The Morning Joe panel had a laugh at Elon Musk’s expense as Tesla’s stock price suffered its biggest single day decline in nearly five years.
The company’s stock plunged 15.43 percent Monday, as part of a wider market downturn caused by President Donald Trump’s trade wars and refusal to rule out a recession.
Musk’s personal net worth took a staggering $29 billion hit as a result, tumbling from $330 billion on Sunday to $301 billion as of Monday evening, a 6.7 percent decline. This is its worst hit since September 2020, when it tumbled 21.1 percent.
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This caused giddiness on the Morning Joe panel Tuesday. A segment was played from Musk’s Monday sit down with Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow, where the billionaire described entitlements like social security and Medicaid as they key to slashing government spending in a meaningful way.
He described entitlements as a “gigantic money magnet” for illegal immigrants that, if cut, could save up to $700 billion.
Financial Times chief U.S. commentator Edward Luce pointed out that illegal immigrants don’t actually avail of social security and said that even Trump knows that messing with retirement benefits is “political dynamite.”
He then came out with a withering put down, saying Musk’s “political standing in this town is falling almost as fast as Tesla’s share price... he is an albatross around Trump’s neck.”
“Well,” said host Joe Scarborough as co-host and wife Mika Brzezinski added: “Not that fast! Have you seen Tesla?!”
“Let’s not overstate it,” Scarborough added, as the whole panel laughed at the billionaire’s expense. Only Jonathan Lemire did not crack totally, but he did struggle to contain his grin.
Also in the interview with Kudlow, Musk appeared to become emotional when talking about Tesla’s fate. He said he was running his businesses “with great difficulty.”
It comes as Bloomberg reports that Musk is not the only billionaire in Trump’s orbit to have suffered big losses. Tech titans Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg were all present at the president’s inauguration on Jan. 20, and all of their companies have suffered.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows that, since the close of trading on Jan. 17, Musk has lost $148 billion in overall wealth, Bezos $29 billion and Zuckerberg $5 billion.
