Tesla and SpaceX CEO and billionaire Elon Musk recently took to social media to criticize President Joe Biden and call him a “damp sock puppet” for not inviting him to a White House meeting for top business leaders.
Musk, 50, blasted Biden in a series of tweets on Thursday in which he described the POTUS as a “damp socket puppet in human form,” according to Fox Business. The tweets were sent as a reply to Biden’s tweet stating that “Companies like GM and Ford are building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before.”
“Biden is treating the American public like fools,” Musk tweeted.
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The White House invited several top business leaders, including General Motors CEO Mary Barra and Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley, to a meeting on Jan. 26 to discuss Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better (BBB) bill. Musk was not invited to the meeting.
The meeting was held to discuss how the BBB bill will “make the U.S. economy more competitive, increase worker productivity and workforce participation, lower inflation over the long-term, and strengthen business growth,” a White House official said, Reuters reported.
The BBB bill will reportedly increase the $7,500 Electric Vehicle (EV) tax credit up to $12,500 for union-made vehicles, as well as make GM and Tesla “eligible for the existing tax credit again after they hit the 200,000-vehicle limit for the credit.”
The BBB bill will also reportedly allocate a budget of up to $3.5 billion to convert factories so they can manufacture EVs. Biden reportedly plans to make 50% of all the newly produced vehicles in the country electric by 2030.
However, the BBB bill was reportedly stalled after U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) refused to support the bill, New York Post reported.
In the meeting, Biden reportedly praised GM’s recent investment of $7 billion in Michigan to boost EV and battery manufacturing and create 4,000 jobs.
This is not the first time Musk has posted critical tweets about Biden. Late last year, he reportedly called out the president’s administration and said they were “maybe a little biased” and seemed “to be controlled by unions” after the White House excluded Musk from an EV summit in August 2021 attended by Ford, GM and Stellantis.
Explaining why Musk was not invited, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the three invited companies are “the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers,” potentially hinting that Tesla was snubbed because its employees are not unionized.
Musk unveiled Tesla’s new showroom in China’s Uyghur Autonomous Region earlier this month, as NextShark previously reported. The Xinjiang store reportedly offers both sales and delivery services.
