Elon Musk has found the most unlikely of enemies as socialist self described "Democratic socialist" and generally uninformed former bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has recently thrown herself into the public eye as a critic of Musk and Tesla.
According to a report by The Daily Caller, Ocasio-Cortez slammed Tesla on Monday night during a climate change town hall that was organized and hosted by ranking socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. In what can be only be described as a "broken clock right twice a day" type of moment regarding Ocasio-Cortez's understanding of economics, she took on Tesla for not returning to taxpayers what they have invested in the company.
She was quoted as stating: "When we as a public choose to invest in new technologies, we deserve a return on that investment."
She continued: "For far too long, we gave money to Tesla, we gave money to a ton of people and we got no return on our investment that the public made in creating technologies, and it’s about time we get our due because it’s the public that funded and financed a lot of innovative technologies."
While Ocasio-Cortez is sniffing down the right path in the sense that Tesla is a cash furnace that is worthy of almost any and all critiques lobbed upon it, perhaps she didn't notice that Tesla paid back its Department of Energy loan in 2013. After all, she was only 24 at the time.
Of course, Ocasio-Cortez did not go into specifics as to exactly how she would like Tesla to repay this investment, nor did she talk about specifically where the company has failed. Those types of details would require more than a surface level examination of the facts.
Recall, we wrote just days ago about Elon Musk‘s most recent interview with Axios that aired on HBO last Sunday.
While Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the rest of the company's board of directors were posturing as though everything was fine earlier this year - even as the company struggled with ramping its Model 3 production and its CEO became the target of both the SEC and the Department of Justice - the reality of the situation below the surface was far closer to what most skeptics had suggested.
Speaking to Axios, Musk admitted that Tesla "faced a severe threat of death" earlier this year and that it was "bleeding money like crazy" as it worked through its crucial Model 3 production ramp. In the interview, Musk admitted that the company "came within single-digit" weeks of death before it was able to meet its production goals.
"Tesla really faced a severe threat of death due to the Model 3 production ramp. Essentially, the company was bleeding money like crazy, and if we didn't solve these problems in a very short period of time, we would die. And it was extremely difficult to solve them."