Well, Tesla stock, down 14% on Thursday as the very public fallout between its CEO, Elon Musk, and President Trump escalates. For more on all this, let's welcome in here, Ross Gerber of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. Ross, it is good to see you. So, listen, we got this brawl. Ross, it breaks out between Trump and Musk on social media. It gets heated, Ross, and very personal, very quickly. I'm sure you were watching, uh, and reading along with the rest of us, as the posts were going back and forth. What did you make of it?

Well, I was, thought I was gonna have a pleasant day. But, um, you know, this is a disaster. I, I've been, of epic proportion, you know, for Teslas and SpaceX, and you know, whether Elon wants to accept it or not, he did help Trump get elected. It is his fault that Trump is President of the United States. And now he's angered this person who's one of the, who, you know, whether Elon likes it or not, he's President of the United States, makes him one of the most powerful people in the world. So I think Elon in his ego, and sort of weird haze of reality, actually thinks he's more powerful than Trump, and this is now a showdown. And this, you know, as a shareholder couldn't be worse for Elon and his properties and his investments and the future that he has because Trump's going to be around and Elon's pointed for another three and a half years. And I don't know why Elon thinks he's going to be around for another 40 years, but he seems to think he's going to live into his 90s, which I think is probably not true.

But, but, Ross, let me ask you, just bring me out to the stock today, which got shelled. I mean, he got nailed 14%. Does that move, does it seem justified to you, Ross, of this?

Yeah. Well, 100%, in fact, I think we're just getting started for the declines because a lot of the stock prices' value isn't based off the underlying business. It's based off the perception that Elon being a part of Tesla is somehow wonderful. And so the stock, you know, was trading at a good 150, $200 premium, what we call the Elon premium. Now he's close to the president, so, you know, it got a even bigger premium, and the perception was that this position was going to be wildly beneficial for, for example, full self-driving regulations on a federal level. But now, the reality's sinking in that that's not going to happen. But even worse, there's going to be a retaliation against Tesla from Trump and Trump's supporters, that's going to be a lot worse than what Elon realizes, because I think there's a lot more maga supporters out there than Elon supporters.

Um, and Ross, you know, at the, maybe one of the issues at the heart of this, or that triggered this, is the EV tax credit, which is at least as the, as the big beautiful bill exists now, will expire at the end of this year. Now, Elon sort of played it off. He says, I wanna get rid of tax credits entirely. I, I don't need them. Um, as a shareholder, how much does Tesla need those tax credits?

Well, of course they need the tax credits, and simple economics would say that if the price of your product is cheaper, you will sell more of it. And if it gets more expensive, then you will sell less of it. So, you know, obviously taking away the tax credits hurts Tesla. And it doesn't really matter any way you wanna spin it. It just makes the car 7,500 more expensive for people, which then, you know, obviously predicates out to lower demand, which is already low. So this is the death blow to Tesla taking away the credits, and, and Elon was responsible for this. So, you know, once again, he can blame Trump all he wants, but Trump wouldn't be doing anything if it weren't for Elon. So Elon is responsible for the death blow for his own company. So if this all goes through the way it does and it isn't stalled out over time and with people's negative opinion towards Tesla because of Elon, I, I'm just extremely worried about the company's future.

Did your firm, Ross, does it still own Tesla shares?

Yeah, yeah. You know, our last 13F, we had 235,000 shares. And we, at one point, we had almo, we had over 500,000 shares at our top of owning Tesla, which is at the end of 21. And after the Twitter thing started happening, we started selling our stock, and we've been doing that. So our position's about 40% of what it was at the high. Um, but, you know, we still have exposure. I lost over $10 million today, and I think it's worthy of a lawsuit. Um, and I expect more of that to come in and, and hopefully these pensions and other companies will sue the board of directors for Tesla for utter and complete negligence. I mean, it's just beyond negligence.

Ross, is that a suit that you would sign on to? Is that something that you would spearhead?

Well, I'm not, I'm not a big fan of trying to resolve my problems in the legal system. I just sell my stock. That's what I have been doing and, and what I'm continuing to recommend clients to do. And we'll probably be selling more aggressively in the coming weeks and months as we learn that robotaxi isn't gonna really work, and they're not really selling any cars, and full self-driving isn't any closer to being solved because Elon's still in denial that he has a hardware problem, not a software problem. So Tesla has a lot of challenges coming up, and this is only going to make it way, way worse for them.

Tell, you know, Ross, the stock did enjoy that nice bump. I mean, even now since early April, it's up about 20%. What did you attribute that bump to? Was that, was that Musk coming back to work full time at Tesla? Was it folks getting excited about the robotaxi in Texas? What did you think?

Yeah, I think it's, it's that. I think, obviously building a robotaxi business has a lot of potential, you know, although I don't love the business, and I think it's gonna be a lot harder for Tesla than they realize. But it, but there's a perception between robotics, um, AI, um, the potential for merging Tesla with XAI, and then robotaxi making Tesla into a very interesting looking play on the future. But it doesn't change the fact that it's an EV company that sells EVs for almost 100% of its revenue. And the rest of its revenue comes from battery storage and charging, which are related to EV, and are all related to climate. So this, you know, change of Tesla from an EV company to an AI company was predicated on these things working and, and Elon having a positive relationship with the government. And so I think that whole premise is now being questioned. And if we're really just selling EVs, the numbers are horrible, and the stock should be trading under 200.