Elon Musk said his companies are “suffering” due to his work with the Trump Administration, pointing to recent attacks against his EV company.
In the second half of a two-part interview on Fox News’ “Special Report” that aired Friday, Bret Baier asked the CEO to address any conflict of interest between his business empire and his work at the White House.
Musk, who runs SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, X, and a tunneling company, was designated a special government employee after President Donald Trump’s electoral victory.
He has put much of his focus on cutting federal spending. The White House has said that Elon Musk is not the head of the DOGE office, which is leading the administration’s efforts to downsize the government, but the CEO has repeatedly been referenced as the de facto leader.
Musk said it has been “disadvantageous for me to be in the government, not advantageous,” adding that his “companies are suffering because I’m in the government.”
Musk pointed to the recent troubles at Tesla.
The company has experienced a stock dip amid disappointing global sales figures and investor concern that the CEO is spending too much time away from his company. Tesla also has faced a series of protests, vandalism incidents, and attacks against its showrooms and vehicles — which Musk cited to Baier — raising concerns from some on Wall Street that Musk has damaged the brand of his company. It’s unclear what the impact has been on his other companies.
Musk previously said he was overseeing his companies with “great difficulty,” and, in a surprise all-hands Tesla meeting on March 20, urged stakeholders to “hang on to your stock.”
The Tesla CEO’s business empire has been supported by billions of dollars worth of government contracts or subsidies and still stands to gain during Trump’s second term.
The White House’s DOGE office, for example, has moved to either de-fang or entirely shut down government agencies that were once investigating Musk’s companies.
Earlier this month, Trump stood in front of the South Lawn of the White House with several Tesla models for a media event, praising the electric vehicles he was once hesitant to endorse.
The president’s second term has created an uncertain economic landscape with his reliance on tariffs as a leveraging tool against global trade partners and as a way to urge companies to produce domestically.
Wall Street estimates that Trump’s recent 25% tariffs against all auto and auto part imports could cost the industry as much as $82 billion.
Musk said in an X post on Wednesday that his company would not be “unscathed” by the tariffs, but Tesla could be the winner in the outcome as the company would be relatively insulated from the tariffs’ impacts since all of its cars are final-assembled in the US.
A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
