Mark Cuban Calls Out Elon Musk After CEO’s Bizarre Conference Call Tirade

It was just two days ago when Elon Musk lashed out at California officials for extending the state (and, most importantly, Tesla’s) lockdown orders. As we noted, the notoriously volatile CEO went off on a bizarre expletive-laden tirade, calling government officials “fascists” and at one point simply asking “what the f*ck?”.

While it’s been clear to us for years that Musk appears to be completely unstable, Elon’s pattern of bizarre behavior culminating in this most recent conference call, where he weighed in on something that is life or death for so many people, may have turned some other innocent bystanders into critics.

For example, social media was littered with people using the #BoycottTesla hashtag, calling Elon out on his bluff:

He is willing to risk workers’ lives to get his $725 MILLION stock option windfall. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone. Yet the protective laws are fascist. Yeah, right. @elonmusk is garbage. #boycottTesla https://t.co/0Ey2ehm3Ep

— Bob McMahon (@ram_mcmahon) April 30, 2020

And another one of these new outspoken critics is billionaire Mark Cuban.

Cuban was asked about the conference call while on Fox News on Wednesday, where he summed it up perfectly:

“Anything that negatively impacts Tesla, Elon hates, period, end of story. You know, I don’t think he has other people’s interests at heart.”

He continued: 

“My attitude is you’ve got to be smart. We don’t have to rush back into things. We get to learn.”

Meanwhile, Musk is doubling down on obviously false predictions he had made about the coronavirus months ago, including where where he predicted the U.S. would have close to zero new cases by now. There were over 26,000 cases reported on April 29, the day of Tesla’s conference call.

Recall, toward the end of Tesla’s conference call, Musk unleashed a 5-minute rant doubling down on his stance against the shelter-in-place orders that have gripped the United States economy in recent weeks, warning that the factory shutdowns are a “serious risk” to the electric automaker’s business.

“It will cause great harm, not just to Tesla, but to many companies,” Musk said on the call.

“And while Tesla will weather the storm, there are many companies that will not. Everything people have worked for their whole life is being destroyed in real time.”

“It’s breaking people’s freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong and not why they came to America or built this country. What the fuck. Excuse me. Outrage. Outrage.”

“Frankly, I would call it forcible imprisoning of people in their homes against all of, their constitutional rights, in my opinion” he said, and then slammed the government imposed shutdown of all non-essential businesses as undemocratic and downright “fascist.”

“If somebody wants to stay in their house, that’s great and they should be able to,” he said. “But to say that they cannot leave their house and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist.  This is not democratic, this is not freedom, give people back their goddamn freedom.”

The full rant can be heard in the clip below. It begins about 35 minutes into the clip and lasts about 8 minutes: