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Tesla thrown under the bus in dinner conversation with Donald Trump
Tesla has grown much over the years, as evidenced by the domination of the Model 3 in the premium sedan segment and the rise of factories like Giga Shanghai. Yet, at the same time, the level of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) that the company and its supporters have had to deal with have also intensified over the years. Even today, with TSLA stock at record levels, and with the company overtaking Volkswagen as the second largest automaker in the industry by market cap, anti-Tesla FUD is still at an all-time high.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, one must acknowledge a rather inconvenient truth. There is a massive misinformation campaign against Tesla, and it has been going on for years. One simply needs to look at a recently leaked recording of a 2018 White House dinner with US President Donald Trump to see proof of this.
Recently, a 90-minute recording of Trump and several dinner guests was shared with the public by a lawyer for Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born businessman who was reportedly involved in ousting American diplomat Marie Yovanovitch, the US’ ambassador to Ukraine. Several topics were discussed in the recording, one of which was electric vehicles in the United States and Tesla’s chances of survival.
During a particularly alarming part of the recording, which came at around the 58-minute mark, several individuals in the dinner started talking about electric vehicles. The US President asked how electric cars are doing in the market, and his inquiry was immediately met with a prompt “Not good.” A guest of the dinner then went on a long tirade against Tesla, filled with, unsurprisingly, a ton of FUD. Granted, Tesla was in a far more challenging place at the time when the recording was taken, but the sheer dislike for the company is quite shocking nonetheless.
“Tesla’s broke. 100%. They can’t produce them. The auto companies have caught up to him. He’s never generated anywhere close to positive cash flow. He’s subsidized by 25,000 per vehicle. It’s over. The other thing people forget about it it’s great to have an electric vehicle, but you gotta plug it in and get a charge somewhere.
“And, the carbon footprint of this phone is the same as a refrigerator running. You need to generate the power. And generating it with wind and solar, wind and solar only generates 3.5% of our power usage today. You would take 50 years to get up to 5% at the rate we’re growing. It is still fossil k generating power. You have to have nuclear, you have to have oil and gas, and you have to have coal,” the guest said.
This statement, of course, is rife with misinformation. Since the time when the recording was taken, Tesla had only reported negative cash flow two times. The company posted positive cash flow four times. The alleged $25,000 subsidy that Teslas receive is also a complete fabrication, as the electric car maker’s federal credits only topped around $7,500. Of course, the comparison between the carbon footprint of a smartphone being comparable to the footprint of a running fridge is equally false.
The conversation only gets stranger from this point, and even with US President Donald Trump bringing up the topic of Tesla’s stock price, the attendees of the dinner were dismissive of the company. A guest even threw some shade at Elon Musk, stating that the CEO is “a little off socially.”
Fortunately for Tesla, the company appears to have reached a point where its results already speak for itself. Even with the FUD being thrown at Tesla’s efforts in China, for example, the company started MIC Model 3 deliveries before the facility’s construction hit the one-year mark. Despite all the alleged demand problems for the Model 3, the all-electric sedan has also maintained its momentum in regions such as Europe, driving down the point that there is a genuine demand for Tesla’s electric cars.
Watch US President Donald Trump and his dinner guests discuss electric vehicles, Tesla, and Elon Musk in the video below.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
