Elon Musk offers his take on who’s really controlling Democratic Party: ‘One does not need to speculate’
By Vivek Saxena
Billionaire investor Elon Musk accused the Democrat Party of being beholden to unions, and as evidence he cited the way President Joe Biden’s administration treats him versus how it treats the corrupt United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
“I think the general public is not aware of the degree to which the unions control the Democratic Party. One does not need to speculate on this point,” he said in an interview last week with the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley club.
He then specifically drew attention to how the Biden administration refused to invite Tesla to its electric vehicle summit last August, despite the company producing more EVs than any other company in the world.
“Last year, President Biden held an EV summit where Tesla was explicitly not allowed to come, but the UAW was. Tesla’s made two-thirds of all electric vehicles in the United States, so deliberately excluding us from an EV summit at the White House but including the UAW, that tells you all you need to know,” he said.
The issue, Musk continued, is that Tesla is a non-unionized company, and the UAW and its allies (including the Biden administration) resent this. Never mind that he has a perfectly valid reason for not allowing the company to unionize.
“Tesla has the highest pay in the water industry. Moreover, the people that work at our Fremont Plant have like, you know, five job offers to work somewhere else. There’s negative unemployment in the Bay Area. Like try hiring someone in the Bay Area — it’s ridiculous. It’s negative unemployment,” he said.
“So our challenge is how do we convince people to stay given the many other opportunities that they have, let alone a union. Like, they’re like, ‘what, we don’t need a union — I’ve got five other job [offers].’ That’s the real reason. It’s the complete opposite of what they’re characterizing.”
The UAW likes to characterize Musk as a greedy, profit-motivated capitalist pig who doesn’t care about his allegedly suffering employees.
In summary, the billionaire investor believes he was snubbed last year because of his refusal to allow Tesla to unionize. And indeed, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s words appear to confirm this.
Asked last whether Tesla’s non-union status was the reason for the snub, she said, “Well, these are the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.”
She meant GM, Ford, and Stellantis, the three unionized auto makers who were invited to the EV summit alongside their UAW overlords.
The Biden administration went on to snub Tesla numerous additional times.
For instance, the president’s “Build Back Better” plan contained a provision that would have provided purchasers with “$12,000 for buying an electric car … unless it’s a Tesla,” as reported by Reason magazine.
Then in January of this year, every major EV producer in America was invited to the White House except for Tesla.
“President Joe Biden met with the company’s biggest competitors at the White House to applaud their efforts–with Tesla CEO Elon Musk notably absent,” according to Forbes.
“CEOs of General Motors, Ford and engine-maker Cummins basked in the glow of the president’s praise for their efforts to curb carbon pollution, boost U.S. manufacturing and support Biden’s stalled Build Back Better legislation.”
And then after the meeting, the president posted a tweet praising GM and Ford for “building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before”:
The tweet annoyed Musk. He responded by reminding the president of Tesla’s existence and calling him a “damp sock puppet.”
Look:
The president snubbed Tesla again during his State of the Union address roughly a month later.
“The US President praised Ford and General Motors during the address for investing in the country to build electric vehicles and creating local jobs,” according to NDTV.
When the president doubled down in a tweet, Musk clapped back with some facts.
Look:
How far would the USA be with renewable energy if the government didn’t subsidize it? How clean would gas and coal be if the government put this much money into these well established forms of energy production?