Former Vice President Kamala Harris said her onetime boss, former President Joe Biden, made a ‘big mistake’ by not inviting Tesla CEO Elon Musk to a 2021 White House event on electric vehicles.
In August 2021, Biden hosted an EV event at the White House with executives from General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, but Musk was not invited, despite Tesla being the nation’s leading EV manufacturer.
‘I write in the book that I thought it was a big mistake to not invite Elon Musk when we did a big EV event,’ Harris told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell on Tuesday at the news outlet’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., referring to her memoir, ‘107 Days,’ in which she criticized Biden for initially running for re-election despite his health struggles.
‘I mean, here he is, the major American manufacturer of extraordinary innovation in this space,’ Harris said of Musk, who is also the CEO of SpaceX.
Musk’s snub was widely viewed as an effort to support the United Auto Workers and organized labor overall, since Tesla plants are not unionized. Harris wrote in her book that she believed Biden was ‘sending a message about Musk’s anti-union stance’ but that she thought excluding him as the top player in the field ‘simply doesn’t make sense.’
Then–White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the event featured ‘the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers,’ emphasizing that Tesla’s workers are not unionized.
Pressed on whether Musk’s snub was punishment for his workers not being unionized, Psaki told reporters: ‘I’ll let you draw your own conclusion.’
The Biden administration defended inviting only those automakers, calling them key partners in the president’s push for union jobs.
Harris said that presidents should ‘put aside political loyalties’ when it comes to recognizing technological innovation.
‘So, I thought that was a mistake, and I don’t know Elon Musk, but I have to assume that that was something that hit him hard and had an impact on his perspective,’ she said.
Musk did appear to take offense after he was not invited to the event, taking numerous jabs at Biden.
‘Yeah, seems odd that Tesla wasn’t invited,’ Musk wrote at the time on social media.
A month later, he said the Biden administration appeared to be ‘controlled by unions’ and was ‘not the friendliest administration.’
After Musk learned Tesla would not be invited, administration officials offered an apology, according to The Wall Street Journal. Biden aides later attempted to soothe things over, but tensions remained.
Harris’ comments on Tuesday mirrored a passage from her new book in which she wrote that the Biden administration’s move not to include Tesla was a mistake and that it appeared to alienate Musk, who later became one of current President Donald Trump’s top financial backers.
‘Musk never forgave it,’ she wrote.
Musk later endorsed Trump in the 2024 election and contributed roughly $300 million toward Republican campaign efforts.