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POLITICS IS MUSK MAKING EVERYTHING WORSE? ABC News In-depth: Has Elon Musk ruined Tesla? \| If You're Listening PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7pvLm54sfI Peter Burgess COMMENTARY The article headlines are very confusing telling the reader little about the content ... which is actually very interesting. Mostly, this article is about the Coors company story and the family that owned and ran the company for several generations. While the family politics are very 'right wing', the company and the family have been pretty good to their employees compared to others. The company and the family have been big supporters of right wing thinking and 'think tanks' including the Heritage Foundation. The American 'right wing' has become a massive American problem now that Trump has political power ... and this has changed my calculus about most everything 'conservative!' Peter Burgess
Has Elon Musk ruined Tesla? \| If You're Listening ABC News In-depth 2M subscribers Apr 4, 2025 If You're Listening \| ABC News In-depth It has not been a good year so far for Elon Musk’s car company Tesla. Stocks are plummeting and sales are falling even faster as people around the world who are opposed to his involvement in the Trump Administration boycott the company. That’s been accompanied by arson and vandalism at Tesla dealerships around the world. But this isn’t the first time that a company has come under sustained attack for its connections to a Presidential administration. For three decades, one of America’s biggest beer companies was subject to a boycott because of the conservative views of the family that owned it. How did that turn out? And what does it tell us about what’s in store for Tesla? Subscribe: https://ab.co/3yqPOZ5 Read more here: Welcome to ABC News In-depth, where you'll find our long-form journalism and other videos to help you understand what's going on in the world around you. Watch more ABC News content ad-free on ABC iview: https://ab.co/2OB7Mk1 For more from ABC News, click here: https://ab.co/2kxYCZY Get breaking news and livestreams from our ABC News channel: / newsonabc Like ABC News on Facebook: / abcnews.au Follow ABC News on Instagram: / abcnews_au Follow ABC News on Twitter: / abcnews Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated. #ABCNewsIndepth #ABCNewsAustralia Transcript 0:00 is doing this to a Tesla dealership evil the suspect used a firearm and Molotov cocktails to damage the center and Destroy multiple vehicles that were parked on site throwing Molotov cocktails at any building is definitely illegal and also bad don't throw Molotov cocktails at things please but what about this they've got that little Stock app I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day 225 and dropping that's former democratic vice presidential candidate Tim wtz indulging in a little bit of Sharden foer at the rapid drop in Tesla's stock price over the last few months his comments made Tesla CEO Elon Musk very sad running around on stage with with a Tesla stock price having where the stock price had gone in half and he was overjoyed what an evil thing to do well it's mean sure but is it evil is selling your stock in Tesla evil it's certainly something that El musk does 1:00 not want you to do so uh what I'm saying is hang on to your stock but what about this though slumping in Europe with a drop of about 40% across Scandinavia and 76% in Germany they're also down 72% in Australia compared with February last year while the stock price and the arson and the vandalism are the things that are getting all the headlines this is by far the most important thing that is happening to Tesla right now Sal across the world are falling as people look for other options in the electric vehicle market and that's at least partially because of Elon musk's charged Bromance with the US president here's a man that I can tell you he's a friend of mine who's become a friend of mine he supported me in the election any friend of my bank account is a friend of mine since Trump took office musk has become his autonomous chainsaw slicing up the US federal government with his doge 2:02 team to it appears that his connections with Trump have led to a full-blown multinational boycott of all things Tesla but this isn't unprecedented in fact America has seen a very similar boycott movement in the past against one of the country's top beer brands because of the conservative views of the company's owners and the close relationship they had with then Republican president Ronald Reagan that boycott lasted for decades and the story of why it happened is extraordinary it tells us a lot about what can be achieved when a whole lot of Ordinary People Bann together to stick it to billionaires so can musk or his opponents learn anything from the past I'm Matt Biven and this is if you're listening [Music] 3:04 the largest Brewery in the world is in the Colorado town of golden just outside Denver nestled in between the train lines and Brew houses is a white 22 room historic Mansion which was built by the brewery's founder Adolf Kors in the drawing room of that house is a Steinway grand piano and the reason the piano is there is because of Adolf ks's grandson bill this is Bill Kors playing the piano he is really quite good at it here's why I had a bicycle accident I was 6 years old and I injured myself and was never allowed uh any kind of contact Sports from that time on when Bill Kors was growing up his big brother ad and little brother Joe would go out and play football and baseball but he couldn't 4:01 join them I stayed indoors and banged away at the piano I'm sure my mother wanted me to be a concert pianist I had a certain I guess talent for it life was tough for a family of Brewers in the 1920s it was the era of prohibition the US federal government had banned alcohol Across the Nation so why not become a pist but by the time Bill was ready to leave