Owing to some recent comments that I heard concerning President-Elect Donald Trump possibly coming down hard on Tesla Motors once he takes office, I figured it was worth posting a note here … Trump apparently owns a Tesla (amongst a great many other cars, no doubt).
That assertion stems from the fact that his campaign told the Washington Post last year that a Tesla was one of two American-made cars that Trump owned. And that would figure, wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t he own one? A Tesla is a rich person’s car, after all, and is often a fairly important status symbol.
Does any of this actually matter? Maybe. Personally, I’m skeptical that, being familiar with the company, that Trump will do anything at all directly in relation to Tesla. The company’s pioneering offerings (which are American-made) have already made a name for themselves, as evidenced by the number of $1,000 reservations placed for the Model 3. It seems very unlikely that much will change with regard to the regulatory environment that Tesla operates in.
The recent appointment of Tesla CEO Elon Musk to Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum seems to suggest that this is the case … or maybe not. Who knows? With how mercurial Trump seems to be, and how much he seems to delegate, the appointment may well mean nothing at all.
Oh, the other American-made car that Trump owns? It’s a Cadillac Escalade. Which would figure, I guess. I wonder what he would say to getting one of the Lucid Motors Air sedans that were unveiled recently? Somebody should tweet him an image of the back seats. …
As far as the Tesla, some have speculated it’s a Model S, but most reports seem to assume it’s a Roadster. Of course, we haven’t actually seen evidence he does have a Tesla, so who knows if the rumor is actually true?
Thinking about it, though, it’s interesting that the two auto execs appointed to the jobs panel mentioned above (GM CEO Mary Barra and Tesla’s Elon Musk) are actually the CEOs of the companies that made the two American-made cars that he owns. I assume that’s not by chance.
Why on earth are so many electric car fans predicting doom-and-gloom because Trump is our next president? Surely not all of us are frothing at the mouth Hillary supporting Liberals?
Donald Trump has done nothing as yet to inspire any of the fear/hate/loathing that I am seeing on environmentally friendly forums. For crying out loud: give the man a chance!
Yes he has. Look at his cabinet nominations (e.g. Scott Pruitt).
They said the same of Adolf Hitler, and look what happened next….!
Right, as if his book Mein Kampf didn’t say exactly what he thought, just like Trump’s tweets.
Very good analysis.
He has done nothing so far to harm the environment because he isn’t in office yet, but he has nominated people to head the EPA and the Energy Dept who have long records of opposing cleaner air regulations and denying the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
Not everyone who opposes Trump’s policies is a “frothing at the mouth Hillary” supporter. Many millions of people opposed Hillary too. They wanted change and flocked to the message of an elderly populist Vermont senator who most people in the country had never heard of. He went from being 60 points behind Hillary to beating her in many states, particularly those with open primaries where independents and new voters were allowed to vote (Hillary’s campaign fought in favor of closed primaries where she had the advantage even though the success of the Dems depended on bringing new voters into the party).
When people who wanted change were denied the chance to vote for a true populist by the Dem Party, many either sat home (Hillary received 3.5 fewer votes than Obama received in 2008) or, gasp, threw a Molotov cocktail at the political system by voting for Trump.
This guy and Van Jones sum it up well–the days of Clinton and other neo-liberals are over:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLTK-CH78Zw&index=2&list=LLx0quQVCuvZiP-nSZoemF7w
Here’s another post mortem on Hillary written by a Hofstra political science professor:
“[T]he Democrats are least as much to blame for the catastrophe of Trump
as are Republicans, starting with Hillary Clinton herself. In reality, Clinton was so morally compromised a candidate, and so lacking any serious rationale for her candidacy other than her own self-aggrandizement (as leaked documents revealed, even the campaign couldn’t figure out what their appeal was supposed to be), that the only serious asset she brought to the campaign was having Trump as her opponent. . . . Had the Republicans nominated anyone without the astonishing baggage that Trump carried, it’s hard to imagine that Clinton would have ever had even a remote chance to win. . . . If you’re so morally freighted a candidate that you can’t even beat the guy with sixteen built-in self-destruct buttons (including being an admitted sexual predator) who is tweeting out messages that chew through alienated groups as fast as his thumbs will allow, you must be one hell of an abysmal candidate. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you Hillary Rodham Clinton!
“It is true, that the Clintons have been subjected to the boundless dishonesty and destructive appetites of a genuine vast right-wing conspiracy. However, for every false scandal imputed to Bill and Hillary, there’s a real one that’s equally bad. They’re just sleazy at the core, and they’re breathtakingly self-interested. They’re disgustingly entitled and dishonest, and Hillary the nominee came by her record-setting low favorability ratings more or less, er, honestly. Of course she was lying when she concocted a reason for not releasing transcripts from her bazillion dollar Wall Street speeches, and of
course it came out when they were leaked that she was saying something
entirely different to the Lloyd Blankfeins of this world than she was saying to the rest of us. Moreover, she admitted right in the middle of one of those speeches that she had one face for insiders, and one face for the rest of us. Quick, which audience do you think got to hear from the real Hillary, Big Money or Stupid Voters?”
BTW, I was banned–BANNED (can you believe it?)–by the Hillary supporting moderator of a related website, Clean Technica, for posting a link to the article from which the above quote is taken. Censorship by so-called liberals–who woulda thunk it.
Now these neo-liberals are blaming Russia for Hillary’s defeat, even though Julian Assange, the owner of Wikileaks, says that the leaked emails came from a Democratic Party insider, not from a Russian source.
Here’s their logic: Russia manipulated our election by revealing what Hillary actually said to Wall Street bankers and to her advisers and what her underlings actually said to each other. In other words, American voters were manipulated by the truth! The election was unfair because truth was revealed!
(What a novel approach. When the U.S. interferes in other countries’ elections, we do it through assassination and military intervention.)
Here’s why Clinton lost:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiBhGFCZxOw
Will this post get scrubbed too for being politically incorrect? We’ll see.
I wouldn’t expect him to attack Tesla per se, but I would expect his administration to gut the federal EV subsidies, if it can, along with the EPA.
He couldn’t get into a Roadster.
Personally I would remove any license Trump has to drive as I can’t imagine a driver with worse credentials. He collects cars simply to brag what he owns.