Former Vice President Kamala Harris said the Biden administration made a significant error by excluding Tesla from a 2021 White House electric vehicle event.
“I think it was a mistake to not invite Elon when we had all the other electric vehicle, American electric vehicle manufacturers,” Harris said in an interview on ‘The Diary of a CEO’ podcast released Thursday.
“And I’m no fan of his, but I admire his work as an innovator and what he has done in terms of American manufacturing of electric vehicles,” Harris added.
The August 2021 event featured executives from General Motors, Ford and Stellantis but conspicuously omitted Musk, whose Tesla dominates the US electric vehicle market.
Back then, Tesla sold approximately 66% of all electric vehicles in the US, surpassing the combined output of the Big Three automakers invited to the White House.
“I definitely regret that we didn’t do it,” Harris told host Steven Bartlett.
Musk x Harris
Over the last few years, Musk repeatedly disparaged Harris throughout the campaign.
In March, he wrote that “the American people would have been disenfranchised if the machine represented by the Kamala puppet had won,” adding, “Thankfully, we have President Trump.”
In December 2024, after Trump’s victory, Musk mocked Harris’s celebrity endorsements.
“I lost count of how many celebrity endorsements and ‘billionaires’ Kamala had supporting her,” he wrote on X. “They were all decisively defeated.”
During the campaign’s final weeks in October 2024, Musk posted that “nothing would sink Kamala’s campaign faster than a 3 hour unscripted conversation with Joe Rogan,” responding to speculation about whether Harris would appear on the popular podcast.
Podcast Regrets
Harris also expressed regret about not appearing on Rogan’s show during the campaign, saying “a lot of games were played” around scheduling.
“I wanted to do Joe Rogan’s show, and there was a lot of games being played, but I wanted to do Joe Rogan’s show,” Harris said.
“I think podcasting is a very powerful medium for people to get information, and to your point, for a lot of people that is a main source of information and it’s important for us to support that.”
She said advisers warned her against the appearance because Rogan would support Trump and it wouldn’t be “productive” for her campaign.
“My perspective was they may have their bias, but there are people that listen who are open-minded, and I’m going to go there and give them a chance to get to know me and give me a chance to make my case to them,” she said.
Trump appeared on Rogan’s podcast on October 25, 2024, in a three-hour conversation that garnered millions of views.
Political Costs of Exclusion
The 2021 White House EV event became a flashpoint in the relationship between the Democratic Party and Musk, who had previously identified as politically independent and supported Democratic causes including climate action.
According to Wall Street Journal reporting from July 2024, Tesla officials reached out to the White House multiple times after Biden’s inauguration hoping to connect Biden and Musk, but were repeatedly rebuffed.
Biden officials didn’t want to anger the United Auto Workers union, which pressured the White House to keep its distance from Musk, the Journal reported.
At the time of the August 2021 event, Tesla sold approximately 66% of all electric vehicles in the US, dwarfing the combined output of the Big Three automakers invited to the White House.
Yet Biden welcomed executives from General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler parent Stellantis while excluding the clear market leader.
White House officials called Tesla with an apology just ahead of the event to inform them that Musk wasn’t invited, according to the WSJ report.
The slight deepened at a November 2021 event promoting Biden’s infrastructure bill, where the president declared: “In the auto industry, Detroit’s leading the world in electric vehicles.”
He then turned to GM CEO Mary Barra and added: “You electrified the entire automobile industry. I’m serious. You led, and it matters.”
Musk’s response at the time was blistering. “Biden is utterly controlled by the UAW,” he wrote on X (then Twitter) in July 2024, reflecting on the exclusion. “He would rather Tesla be dead than not unionized.”
Nuanced Approach
In the “Diary of a CEO” interview, Harris defended her ability to separate political disagreements from policy considerations, even as she maintained her criticism of Musk’s political activities.
“This gets back to my earlier point about what’s the motivation for the decisions that a leader makes and the motivation has to be what is for the greater good,” Harris said, explaining why the administration should have included Musk despite personal or political differences.