school prohibition was over and there was beer to be made of course my father wanted me to be a chemical engineer and course he went out by the time they were in their 40s ad Bill and Joe were all working together at the brewery although it seems from his list of jobs that bill was basically running the whole place responsible for production maintenance engineering so forth research development we weren't all that formal in those days it's titles didn't mean anything you just got the job done the family was conservative in every sense of the word not only 5:01 politically but in their lifestyle despite being the owners of an incredibly profitable Brewery they lived in modest homes and any extra money they had on hand was reinvested into the company or donated to charity they also like to think that they looked after their workers to work at CES was basically a job for life you got paid well you could call Bill by his first name you got free beer and you could drink during the workday sounds pretty good right well according to Bill Life as a c's employee was so good that he was convinced that his Workforce didn't need unions see like a lot of American Business tycoons Bill hated unions he hated them so much in fact that it became the major driver behind his Innovation for instance when the factory that provided steel beer cans to cause went on strike he invented the aluminium beer can and the the system for 6:00 recycling them yes the recyclable aluminium drinks can we all use today was invented by Bill Kors to bust a strike 60 Minutes asked him about his famous anti-union attitude Bill Kors you said unions are a result of poor management from the idealistic standpoint if management is properly concerned with the needs of the workers not just material needs but with health and spiritual and philosophical needs I don't believe a Union's needed I said it and I'm proud of it m that's exactly the way I feel in 1960 the Kors family was in the midst of one of their frequent tussles with the unions when one morning Bill's Big Brother ad didn't show up to work his car had been found still running on the route that he usually took each morning a large pool of blood was on the road a woman nearby said that she heard two gunshots he's grabbed he disappears one day and the family gets a 7:00 note from the kidnapper demanding Ransom and agrees to pay the ransom this is journalist Dan bourm who covered The Saga in his book citizen cause and then nothing ever happens the kidnapper disappears and AD is gone though they didn't tell the family the FBI investigators knew from the amount of Blood on the road that ad could not be alive this was a murder investigation Bill instantly suspected the unions might be behind this it turns out that ad was just unbelievably unlucky the killer was just a random guy an escaped prisoner who thought that kidnapping the air to the Cora's Brewery would make him Rich his scheme was to pretend to have a broken down car and ask ad for help but when he pulled out his gun adors ran for it the wouldbe kidnapper shot him twice in the back and he died right there on the road it was quite a loss it traumatized the whole family I don't 8:01 think we understood just how to handle it the shock and suspicion changed bill forever he became obsessed with the Loyalty of his workers he subjected new recruits to lie detector tests and sent the entire Workforce into therapy they ran everybody through psychiatrist in order to spy on them they were having all the psychiatrist notes rooted to them CU they wanted to see who wasn't loyal to the family I kind of see Bill as a bit like Elon Musk at least up until 2024 an innovator someone extremely driven to succeed someone obsessed with his work who hates unions Tesla is the only non-union car company in America musk says he disagrees with the idea of unions because they create a divide between workers and managers there many people at Tesla who have come gone from working on the line to being in Senior Management there is no Lords and peasants everyone eats at the 9:01 same table everyone parks in the same parking lot so if Bill Kors is pre 2024 Elon Musk who is post 2024 Elon [Music] Musk most of you know that Joe and I are close and he's given me some great advice over the years this is former US President Ronald Reagan and the Joe he's talking about is Bill's little brother Joe Kors who was a key supporter and donor to Reagan for two decades Bill said that Joe was as conservative as they come and described him as a little bit to the right of a Tilla the Han he said it was best if they didn't discuss politics Ronald Reagan meanwhile loved Joe's politics and once told this joke about Joe's advice for wearing a hearing aid he advised me if I have trouble hearing I should wear it in my right ear that's Joe for you he never wants to hear from the left Joe didn't 10:00 just back Reagan financially he and his wife Holly also established the nation's first conservative think tank he's a very very politically conservative guy through a series of circumstances founds the Heritage Foundation uh which gives the conservative movement in the United States its first piece of real estate ever since prohibition nearly destroyed his family's Empire Joe had passionately hated government meddling the Heritage foundation's mission was to get the US federal government out of everyone's lives Joe and Holly I won't even mention the personal debt that I owe each of you let me just say that no one has been more important to heritage's success and that of the conservative movement than the two of you so all of this conservative political activity painted a big Target on the Kors family the Kors family has been routinely denounced as racist sexist Union bashing and its beer products have been 11:01 boycotted by organized labor racial minorities women gays students and teachers for more than a decade the boycott started small with mexican-americans Janos in the 1960s who accused the K's family of discriminating against them in their hiring practices they're so racist and discriminatory and anti-union in their practices and policies in the 1970s the boycott spread to the teon the union representing causes delivery drivers in California then the San Francisco gay rights Community got on board and by 1975 there wasn't a gay bar in the state of California that would serve you a cause from there it spread uncontrollably right across the country a rumor spread that Joe Kors had donated to the anti-gun Lobby so hunters and gun owners got involved in the boycott and then when the cause company denied that rumor the anti-gun Lobby joined the 12:02 boycott as well the Coors family a Golden Colorado Clan which established Adolf Kors company in 1873 has a notorious reputation for founding and financing Ultra right-wing organizations and causes in the 70s a broad Coalition of gays chos and truck drivers all standing side by side on a picket line was extremely unusual but the strength of the boycott was in just how easy it was to participate for buy a Budweiser instead of a cause and you were expressing solidarity the weakness was that while everyone in the Coalition agreed that they hated cause they couldn't agree on what cause actually had to do to get them back on side and here's where the true differences between Bill and Joe emerge they turned the country rightward but they had to change their practices within the walls of their beloved Ry 13:00 because they were so beat up by this boycott Bill took the accusations that he was mistreating his workers seriously he set up one of America's first employee wellness centers at the brewery and he made an effort to hire more diverse staff then in 1982 Bill gave 60 Minutes investigative journalist Mike Wallace full access to ca's entire operation its staff and its books to look into the workplace conditions the Equal Employment opportunity commission now considers Kors one of the leading affirmative action Employers in Colorado 133% of Kors employes are minority members black Hispanic Indian gay journalists have visited the Kors plant and have decided there is no foundation for continuing a boycott of Kes on the issue of homosexuality by the end of the 1980s Kors had donated more than $600 million to minority organizations that's more than 1 and A2 billion in today's money the boycott ebbed but it never 14:02 entirely lifted and that's because for many people the problem they had with cause had nothing to do with the brewery it was to do with their politics we know of their politics we know what they do no matter how many uh Hispanic Representatives they hire their politics remain the same and that and they're against the interest of the Latino Community the lesson of the cause boycott was mixing business and politics can have big ramifications if your business is selling something that can be easily boycotted think about the kind of billionaires who get involved in politics these days they're in banking investing Logistics that kind of thing how are you meant to boycott a mining company fast forward to 2025 and a lot has changed Bill and Joe are dead cause is the major sponsor of the Denver Pride Parade but some things have stayed the same you'll still struggle to find a cause beer in a San Francisco gay bar 15:00 and the conservative think tank that Joe Kors founded the Heritage Foundation they are more powerful than ever before project 2025 is a new paradigm in helping a conservative president be ready to govern day one you remember project 2025 a detailed plan for destroying the American administrative state project 2025 aims to remove any bureaucrat who resists the president critics warn that replacing them with loyalists will enable Trump to carry out a radical agenda yeah that one the one that's being rolled out right now project 2025 isn't some Rabel operation it's run by the influential and conservative Heritage Foundation the work of project 2025 is being carried out by Elon Musk and his Department of government efficiency Doge people don't like it and while it's hard to boycott musk's Spaceship Company not buying a Tesla is pretty easy getting rid of the Tesla you already own is easy although 16:00 it is getting harder we are looking potentially at other brands uh it's just difficult now because the resale value at the moment is not very good and of course this is also causing people to not buy Teslas at all but the rapid spread of the anti-musk movement has created some similar problems to the anti- cause boycott without any centralized List of Demands it's unclear what the end game is if musk resigns from do and steps back from the White House would the boycott be over um so uh you know it's probably a bit too late for that to be honest especially when Donald Trump has tied himself to the Tesla brand by purchasing a car from musk on the White House lawn this is beautiful whoa should I get in get in okay Trump has just implemented a 25% tariff on All Foreign made cars a policy that will definitely ass Tesla which is 17:00 the only automaker that is entirely based in the US this is a different panel than I've had everything's computer everything is indeed computer Mr President but let's say that musk sold his stocks in Tesla and resigned as the CEO would that be enough to get people to buy the cars again or does Tesla have to be sent bankrupt before protesters are satisfied in which case you're destroying the last All-American car brand and handing full control of the transition to electric cars to China I think the cause story tells us that the boycott is probably not going to change Elon musk's Behavior Tesla could shrink to a hundredth of its current size and he would still be a billionaire and it's more likely to just make him more Angry erratic and petulant than he already is anyway I think it's beer o clock uh Matt you know it's 11 a.m. yeah still 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