CEOs Who Just Won't Shut Up
I’ve been an enthusiastic walker, hiker, and sometimes skier for decades. Every year for the last fifteen, I’ve walked or run over three million steps. Probably even more before that, but back then, I wasn’t counting.
And I love the gear. Boots, backpacks, hats, sunglasses—I’ve owned them all, worn them all out, and loved every minute of it.
In 2003, I joined the Raleigh Recreational Hikers, a Meetup group, and eventually became its president. We hiked year-round, tackling some serious trails. Around that time, I decided I needed to upgrade my outdoor gear.
I Bought REI. So Who's the Asshole?
I don’t know why I remember this so clearly, but I really wanted something—anything—from Patagonia. Their gear wasn’t just good; it was cool. I think it was a vest I saw someone wearing on one of our hikes.
Patagonia gear was expensive. For me, this wasn’t an impulse buy—it was an investment. So, I did what any rational person did in 2003: I researched online. And that’s when I found a quote from Patagonia’s CEO, Yvon Chouinard, about the 2004 election:
“Vote the assholes out.”
Now, to be clear, I didn’t vote for George W. Bush. I wouldn’t have, ever. By my reckoning, he’s the second-worst president of my lifetime. On bad days, he takes the top spot.
But I never thought—and still don’t think—he was an asshole. He struck me as a decent man, one who got lost in his own delusions and incompetence, dragging the country into two costly, seemingly endless wars. That was bad.
Really bad. But like many Americans at the time, I thought his opponents might have been worse. And with U.S. soldiers fighting and dying overseas, maybe calling the president an “asshole” wasn’t the most productive civic engagement.
I had already made up my mind about Bush. I didn’t need a guy who sells expensive clothes made in China telling me how to think—especially in such an obnoxious way.
I bought my gear at REI instead—including a high-tech fleece I still love. Twenty years later, I wore it on my ten-kilometer walk this morning. Patagonia lost a sale. I doubt they care.
I also wrote a lengthy email to Yvon Chouinard. I doubt he cared about that either.
Turns out Chouinard is a reliable, left-wing Democratic hack. He sued Trump over something or other. Fine, I guess. I didn’t vote for Trump either. He also fawningly eulogized Jimmy Carter—a president I rank higher than most, but still pretty bad.
But hey, Carter wore the right color jersey. That’s what really matters, right?
Here’s the thing: I don’t care about Chouinard’s politics, or Patagonia’s. They’re generic, off-the-shelf left-wing Democrat views, and if I wanted those, I could turn on the news.
His clothes? Now that’s another thing. Patagonia gear is genuinely innovative—stylish, functional, and high quality.
So why in the world would a guy with a business like that feel the need to mix in a big honking mess of political nonsense?
Patagonia wasn’t the only time politics invaded my shopping cart.
The "Everybody I Dislike is a Nazi" Two-Step
Around the same time, I started taking dance lessons—loads of fun, and I actually got pretty good! Before too long, I needed a proper pair of dance shoes. A friend recommended an online shop based in Missouri—St. Louis, I think. Supposedly, it was legit, carried everything, and had great prices.
Don’t you just love the internet?
But before I could check out, I had to click through a series of screens—not about shoe sizing or shipping policies, but about George W. Bush. According to this store, Bush wasn’t just a bad president. He was a fascist. A Nazi.
This is idiotic. If a boring, anodyne figure like Bush is no better than Nazis, then Nazis are no worse than George W. Bush.
And even if this guy truly believed it, why shove it in my face? On a website selling shoes? Over the years I danced, I spent hundreds of dollars on shoes. Not one dime of it was spent on his site.
Of course, this was a small business, privately owned. The only person who suffered for that stupidity was the owner.
But what happens when billion-dollar corporations pull the same stunt?
Bud Light, anyone?
If any beer could claim to be "right-wing," it’s Bud Light.
In 2022, it was the best-selling beer in America—by a wide margin. It outsold Coors Light, the number two brand, by two-to-one.
Then, in what would become a case study in corporate self-destruction, Bud Light made a stunning move: it partnered with a transgender influencer in a marketing campaign that had nothing to do with beer and everything to do with politics.
The backlash was immediate. Loyal customers felt mocked. Sales plummeted—over a billion dollars a year, gone. A billion dollars! And they’ve never recovered.
Let’s be clear: this wasn’t about expanding their customer base. Bud Light didn’t launch an outreach campaign to LGBTQ consumers or try to sell more beer. It was an ideological statement.
Wall Street noticed. AB InBev’s stock cratered by 20%. Three years later, it’s still dead money, while the S&P 500 is up nearly 70%.
