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During 23 years with the BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, has always watched transfixed as important individuals plunge in popularity, and their fall often came in the full glare of publicity.
Now this is underlined by news that despite what he says Elon Musk’s business interests may be in trouble, and this could be connected with his closeness to Donald Trump.
I’ve seen it happen so many times.
The reputations of influential figures can be riding high one minute, and in the gutter the next. Take the case now of Elon Musk. He is a multi-billionaire, whose business interests span the globe. But look a little closer.
For example, investors in his car company Tesla appear to be disconcerted by falling sales, and it may be driven by dislike over his right-wing views, as well as his closeness to Donald Trump.
Boycotts (and worse) have been mounted, with even Republicans spurning the car. Mr Musk has been bullish in earnings calls, but the truth could be more troubling for him.
Revenue from car sales in the first quarter was down by a fifth, year on year, and operating profit plummeted by two-thirds. Tesla’s market value has fallen by roughly half since its peak of around $1.5 trillion in December. Early last month the company reported that it delivered just 337,000 vehicles in the quarter, 13 per cent fewer than a year before and well below analysts’ expectations. In Europe, which accounts for around a fifth of sales, registrations of new Teslas slid by 40 per cent.
In America, the carmaker’s biggest market, sales fell by almost nine per cent, even as those of all electric vehicles rose by 11 per cent. Slumping sales could partly reflect a backlash against the politics of Mr Musk, who has lately refashioned himself into a right-wing activist and nemesis of America’s “deep state”. Tesla’s showrooms have faced protests and arson attacks since Mr Musk took his chainsaw to the federal government as head of Mr Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
All of this hints at a deeper problem for Tesla: stiffening competition. By contrast with its early years, when it was essentially unchallenged, the carmaker now faces serious threats from rivals such as General Motors (GM) (in America) and BYD (in China and elsewhere).
Apart from Tesla’s troubles, look, too, at Mr Musk’s business interests in the world of social media. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Mr Musk planned to throw $45 million a month behind Mr Trump’s presidential run, because he claimed the Trump-Vance ticket “resounds with victory”.
But this came amid figures showing that at one point the monthly US ad revenue at X had declined at least 55 per cent year-on-year each month since he had bought Twitter and changed the name.
X has struggled to retain some advertisers since the takeover, and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Linda Yaccarino, had to meet bank lenders who helped finance Mr Musk’s acquisition to outline the company’s business plans and reassure them.
Make no mistake, Mr Musk is still a multi-billionaire, but these facts could be difficult. For many years stories on the website I edit, The Eye, were published automatically on Facebook (FB) and Twitter (then X). Now it is only FB, and what has happened recently has emphasised that this was the right thing to do.
His latest travails may have something to do with customers being put off by his trenchant right-wing views, as well as being in Mr Trump’s administration. In The Times, writer Janice Turner declared: “Elon Musk sits astride Twitter/X as the living embodiment of all that is screwed up and vile about his site…so now the question for users is why stay?”.
This was after a contentious comment by him on X that “civil war is inevitable”, during the recent right-wing riots in the UK. Mr Musk’s inflammatory announcement during those riots, showed him with a video in Liverpool, but a spokesperson for Sir Keir Starmer said the violence came from a small minority of people who “do not speak for Britain”, and the Prime Minister did not share the sentiments of the billionaire, who has himself been criticised for allowing far-right figures back on to his social media platform. The spokesperson added: “There’s no justification for comments like that. What we’ve seen in this country is organised, violent thuggery that has no place, either on our streets or online”.
Mr Musk also shared a video of a person purportedly being arrested for offensive comments online, asking: “Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?”, and replied to a post criticising UK policing, suggesting the police’s response “does seem one-sided“.
He shared, too, a fake Daily Telegraph (DT) article claiming Sir Keir was considering sending far-right rioters to “emergency detainment camps” in the Falklands.
Mr Musk deleted his post after about 30 minutes but a screenshot captured by Politics.co.uk suggests it had garnered nearly two million views before it was deleted. In it, he shared an image posted by the co-leader of the far-right group Britain First (BF), Ashlea Simon, which she captioned with, “we’re all being deported to the Falklands”.
