Joe Biden, left, and Elon Musk
Evelyn Hockstein Reuters; Andrew Harr Bloomberg | Getty Images
The feud between President Joe Biden and Tesla CEO Elon Musk does not seem to be cooling off any time soon.
Musk said no one had watched Biden since the president did not mention Tesla in his speech on the state of the Union on Tuesday.
“No one is monitoring the state of the Union,” Musk said in an email to CNBC. Biden highlighted the combined $ 18 billion investment from Ford and GM to build electric vehicles. Tesla, a giant in the electric car industry, was not mentioned in Biden’s address to the nation. Musk did not immediately return subsequent requests from CNBC for comment.
Musk later tweeted directly to Biden, saying that “Tesla has created more than 50,000 jobs in the United States in the electric vehicle industry and invested more than twice GM + Ford together.”
The lack of mention of Biden, leading to Musk’s latest comments, comes after CNBC reported on the ongoing battle between the billionaire and the commander-in-chief. Musk, who also runs the space research company SpaceX, has a net worth of more than $ 235 billion, according to Forbes.
Musk had earlier told CNBC in an email that Biden had “ignored Tesla,” noting that if he had ever been invited to a White House event, the administration had nothing to worry about. I would do the right thing. ” Musk has not yet attended Biden’s White House meeting with other corporate leaders, including those with Ford and GM executives.
According to people familiar with the matter, Biden and senior White House officials have signaled to their allies in private that they have no immediate plans to invite Musk to upcoming summits. These people refused to be named to speak freely in private.
Musk had previously scolded the president on Twitter, recently in late January, after Biden met with General Motors CEO Mary Barra and Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley at a briefing with other corporate leaders to discuss the president’s initiative. Build Back Better, which stopped in Congress. Musk tweeted that Biden called “a puppet of wet socks in human form.”
Behind the scenes, the president and his team have been exacerbated by Musk’s criticism, according to more than half a dozen people familiar with the matter.
Biden’s advisers have privately declined to invite Musk to future events in the industry, fearing that the outspoken CEO will say something that could upset the president or the administration, according to someone familiar with the discussions.