Trump Thinks Elon Musk Has TDS, Says The CEO Of Tesla Is Only Upset Because The EV Mandate Was Taken Away

Elon Musk and President Trump are currently going through a high-stakes and very public separation of ways, and the ensuing near-constant dribbling of negative stories is having a detectable impact on Tesla's share price.

To wit, in his latest comments to the press, President Trump remarked that he was "very disappointed" in Elon Musk, and that too after he "helped Elon a lot." The President of the US thinks the Tesla CEO is only upset because the Biden-era EV mandate has been taken away.

Of course, the White House's retraction of Jared Isaacman's nomination for the post of the administrator of NASA has not helped to calm the situation. Isaacman was widely considered an ally of Musk.

Finally, Trump seems to think Elon Musk has TDS or Trump Derangement Syndrome!

And, Elon Musk has just lobbed another volley, going so far as to suggest that Trump could not have been elected without him.

For the benefit of those who might not be aware, the brewing bad blood between Elon Musk and Trump came to a proverbial boil a few days back when Elon Musk unabashedly slammed Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' as "outrageous" and "pork-filled." Since then, he has continued to heap criticism on this piece of legislation. However, the President and the White House have asserted that the legislation will unleash "an era of unprecedented economic growth," countering Musk by stating that the legislation delivers $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings.

Of course, there is rampant speculation that Elon Musk tried to salvage the $7,500 EV tax credit via the said bill. As we noted in a previous post, the tax credit is essential to Musk's goal of launching a cheaper Tesla model for around $30,000.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has suggested that Elon Musk's relentless promotion of xAI at the expense of OpenAI during his recent trip to the UAE with the wider Trump entourage might have contributed to the brewing bad blood between the power duo.

At the end of the day, it can't be denied that Musk paid a steep price for dabbling in politics. After all, Wall Street analysts currently expect Tesla's sales to decline by 7 percent and 5 percent year-over-year in Q2'25 and FY 25, respectively, largely driven by the brand damage that Tesla has suffered in the US and the EU from Musk's political positions.

Of course, the fear now is that Tesla might not receive a more favorable treatment from the NHTSA and other regulators as it prepares to launch an unsupervised version of the FSD, along with a dedicated robotaxi service. This thesis had underpinned a sizable proportion of Tesla's rally in the aftermath of the November 2024 presidential elections in the US.

To hammer this point home, consider the fact that Bloomberg recently highlighted the FSD's susceptibility to instances of visual impairment, including sun glare.

Of course, the FSD version tested by Bloomberg is not the one that will debut next week as Tesla's much-anticipated answer to the autonomy conundrum. Also, Elon Musk has taken pains to tout the FSD cameras' direct photon-counting ability, which supposedly precludes all potential instances of visual impairment.

Critics, however, have pointed out that the CMOS-based cameras used in Tesla HW4 are too low-tech to enable photon counting.

As of the time of writing, Tesla shares are down over 8 percent. So far this year, the stock is down around 20 percent.

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