Trump and Elon’s Oval Office Tesla auto show

So Donald Trump and Sean Hannity are each springing for a Tesla. It shouldn’t prove much of a hit to their respective wallets, seeing as how each has amassed a not insubstantial fortune thanks to the emergence of the MAGA movement, though Hannity is probably something of a piker next to Trump. Trump went all-in: “Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! 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 stand for.”

Trump had several Teslas lined up in the White House driveway for his perusal but he never indicated whether he will install a charging station to ensure that his new car can actually hit the open road. With their immense torque, the Teslas are a hot number even if Democrats are balking at procuring one. No matter what you think about Elon, Teslas are indisputably nifty cars — not luxury like Mercedes Benz but elegantly spartan with a special nook for charging your smartphone.

Here in Amsterdam, where I’m visiting this week, an industrialist friend snorted with contempt when I suggested that buying a Tesla might be infra dig. He loves his model S, not least because of a handsome subsidy that the Dutch government hands out for buying one. Trump, by contrast, has been breathing fire about subsidies for EVs, claiming that we should remain wedded to the good, old industrial combustion engine — a notion that renders the left combustible.

But as Tesla, once the most virtuous of virtue-signaling products, comes into bad odor, Trump is reversing field. It’s his favorite tactic. One day he cuts off Ukraine from military aid. The next he restores it. Another day he imposes tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The next day he rescinds them. And so on. Truth be told, it requires something of a mental gymnast to follow his tergiversations or, if you prefer, contortions.

What Trump himself would do with a Tesla is an open question — though he indicated it would be a gift for his granddaughter Kai. His purchase of one suggests a kind of loyalty to Musk that he has not hitherto displayed. Here’s hoping that Musk makes his appreciation abundantly apparent. In the Trump White House, as the recent visit of President Volodymyr Zelensky underscored, fawning obeisance isn’t an option.

Hannity is a different story. Unlike Trump, for whom his second term is a last hurrah, the Fox host has a longer game plan in mind but buying a Tesla conflicts with it. There’s no evidence that Republicans are thirsting to abandon the jet-fuel age. 

If Trump and Hannity procuring a Tesla is the best Musk can do, he may be headed for the skids. Trump has managed to emerge from his own serial bankruptcies intact, but the notion that he can rescue Musk from his follies defies credulity. As his stock value collapses and his dealerships are boycotted, Musk may be headed for a kind of financial X-ile.