The fake piece, purportedly written by a senior news reporter for the DT and mocked up in the newspaper’s style, said camps in the Falklands “would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots as the British prison system is already at capacity”.
But Mr Musk’s remarks and endorsements have not simply been opposed by the UK Government. The head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Stephen Parkinson, declared that his interventions over the riots were: “deeply unhelpful”.
Mr Musk seems to have unlikely backers. For instance the extreme right wing activist Tommy Robinson appears to be a supporter of his. A post by Mr Musk included a Family Guy meme featuring its main character in the electric chair, alongside the words: “In 2030 for making a Facebook comment that the UK government didn’t like”. Mr Robinson reposted it with the comment: “If it wasn’t for Elon Musk. The government and legacy media would’ve had me hung, drawn and quartered, without reply, over their failings”.
Controversies about his businesses shine the spotlight on previous information about Mr Musk. He has been described by his daughter as a ‘cruel and absent father’, and major firms boycotted his social media site after allegedly anti-Semitic remarks.
Mr Musk had supposedly agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish or other people were stoking hatred against white people. He said that the user who referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was speaking “the actual truth”. The conspiracy theory holds that Jews or others are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations that will lead to a “white genocide”. It has also been spouted during the riots, with Jews replaced by Muslims.
Major firms including Disney, Warner Bros and Sky News’ parent company Comcast pulled their advertising, and Lions Gate Entertainment as well as Paramount Global also said they were pausing advertising. It was reported that Apple was pulling ads too. IBM also halted its advertising on X after a report by Media Matters (MM), the US media watchdog, found that its ads were placed next to pro neo-Nazi content.
These (as with the problems over Tesla and X) are only the latest challenges to face Mr Musk, and he has always possessed a well-known propensity to turn to the law to resolve them.
It has been revealed, for example, that a not-for-profit organisation was forced to close, because it was presented with a lawsuit from Mr Musk.
His platform claimed the advertising group Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), illegally conspired to boycott advertising on his platform. “GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances”, the group said in a statement. It continued: “GARM therefore is making the difficult decision to discontinue its activities”.
It has also emerged that Mr Musk has sued MM alleging it manufactured the report showing advertisers’ posts alongside neo-Nazi content. In a lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Texas, it was claimed that MM “knowingly and maliciously”portrayed ads next to hateful material “as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform”.
Meanwhile, he has always denied that he is against Jews. He has, for instance, proclaimed: “To be super clear: I am pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind“.
But to Mr Musk’s critics this is pure humbug because he has described George Soros (the 93 year old Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, and a frequent victim of anti-Semitic attacks), as ‘reminding him of Magneto’ (a Marvel comic villain who is also a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust).
Mr Musk has also engaged in a very public spat with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is a high-profile organisation opposing anti-Semitism and racism. He has threatened the ADL with legal action, blaming it for a collapse in advertising revenue, when it could, in fact, be to do with the nervousness of companies associating with him.
Perhaps there is also nervousness among customers, if Tesla and X aren’t doing too well..
The memories of Phil’s, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when the rise and fall of influential figures was often reported) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disease Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Tomorrow – how a leading Labour figure who the Government say champions “gender equality worldwide” has endorsed the Prime Minister (PM) by declaring the controversial legal ruling over trans rights, which split the left including groups in Wales, “offers clarity”.
Harriet (Baroness) Harman backed Sir Keir Starmer, and her role in previous legislation central to the contentious judgement was crucial as she wrote the law in question – the Equality Act 2010.
Last month the UK Supreme Court grabbed the headlines by ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex under this law, and afterwards, when Sir Keir was asked if he still believed that a transgender woman was a woman, the PM’s official spokesman said: “No, the Supreme Court judgment has made clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman”.
Yet in March 2022, when he was leader of the opposition, Sir Keir told The Times that “a woman is a female adult, and in addition to that transwomen are women, and that is not just my view – that is actually the law”.
However trans rights have been a totemic issue for the left, replacing unemployment, so the legal judgement is likely to ignite civil war within left-wing circles, and tomorrow The Eye will re-publish our story after the contentious ruling about how it might affect the Welsh independence organisation YesCymru.
