Donald Trump has gone all in on Elon Musk with a Tesla tirade on Truth Social, complaining that Tesla (one of Musk’s companies) is being unfairly targeted. Musk’s unelected role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has involved cutting jobs for thousands and ending select federal contracts, and not everyone’s a fan. Tesla sales and stock have been crashing, and Tesla dealerships have faced protests and even vandalism. So to support Musk, Trump said in his Truth Social post that he’d be buying a Tesla. He posted on the evening of March 10, and by March 11, five Teslas were at the White House, as was Musk (and one of Musk’s many children).

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Trump spoke with reporters outside the White House, standing between one of the cars and Musk, and at one point, Trump pointed at Musk and said, “there’s no better team,” seemingly referring to himself and Musk. You’d think that Trump’s closest teammate would be JD Vance, but nope.

It’s yet another moment of the Trump and Musk love fest that makes some question why VP JD Vance is even around. Trump also said of Musk, “We have to take care of our high IQ people because we don’t have too many of them and we have to take care of them,” via X. We don’t often hear Trump describe Vance that way, though Trump did say in his inauguration day speech that Vance was smart, but his wife Usha Vance was even smarter, via YouTube.

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JD Vance didn’t attend the unexpected White House-turned-Tesla showroom event, nor was there any mention of him by Donald Trump. Instead, the event seems to be all about Trump supporting and promoting Elon Musk — a multimillion dollar political donor. 

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While we haven’t yet heard from Vance about the Trump-Musk-Tesla situation, people on social media certainly have thoughts. Some thought it was funny that Vance seemed to be clearly out of the loop in the whole situation. One person joked on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Waiting for the Trump branded Sham-WOW! for washing Tesla’s. In gold of course.” Another said: “This is like Joe Biden hosting a Hunter Biden art exhibition with his paintings for sale at the White House, only Hunter is actually the unelected co-president and not just a private citizen.”

Vance is said to be unbothered by Musk’s continued presence at the White House. We wonder how long that feeling will last as Trump seems to continue to put Musk ahead of Vance. Perhaps Vance’s next step will be buying a Tesla for himself as a way to help further ingratiate himself to Trump and reassert himself as a part of the team.

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If JD Vance did buy a Tesla, that would be a flip-flop for him. He’s talked about Teslas not being his thing, and he’s disparaged electric vehicles in general. But now that Donald Trump has publicly promoted Teslas, we wonder if Vance will get on board. Vance was previously anti-Trump and anti-MAGA, so walking back prior statements wouldn’t be a surprise.

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But like Vance, Trump’s also spoken out against electric vehicles, as recently as his address to the joint session of Congress in early March 2025  in which he noted that he’d eliminated a policy from Joe Biden that would have required cars to produce less pollution. The Trump administration has also cut off the power to around 8,000 electric car chargers on federal property.

Trump has acknowledged the role that Musk has played in what little support he has given to electric vehicles, specifically, it seems, Teslas. At a rally in Atlanta in August 2024, Trump said, “I’m for electric cars. I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” via YouTube. Musk publicly promoted Trump for president in July 2024.

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