EXCLUSIVE! Tesla board made Elon Musk post again Trump
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Elon Musk is shifting his tone on Donald Trump after weeks of backlash triggered a rare internal warning from Tesla's board of directors. Public criticism surged following Musk's prominent role in Trump's second administration. And for the first time in years, Tesla's leadership told Musk directly that his political behavior was damaging the company.

Multiple people familiar with that matter said the board told Musk he would need to walk back his statements about Trump and fast or risk losing his position at Tesla. Now, the shift began in late spring, shortly after Musk stood next to Trump at a White House press event and doubled down on the federal layoffs driven by Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. And Musk had personally overseen the cuts, defended them publicly, and celebrated his success at the Oval Office.

But inside Tesla, those moments created a different kind of panic. Key customers began canceling orders. Sentiment on investor calls turned hostile. Tesla stock dipped sharply in the two weeks following Musk's highest-profile political appearances. Board members took notice as well.

Two directors, including one who has worked with Musk since Tesla's earliest years, warned that public association with Trump was becoming an existential threat to the brand. They argued that Musk's recent political comments were alienating core Tesla buyers, many of whom lean liberal or identify with climate activism. One director reportedly told him, "You can't sell clean energy cars while backing someone tearing up the EPA."

Tesla's internal data team had already flagged concerning trends. Social media sentiment analysts showed Tesla's brand approval had dropped by double digits in key markets like California and New York. Suburban buyers, once a stable Tesla demographic, were voicing concerns about Musk's comments on LGBTQ rights and his dismissive tone toward climate policy. Tesla's PR team, which Musk had famously dismantled, struggled to mount any kind of response.

Privately, Elon Musk started softening his language. At a June meeting, he was asked about his role in Trump's second term. And for the first time, he didn't answer with his usual bravado.

He said only that he believed in efficiency and wanted what was best for the country. He avoided using Trump's name entirely. The silence wasn't random. Sources close to the board say they told him that disassociating from Trump was non-negotiable if he wanted to maintain his leadership position. The pressure came as Tesla faced other vulnerabilities.

Its market global share had begun shrinking under intense competition from Chinese electric vehicle makers, and the company also remained under federal investigation for safety violations tied to autopilot. Any appearance of political favoritism risked drawing unwanted attention to those cases, especially since Musk had helped dismantle the regulatory agencies meant to oversee them.

Now, board members also raised concerns about brand consistency. For years, Tesla marketed itself as a clean tech leader, a climate-first brand backed by innovation. Musk's political rhetoric was pulling the company into a completely different orbit. When Musk echoed Trump's anti-trans talking points and used terms like woke mind virus, Tesla's legal and marketing teams received a wave of emails from longtime customers threatening to cancel orders. At the

At the core of the board's concern was shareholder trust, though. After Musk's purchase of Twitter, now X, many investors question whether he could balance Tesla's needs with his growing political ventures. The Trump alliance pushed those concerns over the edge.

Major institutional investors warned that Musk's behavior was destabilizing the company's value. Some quietly began trimming their Tesla holdings. And the final breaking point came when Tesla's customer satisfaction rating dropped below 70% for the first time in the company's modern history.

Internal polling attributed the decline directly to Musk's political activity and public persona. One director told colleagues that, "...our product didn't get worse, our CEO did." And after the internal push, Musk began a slow retreat. He has not publicly apologized for his role in Trump's administration, but insiders say he issued a private statement to test the board members, acknowledging that he had let personal convictions interfere with company responsibilities.

That message wasn't released publicly, but was seen as the first step toward more visible damage control.

And Musk's recent tweets have also reflected this change. In early May, he posted praise for renewable energy initiatives in Europe, shared a photo of Tesla's solar installation in Puerto Rico, and promoted an LGBTQ-friendly hiring campaign at a Tesla plant in Nevada. Those posts are part of what some inside the company describe as a coordinated effort to rebalance his image. Still, Tesla employees remain skeptical.

Several said that unless Musk offers a direct public apology or makes a clean break from Trump, the damage may already be done. Others within the company fear that Musk's political ambitions will resurface after the immediate backlash fades. And at a June meeting, one director proposed setting up a formal political conduct clause in Musk's executive agreement, an unprecedented move at Tesla.

And that proposal has not yet been approved, but its existence signals just how seriously the company now views the situation. And for Elon Musk, the tension between personal freedom and corporate leadership is becoming harder to manage. He built Tesla on the back of a progressive consumer base and now finds themselves at odds with much of his user base.

That same community that built Tesla and made him so rich, they feel like he has turned his back on them. And now he's on a public campaign to wash away everything that he did with Donald Trump.

All the negative things that he said about the community, everything he said about people, he's trying to wash that all away. That's what these people think. And his public turned toward hard right politics and only needed a segment of the market that made Tesla one of the most admired brands in the entire world. Now, if Musk doesn't make a more explicit public correction, the company may face deeper problems.

Now we all know if you've been following this, that Elon Musk had broken ties with Trump on X. Therefore he thinks that does the company. Well, I'm sure the shareholders found that good and people inside the company were impressed by that. But he also just said, I may have taken things too far. He didn't say he disagreed or he's completely cutting ties with president of Donald Trump.

He's just said that he may have taken his actions a little bit too far, which if you know the policies in Tesla right now and what they're looking to put on his executive contract in the future, I think political leanings for Elon Musk or any CEO that may be replacing him, which isn't the case at this point, but anybody that may be replacing Elon Musk in the future is

I think they should be held accountable for any political damage that they do to the brand. My own personal opinion. I think Elon Musk went wild for a little bit there on X and he's pulled back. He's apologized. And for most of the people that used to support Elon Musk, they believe this is a PR campaign. He doesn't really feel this way.

Elon Musk is just posting these things on X. They even think the break from Donald Trump. Some people think the break from Donald Trump, even internal people on the board think the break from Donald Trump or know that the break from Donald Trump is actually just a PR stunt to convince just enough people from left leaning policies, those kind of people to buy Tesla's again.

The stock is dipping. The sales are going away. And if you can get even a small margin of those people back by pretending to be done with Trump, because Trump, as was stated,

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all of his companies. Donald Trump said that. And then immediately Elon Musk blew up at him and said, they're going to stop doing the dragon spacecraft. That's the spacecraft that sends humans to the international space station into space. They're going to cut all of that funding and stop, um, making new versions of the dragon. They plan that anyway. Yeah.

Elon Musk and SpaceX has been planning that for years. They were going to decommission the older dragon spacecrafts and just use the new versions. They can't get rid of the dragon spacecraft. They have contracts with NASA. They have contracts with the government. They have private contracts to send people to space. They can't decommission the whole thing right away.

But they are planning to decommission the Dragon spacecraft when Starship comes fully online, when they can send people to space, to low Earth orbit and to the moon and Mars, et cetera. With Starship, they're going to decommission that anyway. So the plan was there to decommission it. Elon Musk didn't state a time frame. He said immediately. But who knows what crafts he was talking about?

Um, and this is because I have covered space X for the last five years in know the ins and outs of the company and you know, what their, what their briefs and briefings are and what has been talked about the dragon spacecraft, the newer versions will stick around the older versions decommissioned. So maybe Elon Musk was talking about that and maybe this was what some people feel internally at Tesla. They feel that this was all smoke and mirrors.

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