The Trump-Musk rift is realistically 'permanent' after fallout

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Tesla (TSLA) stock is staging a recovery Friday morning after sinking and erasing $153 billion of market value on Thursday in response to CEO Elon Musk's ensuing feud with President Trump. This all comes one week ahead of the EV developer's launch of its robotaxi beta in Austin, Texas.

ROTH MKM senior research analyst Craig Irwin and The Washington Note Founding Editor at Large Steve Clemons join the Morning Brief team in discussing Musk and Trump's relationship and whether this fallout could impact Musk's other businesses.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.

00:00 Speaker A

That kind of turns an eye to the vindictive activity that President Trump has been known to have in the past, expecting that they would just come together and high five at the end of this. So, as you're kind of looking through the the other broader risks here, not just the Tesla, but of course, and not within a coverage universe right now, SpaceX and the other businesses, seems like there are different areas where Trump could go after Musk, and Tesla might not be the the core focus of that, but it still is the one that investors have to grapple with at least in the near term whether they want to hold Tesla voluntarily or do as a result of it being in one of the indexes.

01:40 Speaker B

So both of them have have a record of being highly vindictive, right? There's some some stories that haven't really found their way into these books that have been written about Elon Musk, but he has really humiliated some of the executives that he's fired over the last many years. Um, President Trump, I guess most of the public first knows him from his time on on the apprentice, right? Where his uh, he was humiliating people by by the way he was firing them, but then it was turned more or less into a comedy, right? And I think that Trump has shown shown the ability to rechannel that vindictiveness, um, maybe a little bit more effectiveness than than effectively than Musk in in the last couple years. Um, and they do both tend to step back from, you know, mistakes or heated situations and re-evaluate. So I'm not I'm not overly concerned about the short-term. I mean, the tremendous downdraft in Tesla yesterday did not give me a good feeling, but I think at the end of the day, we have two men that have the shared interest and shared vision of the future that differs slightly, and they'll both understand that, and I think there will be a coming together, and I do see a high five, um, probably not today, but in the not too distant future.

03:57 Steve

Steve, we got to go 15 seconds. Are you expecting a high five? We still talking about this story next week, or this the pop

04:07 Speaker C

I I think it's I I mean, I don't think this is a kumbaya situation between these two men. You know, I think this is going to be a permanent rift. Um, I I think that uh, I think they've gone nuclear with each other and and gone after each other in such a way and so publicly. I don't I don't see that as a realistic option. I do see both sides surviving well. But, you know, when you accuse somebody of saying, hey, they're in the Epstein files, which is really a lot about sexual innuendo, and you're talking about removing all grants and trying to sort of destroy the other person, you know, you know, Musk is sort of the Da Vinci of our times, and he's complicated, but when you have that, this is not going to end in a way that's nice for either one of them. Both equities of the US government and Donald Trump will be fine, you know, and and Tesla will be fine. I agree with Craig in that, but they're not going to high five.