Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been a consistent critic of the US response to the coronavirus pandemic, calling panic over the virus „dumb“ last month and not something people should be overly worried about right now.<\/b>
\nWell, that escalated pretty quickly.
Tesla\u2019s earnings call on Wednesday started off with a standard rundown of the electric carmaker\u2019s latest performance and miscellaneous fundamentals over the past 90 days. And then, all of a sudden it seemed, Tesla CEO Elon Musk went full-on MAGA after the presentation to analysts was a little more than halfway finished, with the brash billionaire ranting and even cursing to make a couple of points in response to the quarantines and shelter-in-place orders around the country as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Orders, he added, that are causing considerable worry at Tesla, which Musk said produces \u201cthe vast majority of our cars\u201d in the Bay Area \u2014 where a stay-at-home order was just extended through most of the next month.
\u201cThe extension of the shelter-in-place or, frankly, I would call it forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights \u2014 my opinion \u2014 and erasing people\u2019s freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong, and not why people came to America or built this country\u2026 What the fuck?\u201d (\u201cExcuse me,\u201d he added, as an aside.) \u201cIt will cause great harm, not just to Tesla but to many companies. And while Tesla will weather the storm, there are many small companies (that) will not. And all of people8A60371A0499703BA433F56457878721\u2026 everything people have worked for their whole life is being destroyed in real-time.\u201d
This diatribe, we should add, came after the CEO posted a very Trumpian pronouncement to his always-feisty Twitter account late Tuesday, and his replies to that tweet prefaced the extended and seemingly impromptu rant he gave during the electric carmaker\u2019s latest quarterly earnings call.
Popstar Ariana Grande\u2019s mother Joan Grande was among those who jumped into the fray in response to Musk\u2019s tweet, calling him \u201cirresponsible\u201d and \u201cnot very smart\u201d \u2014
As we\u2019ve reported, Musk has been a consistent critic of the US response to the coronavirus crisis pretty much since its inception, with the CEO tweeting back in March that \u201cthe coronavirus panic is dumb\u201d and then doubling-down on that after drawing fire because of the tweet. In a memo to workers at his company SpaceX, he declared that the coronavirus doesn\u2019t even rank on a list of the Top 100 things we should be worried about in the US right now.
As of Wednesday night, according to the latest numbers from Johns Hopkins University, more than 1 million cases of the virus have been confirmed in the US, and there have been almost 61,000 deaths. That\u2019s more American lives than were lost during the Vietnam War.
Undaunted, Elon returned to Twitter after the Tesla call Wednesday, tweeting out this chart:
At one point during the Tesla call, a questioner brought up former Intel CEO Andy Grove\u2019s maxim about great companies being improved by crisis, and how is the current coronavirus crisis possibly improving Tesla? Musk conceded that this moment in time is forcing the company to be more efficient, and to think about its core beliefs and \u201cwhat we want to do.\u201d And then he fired back up again.
\u201cThis is the time to think about the future,\u201d Musk said towards the end of the call, before returning to the coronavirus-related shelter-in-place orders. \u201cAnd also to ask \u2014 is it right to infringe upon peoples\u2019 rights, as is happening right now? I think people are gonna be very angry about this. And are very angry. If somebody wants to stay in their house, that\u2019s great \u2026 but to say they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do \u2014 this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom.
\u201cGive people back their goddamn freedom.\u201d
At that point, I counted about six full seconds of silence from all participants on the call, which was eventually broken by: \u201cOkay, let\u2019s go to the next question, please.\u201d<\/p>\n