Trump Buys Tesla: Shows Support at WH

Aakhir Tak – In Shorts

Trump bought a Tesla, fulfilling his promise and showcasing vehicles outside the White House.
He selected a red Model S sedan to show support for Elon Musk.
Five Tesla vehicles were on display at the White House’s South Lawn.
Trump called Tesla “a great product” and praised Elon Musk.
Tesla’s stock saw an increase of nearly 4%.

Aakhir Tak – In Depth

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US President Donald Trump held a press conference at the White House’s South Lawn with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in tow. But this time, the White House turned into a Tesla showroom, with five vehicles in the background and the President buying a red Model S sedan to show his support to the EV company chief as he faces backlash over his efforts to downsize the federal government. This Trump Tesla event made headlines.

On Tuesday, just hours after Trump announced on Truth Social that he planned to buy a Tesla, the EV company delivered five of its vehicles to the White House and parked them on a driveway for Trump to personally inspect them. This was a show of support for Elon Musk.

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“Wow, that’s beautiful. Everything’s computer,” Trump said as he got into the driver’s seat of a Model S.

Musk got in on the passenger side and joked about “giving the Secret Service a heart attack” as they talked about how to start a vehicle that can reach 95 km per hour in a few seconds. This interaction at the White House was notable.

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Addressing reporters, the President said that he would write a cheque for the car, which retails for roughly $80,000, and leave it at the White House, so his staff can drive it.

“It is a great product, as good as it gets… Elon has devoted his energy and his life to doing this, and I think he has been treated very unfairly. We have to celebrate him,” he said, praising the Tesla CEO. The Model S was the car of choice.

As a result of Trump’s gesture towards his tech billionaire ally, Tesla’s stock ended up closing nearly 4 per cent on Tuesday, a day after it plunged over 15 per cent, marking its steepest single-day drop in years.The EV company’s market cap currently stood at $696 billion. This was a welcome boost for Tesla Stock.

On his part, Musk announced at the White House press conference that Tesla was going to double its vehicle output in the US as “an act of faith in America”.

Following Trump’s landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election, Tesla’s valuation reached an all-time high at $1.5 trillion on December 17. But in less than three months, the EV company’s stock price fell by 45 per cent.

As per media reports, the decline in Tesla’s stock price was attributed to falling sales figures, as well as Musk’s work under his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which seeks to fire hundreds of thousands of government employees as part of a broader budget overhaul under the Trump administration. The EV market is constantly evolving.

On Monday night, the Republican president announced that he was going to buy a new Tesla as “a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American”.

“Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!” Trump wrote. “But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for.”

This latest show of support comes after X was allegedly targeted by a “massive cyberattack” that disrupted the social media platform on Monday, as well as four Tesla Cybertrucks set ablaze in Seattle on Sunday night.

Aakhir Tak – Key Takeaways to Remember