Giving Patrick Boyle the last word on Musk v. Trump

As always, I feel slightly guilty about posting excepts from these transcripts (they're never as good without Boyle's delivery), but here are a few highlights. [Proofed and reformatted by ChatGPT]

 

The biggest sign that things would not last of course was the  Jim Cramer tweet.  Once Cramer said he was bullish on the friendship, you could basically set your  watch to it knowing that disaster was looming.

Now, I hate to say this – but if Musk is right in saying that he made Trump – Trump should probably be a little bit nervous – as it has become somewhat noticeable over the years that everything Elon Musk makes – burns to the ground.

Judged on sales alone, the Cybertruck has been more of a flop than the Edsel – and that is a big deal, because the Edsel has gone down in history as an enduring icon of failure in the automobile industry. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, ineffective marketing, flawed design, a high purchase price, and poor workmanship led to “consumer blowback” when the Edsel was released in 1957. While Ford had planned to sell 200,000 Edsels a year, they only managed to sell 63,000 cars and had to scrap the new brand entirely two years later.

Elon Musk predicted that he would sell 250,000 Cybertrucks in the first year – after all, he had taken a million deposits – but Tesla ended up selling just under 50,000 Cybertrucks. The failure could possibly be blamed on ineffective marketing, a flawed design, a high purchase price, poor workmanship, and general fugliness – but none of this actually mattered – as, despite the decline in sales, Tesla stock rose 62.5% and hit an all-time high in 2024.

I asked Grok – Elon Musk’s chatbot – why the stock had gone up so much despite all of the bad news and the corporate underperformance. I figured Grok would be the best person – or graphics card – or whatever it is – to ask, as Elon Musk has described it as being “scary smart.” Grok explained to me that despite a decline in Tesla's vehicle deliveries, Tesla stock surged because of Elon Musk's political influence and because of optimism about Musk's close ties to Donald Trump and his advisory role within the U.S. government.

Grok said that investors were betting that Musk’s influence in government could lead to favorable regulatory changes for his businesses.

Now, I had to ask Grok if it thought that the investors had been foolish in their optimism, and it told me that “their enthusiasm looks like it was riding more on hope than on grounded reasoning.”

I wasn’t really sure about the ethics of the whole situation either, so I asked Grok if it thought that this was an example of crony capitalism – and it replied yes…

I’ll tell you – life has gotten a lot easier now that I can outsource my morality to a graphics card.