Trump: "Crooked Joe Sold Them Down the River With His Ridiculous All Electric Car Hoax"

Earlier this week, president Donald Trump staged an impromptu infomercial in front of the White House in a desperate bid to prop up Elon Musk's embattled carmaker, Tesla.

The bizarre appearance demonstrated Trump's unprecedented willingness to debase himself, putting on his best impression of a Tesla car salesman.

The stunt wasn't just an unprecedented display of corruption; it also highlights Trump's shameless flip-flopping on his support for electric vehicles.

Remember in 2023, when former president Joe Biden's administration made a concerted push to electrify American roads and Trump accused him of selling out the United Auto Workers, who went on strike against major automakers to fight for higher wages and better union representation for battery plant workers?

"Crooked Joe sold them down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post at the time, referring to the Biden administration subsidizing the EV industry.

Republicans blamed the Biden administration's pro-EV stance for revenue losses incurred by major automakers.

Trump's stance on EVs has bounced back and forth, from a full-throated endorsement to excoriating comments opposing their existence. In 2022, he went on a bizarre rant, arguing that we should get "rid of this stuff." Just two years earlier, he said that he was "all for electric cars."

Vice president JD Vance has similarly rallied against EVs, going as far as introducing a bill that called for $7,500 incentives for new gas or diesel-powered vehicles instead.

But now that Musk has infiltrated the US government with the purported goal of excising $1 trillion in spending — essentially doing the dirty work on behalf of the Trump administration — the president is singing a dramatically different tune yet again.

"I don’t like what’s happening to you," Trump told Musk during this week's sales pitch, likely referring to Tesla's financial woes.

"Wow," he gushed, after climbing into a $80,000 Model S. "That's beautiful."

Trump's actions and verbal promises have flatly contradicted each other. Last year, Trump told an audience during a campaign rally that he had "no choice" in being "for electric cars" now that "Musk endorsed me very strongly."

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has rolled back Biden-era EV rules, nixing targets to have half of all new vehicles sold in the US to be electric by 2030, a non-legally-binding executive order signed by Biden in 2021.

The administration's EPA also rolled back vehicle emissions targets this week.

Whether Trump's stunt will have the intended effect of propping up the carmaker remains to be seen. As experts have pointed out, associating the already tarnished brand even more closely with the Trump administration could end up backfiring spectacularly.

Even Tesla attempted to distance itself from the White House, arguing that the president's extremely harmful trade war could end up exposing it to retaliatory tariffs.

In short, Trump's self-serving, on-and-off-again stance on EVs demonstrates that it never was about electrification or environmental policies. This week's White House showroom event was nothing short of a naked attempt to line the pocket of the richest man in the world.

Put simply, Trump is pro-Tesla and pro-Musk — not pro-EV.

But Tesla is in crisis right now. With sales numbers falling from the sky worldwide, investors are starting to get cold feet. Even the brand's biggest bulls on Wall Street are concerned Musk's abhorrent behavior could leave lasting scars.

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