Elon Musk's comments at the New York Times' Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence
Tesla CEO Elon Musk/ Image:AFP News AFP News

Tesla not being invited to the White House EV Summit in 2021 still irks its CEO, Elon Musk.

On Christmas Eve, he took to X (earlier Twitter) to lash out at US President Joe Biden for excluding Tesla from the summit.

He wrote: "Let's not forget the White House giving Tesla the cold shoulder, excluding us from the EV summit, and crediting GM with "leading the electric car revolution" in the same quarter that they delivered 26 electric cars (not a typo) and Tesla delivered 300 thousand."

Musk did not stop with this tweet and again continued his criticism of the Biden administration on Monday. He accused the Democratic Party of being under union control.

"Most of the Democratic Party is controlled by the unions — they carry far more weight than the environmentalists — and Biden particularly so (he gladly admits it)," Musk wrote in a post uploaded on Christmas Day.

The exclusion of Tesla from the summit has been a sensitive issue for Musk. He spoke about it at the New York Times Dealbook Summit as well.

"They held an electric vehicle summit at the White House and specifically refused to let Tesla attend. Biden went on to add insult to injury and publicly said GM was leading the electric car revolution," Musk said.

This is not a sudden development; there has been a tug-of-war going on between Musk and the Biden administration for quite a while now.

Earlier this month, Maye Musk, Elon's mother, slammed President Biden after his government declined to give almost $900 million in subsidies to Musk's Starlink.

She accused Biden of hating her son, and added that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has just become another government agency "engaging in the regulatory harassment of Elon Musk".

The FCC had said that Starlink had failed to meet basic programme requirements, which is what led to it not being given the subsidy.

Starlink operates a constellation of more than 2,000 satellites that aim to provide internet access across the planet.

Like regular satellite internet providers such as ViaSat or HughesNet, Starlink also seeks to connect homes to the Internet, particularly those in rural areas and other parts of the planet where high-speed broadband Internet is unavailable.

In a Twitter post, Musk also agreed with his mother's claims and added that the US administration is "changing rules to prevent SpaceX from competing".

"What actually happened is that the companies that lobbied for this massive earmark (not us) thought they would win, but instead were outperformed by Starlink, so now they're changing the rules to prevent SpaceX from competing," he added.

Musk and his Twitter Feuds:

This is not the first time that Musk has been involved in a Twitter feud with someone or has used the platform to slam someone. Last week, he was embroiled in a Twitter feud with Brazil's First Lady Rosangela "Janja" da Silva.

The war of words began after the first lady's account was hacked on December 11. The hackers posted several messages, including insults against Janja and President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva.

In a Twitter post, she accused Musk of not taking responsibility for the "crimes" that are committed on the platform. She also accused the company, which is now known as X, of not taking quick action when her account got hacked.

But Elon said that X was not to be blamed for the hacking. "It is not clear how someone guessing her email password is our responsibility," he wrote in a Twitter post. In response to Musk's comments, Janja said that the reply was "symptomatic" of Musk.

"I didn't say it's X's responsibility for someone to 'guess' my account password, but it should be the platform's responsibility to act as quickly as possible when crimes are committed within it," she said in the statement.