Buttigieg admits Biden was wrong to exclude Musk from from EV summit

Pete Buttigieg.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said then-President Joe Biden made a mistake early in his lone term when he snubbed Elon Musk and didn't invite him to a White House Summit on electric vehicles.

In 2021, Biden held the summit at the White House and invited the CEOs of Ford, GM Chrysler, and others, but specifically didn't invite Musk, the CEO of Tesla, the leading American manufacturer of electric vehicles. At the time, sales of Teslas accounted for almost 75% of all electric vehicles purchased in the U.S., and Musk said it "seems odd that Tesla wasn't invited."

Five years later and while exploring a possible White House run in 2028, Buttigieg now says excluding Musk from the event was "a mistake." Buttigieg made the remarks on the Diary of a CEO podcast and explained away the "mistake" as some sort of an afterthought. 

"I can tell you how the mistake happened. There was a difficult and complex set of negotiations happening between the big three automakers to try to get to a new framework moving forward on tailpipe standards. This event was built to kind of celebrate the agreement that had been reached around tailpipe standards," Buttigieg told the podcast's host, Steven Bartlett.

"Tesla, because all they make are EVs, doesn't even have tailpipes," Buttigieg continued. "And so, people weren't really thinking about inviting Tesla. But what Elon saw was: there's an event at the White House about EVs. He is, if not single-handedly responsible, certainly is the person most responsible for EV excellence on American soil. And he's saying, "What the f**k?" And I I don't blame him for that."

Bartlett went on to point out that not long after the snub, Musk, a longtime Democrat, began breaking with the party, bought Twitter about a year later and changed it to X, and ultimately became one of Trump's most influential backers in 2024. He also brought up AOC's repeated bashing of the billionaire class and how modern Democrats have dug in on vilifying billionaires. 

"That doesn't make a ton of sense to me," Buttigieg said. "You know the thing we most admire about the entrepreneurs is that they work hard and they do things and they make things, right, and they generate value -- and I think most Americans don't spite you the value that you get from having created even more value."

Watch a clip of Buttigieg below and see his full remarks on Musk and billionaires here.