Let’s face it these days a good laugh is hard to come by. Anything funny either allegedly offends someone or is considered to be COVID misinformation or climate change denial or some other prohibited subject for humorous commentary.
So, when Elon Musk referred to alleged President Joe Biden as a “damp sock puppet” we laughed out loud.
We have no idea where Mr. Musk came up with that new pejorative term for our dangerously inept president, but as humor it has a lot going for it – it doesn’t use the F-bomb, making it family-friendly, it conjures up a hilarious image, and it fits Biden’s bumbling out-of-touch controlled by others speaking and decision-making style to a tee.
But what prompted Elon Musk to lash out at Biden in the first place?
It turns out Mr. Musk dropped the sock puppet bomb on Biden after he wasn't invited to a meeting at the White House focusing on electric vehicles, but CEOs of General Motors (GM) and Ford were in attendance.
Musk, whose billion-dollar company makes its vehicles in California and is now headquartered in Austin, Texas, didn't take the snub lightly, replying to the tweet: “Starts with a T, Ends with an A, ESL in the middle.”
“Biden is treating the American public like fools,” Mr. Musk later complained.
And then he got really wound-up, tweeting: “Biden is a damp [sock] puppet in human form.”
According to reporting by the UK’s Daily Mail, this has been building for a while, as Mr. Musk was also snubbed in August when he was omitted as an attendee to Biden’s electric vehicle summit.
At that summit, Biden stood by the CEOs of Ford, GM and Stellantis when he announced his executive order that half the US cars sales will be zero emissions by 2030.
Press secretary Jen Psaki later said the three companies that were invited to the summit were “the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers.” Tesla's auto workers are not unionized.
The Daily Mail reported Mr. Musk later criticized the Biden administration for seemingly being “controlled by the unions.”
“Does that sound maybe a little biased or something?” Musk said at the time. “It’s not the friendliest administration.”
Mr. Musk has reason to be irked by the exclusion from the electric vehicle summit: General Motors just had an embarrassingly bad fourth quarter. GM sold only 26 electric vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2021, including 25 Chevrolet Bolt EV/EUV and one electric GMC Hummer pickup.
Tesla produced nearly 1million electric vehicles last year and made $17billion in sales in its fourth quarter.
Two days before the GM report was released, Tesla reported that it delivered 308,600 electric vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2021, another record. Its full-year delivery was just shy of one million, representing almost 100 percent growth from 2020, according to reporting by Observer.com.
What is even funnier about the Musk – Biden contretemps is that Elon Musk has had a long and beneficial relationship with the Democratic Party’s establishment elite – especially with former President Barack Obama.
During the Obama years Mr. Musk’s Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City enterprises all benefited from the various government grants, tax incentives, green energy preferences and other government largesse that the Democrats doled out.
Immediately after Joe Biden’s inauguration Mr. Musk told Fortune Magazine, “I’m super fired up that the new administration is focused on climate,” adding that he followed Biden on Twitter and was watching his moves carefully.
But snubs from the Biden White House, ridiculous COVID restrictions and the Third Worlding of California apparently soured Mr. Musk on the Democrats and for most of the past year he’s been in a war of words and memes with California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom or Joe Biden.
The war with California peaked when, after more than a year of fighting with California Democrat local and state officials over COVID mandates and high taxes, Musk moved Tesla headquarters to Austin, Texas.
Engaging in a meme war and a bit of humorous name-calling with our screwball president hasn’t turned Elon Musk into a movement conservative, but it has added his formidable intellect and immense fortune to our side of the battlefield on certain issues, where his help should be most welcome.
Elon Musk
Damp Sock Puppet
Electric vehicles
Tesla
Electric vehicle summit
Ford
General Motors
unionized auto workers
electric car sales
COVID restrictions
Tesla moves to Austin Texas