Tesla stock falls as the Trump-Musk feud is heating up again

The billionaires are fighting on their respective social media platforms again, sending Tesla stock down 7% premarket.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump rekindled their on-again, off-again online feud over the holiday weekend, when Musk claimed to have launched his threatened third political party, the “America Party.”

In response, Trump took to Truth Social to call Musk a “TRAIN WRECK” and say his political party would cause “DISRUPTION & CHAOS.”

Now Musk is back on X making fun of the president and once again making veiled accusations of Epstein connections — in a feud that could have negative consequences for Musk’s companies, especially Tesla’s self-driving aspirations. As analyst Dan Ives wrote yesterday, “Trump can create more hurdles for Musk/Tesla/SpaceX over the coming years if this political battle gets nastier heading into mid-terms in 2026.”

This latest feud seems to be reaching a boiling point after it started again last week. After Musk criticized Trump’s tax bill, which has since become law, the president said he was going to have DOGE, the organization Musk formerly led, “take a good, hard, look” at the subsidies Musk’s companies get, and would consider deporting him. The spat seemed to cool, only to reignite this weekend when Musk said he had formed a competing political party.

The two had their first public blowout in early June, which started with criticism of the “big, beautiful bill” and ended with veiled accusations of pedophilia. Tesla stock plummeted and then recovered.

Tesla, of course, has other things weighing on it as well, including mounting problems in China, its second-biggest market; falling vehicle sales globally; and big questions about the safety of its self-driving technology.

Currently the stock is down 11% from where it closed June 4, the day before the beef first exploded.