Billionaire Elon Musk grilled President Joe Biden after being excluded from a White House summit meeting with domestic electric vehicle producers, including the CEOs of General Motors and Ford.
The meeting was held with top business leaders to promote Biden’s Build Back Better Act.
Biden’s Twitter account shared a video of him standing alongside GM CEO Mary Barra and discussing the company’s role in combating climate change through production of electric vehicles.
“I meant it when I said the future was going to be made right here in America. Companies like GM and Ford are building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before,” the caption read.
Musk left multiple comments on the video, calling out Biden for disregarding Tesla’s efforts in electric cars. “Starts with a T Ends with an A ESL in the middle,” he wrote.
One user tweeted that Biden is “trying to cancel a great American company and rewrite EV history,” to which Musk replied, “Biden is treating the American public like fools”.
He also called the president “a damp [sock] puppet in human form”.
Back in August, Musk was not invited to the White House’s electric vehicle summit. Biden stood with executives from Ford, GM and Stellantis as he announced his executive order for half of all US car sales to be zero-emission vehicles by 2030.
When asked why the Tesla CEO was not present at that event, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said only “the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers” were invited, implying that Tesla was excluded because its hourly employees aren’t unionized.
According to the New York Post, Tesla “delivered a record 936,172 electric cars in the 2021 fiscal year, an increase of 87 percent compared to the previous year”.
