Elon Musk publicly melted down on Thursday over a recent report from the Wall Street Journal that claims the billionaire’s car company, Tesla, is looking to replace him as CEO.
On Wednesday, the Journal reported that, in recent weeks, Tesla’s board had begun the search for a new corporate leader. Sources familiar with the internal conversations said that board members had “reached out to several executive search firms to work on a formal process for finding Tesla’s next chief executive.” The company ultimately zeroed in on one major search firm, the newspaper says. It is unclear if the search is ongoing or whether Musk even knew about it prior to the reporting, the newspaper claims.
Tesla has since denied the report. In a post made to Musk’s platform, X, Tesla’s chair, Robyn Denholm, said the following: “Earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company. This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published). The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”
On Thursday morning, Musk retweeted Denholm’s post, adding his own vitriolic commentary to the mix: “It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the [WSJ] would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors,” Musk said.
Later, Musk tweeted: “WSJ is a discredit to journalism.”
The Journal claims it reached out to Musk for comment before the story was published, so ostensibly Musk would have had time to personally deny the report if he wanted to. Gizmodo reached out to Tesla and Musk for comment.
It would be difficult to say that Musk has been a particularly present or effective corporate leader over the past few months. Instead, Musk has been very busy leading the Trump administration’s DOGE effort that is designed to shrink the government and cut federal spending. That effort has been a complete and total mess, and has inspired intense hatred from millions of Americans.
Since helming DOGE, Musk and Tesla’s standing have plummeted all over the world. Indeed, Musk’s DOGE-work has become the subject of nationwide political protests, which have targeted the car company’s corporate profits. During Tesla’s most recent earnings call, it was revealed that the car company’s profits had plummeted by a whopping 70 percent during the first quarter of this year. Tesla sales are also dropping all over the world, most dramatically in Europe.
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