Tesla investors hopelessly turn to TSLA board to rein in Elon Musk

Some Tesla investors are hopelessly turning to the company’s board of directors in the hope that they would rein in Elon Musk following growing concerns that he is negatively affecting Tesla’s brand.

Over the last two years, Musk has tested the faith of his fans and Tesla investors. Many have raised concerns that his behavior since acquiring Twitter could be negatively affecting Tesla’s brand.

On several occasions, like most recently when he was trying to bully Mark Zuckerberg into fighting him at his house, Tesla investors have called for the board to act and rein in its CEO. The board of directors, which is the only body with power over the CEO of a company, has never acted so far.

Now, following Musk’s agreement with an antisemite comment on X, more Tesla investors are calling for the board to suspend or remove him.

Jerry Braakman, president of First American Trust, called for the board to suspend Musk for 30 to 60 days to “send a message.” He said (via CNN):

“I believe in free speech, but there’s no excuse for spreading hatred by a CEO of a public company.” 

He is not alone in calling for Tesla’s board to act. Several other prominent Tesla investors have made similar comments – some going as far as calling for the board to fire Musk. However, the chances of that happening are extremely low. Not only has the Tesla board never acted on Musk’s more extreme behaviors, they have not even commented on it.

The board is technically independent and is supposed to be acting with the best interest of shareholders in mind. It could fire Musk, who owns less than 20% of Tesla, but the CEO has been known to be very close to several board members and hold a lot of influence on the board.

Musk’s brother, Kimbal, is even on Tesla’s board.

Electrek’s Take

Alright, this one is a mess. I’m not going to lie. Elon fans will call me a hater, and Elon haters will call me an apologist no matter what, so here we go:

The media is having a field day calling Elon antisemite over the tweet, and this time, it’s hard to argue against it. He seems to have clearly agreed with a tweet that was tinted with antisemitism.

For those not aware of the situation, the whole thing is about this simple thread:

In short, a Jewish person challenges antisemites to say their antisemite rhetoric “to their faces,” and an X user claims to take him up on the challenge. Apparently, “to their faces” now means anonymously and online?

The X user makes a poorly worded argument about “Jewish communities” pushing “dialectical hatred against whites” and then seems to blame Jewish people for “hordes of minorities” immigrating to the West.

Elon decided to agree with that moron.

Now, do I believe Elon is an antisemite? No. I don’t think that’s the case. I am not trying to excuse his behavior, but I think it has more to do with his obsession with X and the poor level of communication on the platform.

Elon is at war with the Anti-Defamation League and similar organizations that are attacking X for what they claim is not doing enough to prevent racism and antisemitism on the platform.

Now, I don’t think Elon wants to promote antisemitism or racism on X, but I also don’t think X currently has the resources to manage that properly. Elon also sees the boycott attacks by ADL and others as a personal attack from the left or a “woke virus” against him.

When he sees people fighting against that, he supports them, like in this case – even though they are in that fight for different reasons. The nuance of that is not clear on X.

Now, at the end of the day, he is still agreeing with an antisemitic sentiment, which is obviously going to be hurtful to many.

My main concern is that he doesn’t recognize that nor is he apologizing for it. The longer that takes, the more it’s becoming difficult to argue against the fact that he is antisemitic himself.

That’s where Tesla investors should be concerned. He seems to be losing his grasp on reality and critical thinking when it comes to himself and how his cult of personality is distorting the reality around him.

But asking Tesla’s board to do anything is useless, in my opinion. I’ve completely lost faith in them.

Unless they publicly explain their stance on this situation, I think investors should vote them all out at the next election.