If I sold Bud Light, of course I’d want transgender people to drink my beer. But this wasn’t a business—it was virtue signaling. It alienated core customers, burned billions in value, and in the end, probably didn’t sell a single extra bottle of beer.
Self-inflicted corporate disasters aren’t exclusive to the left. If Bud Light’s downfall was a spectacular nosedive, Mike Lindell’s MyPillow collapse was a slow motion train wreck, one from which you just couldn’t look away.
Once a ubiquitous, jovial TV pitchman and a wildly successful businessman, Lindell built MyPillow into a juggernaut. At its peak, it was selling an incredible 30 million pillows a year and employing over 1,500 people. Then, after the 2020 election, he threw it all away.
Lindell became consumed by election fraud conspiracy theories, insisting—over and over—that he had irrefutable proof Joe Biden stole the presidency. He spent millions on lawsuits, slandered legitimate companies that were perfectly innocent, and in the process, let his own empire burn.
The consequences were brutal. Nearly every major retailer—including Walmart—dropped MyPillow from its shelves. The company auctioned off 850 pieces of equipment. It downsized. It couldn’t pay its shipping bills—FedEx and DHL have sued for millions.
And for what? Because Donald Trump lost an election?
Even if Lindell were right—and he’s not—what good is a bankrupt activist? If he had kept MyPillow thriving, he could have supported his cause for decades. Instead, he burned his own business to the ground. His net worth was once estimated at $300 million. By the time the dust settles, it’ll be far, far lower than that.
Bud Light and My Pillow Were Small Potatoes
Bud Light and MyPillow were disasters—but they were niche products. A brand of beer and a quirky pillow cratering in the name of dumb politics is bad, sure, but neither was a trillion-dollar global powerhouse. What’s happening at Tesla, on the other hand, is corporate self-sabotage on a scale I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.
And what’s happening at Tesla is that its stock price has fallen from over $480 a share in December to less than $250 as I write this—a 48% decline in a period when the S&P 500 is down about 6%.
Contrary to breathless media reports, Tesla’s sales and profits have not collapsed. In March of last year, Tesla reported earnings of $0.46 per share on sales of $21.3 billion. This month, Wall Street expects earnings of $0.52 per share on over $23 billion in revenue.
I’ve seen so-called “credible” news sources claim Tesla’s sales and profits have “fallen off a cliff” and “tanked.” This is nonsense—nonsense that’s easily fact-checked. But while Tesla’s numbers haven’t crashed, they certainly aren’t booming either.
In today’s hyper-polarized political environment, Tesla dealerships and vehicles have become targets of sometimes violent protests—not exactly great for business. In the short term, this kind of idiotic activism hurts Tesla, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk’s and Trump’s critics end up driving new customers to Tesla out of sheer political backlash. The essence of political science, after all, is the study of unintended consequences.
But protests are just one of Tesla’s problems. Competition is the bigger threat, and first among Tesla’s challengers is BYD Auto from China, which seemed to have come out of nowhere. Last year, BYD outsold Tesla by more than two-to-one, growing global deliveries by almost 50%—while Tesla’s deliveries declined slightly. A 2% drop may not seem dramatic, but in a fast-growing market, stagnation is decline.
Tesla’s appeal has never been just about technology. Like Apple, it built its brand on cutting-edge design and desirability. But beauty fades, and some of its cars are desperately overdue for a refresh.
Even in technology, Tesla may be slipping. Not long ago, it was the leader in self-driving innovation. Yet, when I was in Los Angeles recently, I saw dozens of self-driving taxis. Not one was a Tesla.
People have underestimated Elon Musk for decades—and they’ve always been wrong. I don’t mean to bet against him now. But the real question isn’t whether Musk still has it—it’s whether Tesla still has Musk. In the early days, he was notorious for sleeping on the floor of Tesla’s factories. These days, he seems to be sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom.
And for what? DOGE, Musk’s effort to cut the size and scope of government, has, in my opinion, almost no chance of material success. If his crusade were actually bearing fruit, I’d be writing a different column—one that first urged him to step down as Tesla’s CEO and give the company the focused, full-time leadership it needs and deserves.
Tesla's Biggest Problem is Musk. Musk's Biggest Problem is Himself
I was once a skeptic of Musk. I saw both Tesla and SpaceX as perfectly engineered to extract rents from the federal government. That argument still holds some water, but Musk has, to a great extent, won me over.
But Tesla isn’t a viral app. It’s a car company. And that’s a business where sales and especially profits are notoriously hard to come by—even with a full-time CEO.
