Dan Ives warns Musk's political drama could spell trouble for Tesla

The Wedbush analyst says Musk's DOGE fallout could cause permanent brand damage to Tesla.

Transcript

00:00In terms of the Doge fallout, how much brand and reputational damage do you think was done

00:05to Tesla? How long does it take to recover from that? And how big of a risk is Musk not necessarily

00:11playing nice with President Trump? Yeah, look, five to 10 percent, probably

00:15permanent brand damage in terms of your five, 10 percent of maybe consumers that will never buy

00:21Tesla, right? I think that will ultimately feed some of that within the U.S., which is why it

00:29speaks it was so important for Musk to distance himself from Trump and Doge. I think Europe,

00:35the brand issues are probably more damaging than maybe in the U.S. And I think we're seeing that in

00:41some of the numbers. But look, I mean, it happened, right? I mean, Doge took on a life of its own. And

00:48I think, you know, Musk recognized that. I do believe when it comes to Trump, there's a cordial

00:54relationship. I think I do think they become kind of friendly, you know, slowly again. I don't view

01:01that as a negative. I think Trump is going to continue to be a supporter of autonomous, the

01:06Musk vision. But look, this is going to be some work ahead, right? Especially when it comes to brand

01:13some of the issues that they're having in Europe, in U.S., as well as in China.