Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Fox News viewers to buy Tesla stock, calling CEO Elon Musk “probably the best person to bet on” he had ever met.
Lutnick offered the investment advice on Wednesday’s episode of Jesse Watters Primetime after host Jesse Watters had delivered a long monologue criticizing the vandalism of Tesla vehicles, dealerships, and charging stations, and protests directed at the company and Musk over his support for far-right politics and wide-ranging budget cuts and layoffs that were happening as part of DOGE’s efforts to reshape the federal government.
Watters introduced Lutnick and asked him, “How are you interpreting firebombing Teslas?”
“This is so outrageous,” replied Lutnick. “You probably have the best entrepreneur, the best technologist, best leader of any set of companies in America, working for America, and you have this sort of weird side of the Democratic Party attacking him.”
“Let me remind you, he is the guy that saved the astronauts, saved the astronauts and he’s the guy who’s going to build the next generation technology,” Lutnick added, presumably referring to NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, who returned to Earth Tuesday after a nine-month delay on the International Space Station. Williams and Wilmore’s extra time on the ISS and return has been the subject of a surfeit of misinformation from Musk and the White House, including false claims that President Joe Biden “stranded” them.
“I think if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla!” Lutnick continued. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap, it’ll never be this cheap again. When people understand the things he’s building, the robots he’s building, the technology he’s building — people will be dreaming of today and Jesse Watters and thinking, ‘gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk’s stock!’ I mean, who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk? You gotta be kidding.”
“Alright, so you’re calling the bottom? This is it?” asked Watters.
“Whether today is the bottom or not, I tell you what, Elon Musk is probably the best person to bet on I have ever met,” said Lutnick. “And I think, we all know that, I mean, gosh, in the same week that he saves astronauts with his rockets that he invented — imagine that. He’s building, he’s building the coolest robots you’ve ever seen. Go online and look up ‘Optimus’ — it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen, we’re all gonna be buying robots, they’re gonna cost about $30,000, you’re buying a Tesla robot, and anybody who doesn’t buy a Tesla robot is gonna be silly, no one’s gonna be keying anything. Elon Musk is the best entrepreneur and technologist in America and I’d bet on him — I wish I was allowed, but I’m not allowed to buy any stock!”
“Alright, alright,” Watters interjected, “Secretary, I gotta stop, I gotta stop you, you’re saying we will have $30,000 robots that I can buy and boss around and get them to do chores, is that what you are saying?”
“Absolutely! Go online and look up Optimus!” replied Lutnick.
“When do I get a robot?” asked Watters.
“I think he says at the end of ’26, he’s gonna start making tons of robots, ’27 and ’28, he thinks 2028 you and I are each gonna have five robots each. They’re gonna mow our lawn and they’re gonna make us coffee and they’re gonna make our bed…and they’re gonna fix our bathroom and renovate our bathrooms — I’m telling you we are gonna have very nice bathrooms!”
“OK, Johnny is out of a job, but my bathroom will be sparkling clean,” said Watters, laughing. “God help us all.”
Musk did found SpaceX and named the Dragon spacecraft that was used to bring home Williams and Wilmore after the Peter, Paul, and Mary song “Puff the Magic Dragon,” but it is almost certainly a stretch to say that he “invented” the rocket, lacking education in the engineering and rocket science knowledge needed. He did say on an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2021 that he told the SpaceX engineers to make the tip of the Starship “more pointy” because of a scene in Sasha Baron Cohen’s 2012 film The Dictator. “I thought it would be funny to make it more pointy, so we did.”
Lutnick’s televised promotion of Tesla stock drew swift criticism over the potential legal issues and ethical conflicts.
Why on earth are Cabinet officials promoting a company’s stock? And the stock of a senior government employee at that? This is through the looking glass of ethics violations. https://t.co/8EXBOcPzNB
— Dan Shapiro (@DanielBShapiro) March 20, 2025
If this cabinet secretary himself owns any of the stock he’s touting on TV, he’s probably committed a serious ethics offense.
If he doesn’t own the stock himself, then he probably hasn’t broken any laws, but is engaged in a shameful breach of trust with the audience watching. https://t.co/P1cll3pGAt
— David Frum (@davidfrum) March 20, 2025
This is like Gina Raimondo going on MSNBC and telling people to buy Hunter Biden’s paintings, only if Hunter was the unelected co-president and not a private citizen https://t.co/oTLTcbNp1H
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2025
When Kellyanne Conway encouraged Fox viewers to buy Ivanka Trump’s clothing line, the top Oversight REPUBLICAN called it “wrong” and asked the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to look into it.
Tonight, the Commerce Secretary on Fox encouraged people to buy Tesla stock.
— Sam Stein (@samstein) March 20, 2025
