Former vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., and the world’s richest man Elon Musk traded disses over Tesla stock’s brutal start to 2024, as Musk’s electric vehicle brand navigates challenges on Wall Street and beyond while its boss Musk allies with President Donald Trump.
Tim Walz, pictured in November, celebrated Tesla stock's recent slump.
During a Tuesday night speech in Wisconsin, Walz said he frequently checks how Tesla stock is doing to “give me a little boost during the day.”
“$225 and dropping,” exclaimed Walz, referring to Tesla’s closing share price Tuesday, a more than 50% decline from its December peak, though Tesla shares did not in fact drop further when markets opened Wednesday, gaining more than 3% to $233.
Responding to Walz’s proclamation, Musk posted to his X social media platform: “Sometimes when I need a little boost, I look at the @JDVance portrait in the @WhiteHouse and thank the Lord ????,” celebrating Trump and his Vice President JD Vance’s victory over Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Walz.
Walz also suggested owners of Tesla vehicles should remove the Tesla logo from their cars.
Tesla stock is the leader of a down 2025 thus far for the stock market, as its 44% year-to-date slide through Tuesday made it the 500th-best-returning stock listed on the S&P 500 benchmark index. Shares of Tesla surged as much as 90% in the weeks after Trump won the election, but they now trade about 7% below what they did on Election Day. Though Tesla is joined by its big tech peers like Apple and Google as stock market laggards, Tesla’s losses tie largely back to the public’s increasingly polarized view of Musk, according to several analysts. Numerous Wall Street firms have downgraded their forecasts for Tesla sales this year, citing significant sales declines in regions in which Musk has been outspoken in right-wing politics, like Germany, where Tesla’s February sales declined 76% year-over-year. Tesla’s brand issues have “grown more acute since Mr. Musk stepped into a more divisive new role in government,” JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman wrote to clients last week, referring to Musk’s position as the newly created head of the Department of Government Efficiency, the commission largely leading Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal government footprint. Tesla showrooms have been the site of protests nationally, and Musk derided a Las Vegas incident in which multiple Teslas were set on fire as domestic terrorism. “Tesla just makes electric cars and has done nothing to deserve these evil attacks,” Musk wrote Tuesday.
“I think there’s something poetic about a schoolteacher being in this fight against the richest man in the world,” the former high school teacher Walz told The Minnesota Star Tribune on Tuesday.
Musk is worth roughly 300,000 times more than Walz, according to Forbes’ calculations. Musk’s world-leading $321.4 billion net worth stems mostly from his stakes in Tesla and his private aerospace titan SpaceX, and Walz’s just over $1 million fortune.