on Monday, the stock price declined and erased billions in market value and pushed Tesla closer to Technical Support levels that traders monitor now. The shares fell as much as 7.3% in early trading before recovering a little bit midday. Still down by the end of the
day. Now. Elon stated goal of creating a kingmaker party in Congress faces obstacles to third parties historically struggle in America's two party system due to ballot access requirements, fundraising disadvantages which he doesn't have and strategic voting patterns. But we have AI, we have Grok, we have XAI to take care of that right. Political scientists point to a failure of previous billionaire
funded third party efforts. Ross Perot, remember that guy he was in the Reform Party and also remember Michael Bloomberg had various independent initiatives. Now, the America Party, Elon's America Party, we need to overcome everything that they couldn't do. Ross Perot had ungodly amounts of money. Michael Bloomberg, same thing. Can you do it? I mean, if anybody could, it probably be probably be Elon. He might be able to crack the
code. But we will see if it does really hurt Tesla, could the board kick him off? Just I don't know if it's up in the air right now. And that's another variable to Tesla's complex investment thesis. We got a factor in political risk alongside traditional metrics like vehicle deliveries, gross margins and technology development. And we don't want to away from the traditional metrics.
You know, people may start reducing Tesla holdings to avoid exposure or unpredictable political developments. It's not safe if Elon's try to take on big government, you know, if he's trying to take on the Republican Party, somebody who can be nasty, Donald Trump can be nasty. Taking on the Democratic Party, they could be nasty, too. And if you're going to fight against them, you're going to take their power and their money away. Oh, they will fight you, you know.
The company's board of directors faces pressure to address shareholder concerns now about Elon Musk's focus and corporate governance of Tesla. But does he want to fight both parties? I mean, he's in it to win it, right? We're going to see. But with Elon launching this America party and Tesla struggling a little bit with competitive pressures raises fundamental questions about his responsibility in Tesla. The 7% stock decline reflects investor skepticism.
People just don't really want it, you know, they just don't want his political stuff. They just want their money to make money for them. That's why they invested. They believe in Tesla, they believe in the vision, they believe in Elon, but they didn't sign up for this. And that's why some people either sold their stock or just didn't invest as much this time around. They need focus right now. They need focused execution to maintain the position as the top EV company in the United States.
Hyundai's coming for them. BYD, you know, in other countries. So Elon going to do his political party and maybe it's going to hurt Tesla little bit. Tesla's very, very, very well priced right now. Let's just say that. I'm going to say it's overpriced, but the only place it could go is up from here. It's a technology company. It's not a car company. It's an AI company. It's not a car company. It's a robot company. It's not a car company anymore.
Elon Musk. But remember, I want to, I want you to remember this too. Elon Musk, when it was favorable for him to be on the side of progressive Democrats. He was a progressive Democrat. And this is for business. He did this for business. He was part of the Green Initiative. That's why people bought into Tesla. Great marketing. I thought it was cool. I don't want to go to the gas pump anymore. I want a self-sustaining vehicle
that I could charge at my house. Why would I want to pay all these oil companies all this money when I could just plug my car in at night, let it trickle charge overnight? That sounds like a great idea. And then when Trump got into office, like before that, he could see the the winds of
change shifting. So his mindset shifted to the Republican Party. He was all in hundreds of millions of dollars, almost $400 million into the Trump campaign, amongst other campaigns full in. And now because that's not favorable anymore, mainly because people started burning down Tesla showrooms, people worth having, millions of people, millions of people were marching against him. He saw the shift again and he's moving to his own political
party. So he's not part of the Republican Party or part of the Democratic Party. He's going to do his own thing. I want you to take a step back. Don't think about your own party. If you're Republican, you can always be a Republican. If you're a Democrat, you can always be a Democrat. But step back, Look at what he did. Look at his timeline. Just think to yourself, why is
he doing this party? Is he doing it so he can get some power back, maybe some power back so he can pass the legislation that he needs, so he can get subsidies for Tesla, so he can continue building Tesla into the most influential company of all time, and also those subsidies for SpaceX? Just take a step back. We're going to have another episode about all that in the coming days. So again, thank you so much for listening.
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I'm just using letters. So BR thanks, Will, for everything you do. I appreciate all the time you put into the show. Love it, keep it going. And then they donated $35. I was, I'm so touched by this. That's only two of them, though. There were more. And I can talk about those in another episode. So if you want to, if you want your message read, if you have a question, Venmo at Will Dash Walden, that's me.
Will Walden. I'm your host and I'll let you know let you know how it goes and I'll read your note on the air. We'll start the shows with those in the future. OK, That's that's my promise to you. We'll start that coming up in the next few days. Questions to me, put them out first. Could be about Elon, could be about Tesla, could be about SpaceX. Just let me know. All right, everybody, thank you so much. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your
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