Commerce Secretary
Howard Lutnick urged the public to "buy
Tesla" stock, a highly unusual promotion by a Cabinet member of a company whose current investors have suffered a sharp slide in share price since December.
Lutnick's touting of Tesla shares Wednesday night came as CEO
Elon Musk oversees the highly controversial
DOGE effort to slash the federal workforce for the
Trump administration.
The company is also facing a spate of
vandalism of Tesla locations and vehicles around the United States in reaction to Musk's involvement with DOGE and his financial support for President
Donald Trump's electoral victory.
Government conflict of interest rules prohibit federal employees from using their "government position or title or any authority associated with his public office to endorse any product, service or enterprise" save for very limited situations, none of which appeared to apply to Lutnick.
"If you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla," Lutnick said during an interview on
Fox News with Jesse Watters.
"It's unbelievable," Lutnick said, drawing out the last word, "that this guy's stock is so cheap."
"It'll never be this cheap again," Lutnick continued, next to a split screen of video showing flames from Teslas in Las Vegas that were set on fire by Molotov cocktails earlier in the week.
Tesla has shed hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization since its stock's sharp slide began in December, a month after Trump was elected to a second non-consecutive term in the White House. The company's share price is more than 50% lower than the high reached in December.
"When people understand the things he's building, the robots he's building, the technology he's building, people are going to be dreaming of today, and Jesse Watters will [be] thinking 'gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk's stock."
Lutnick continued, "I mean, who wouldn't invest in Elon Musk? You gotta be kidding."
Before Trump picked him to head the Commerce Department, Lutnick had a long career on Wall Street, leading the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
A spokesperson for Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment from CNBC.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked about Lutnick's statements, said, "I think the Commerce secretary was reiterating that the President supports an American-made company like Tesla, who produces a very good product for the American people."
Leavitt said the company "was beloved by the American people, particularly Democrats, until Elon Musk decided to endorse and vote for Donald Trump."
"Now we have seen despicable and unacceptable violence taking place across our country at Telsa dealerships, workers, employees and also innocent Americans who drive these vehicles," she said.
Trump recently turned the White House lawn into a temporary Tesla showroom, so that Musk could display five vehicles for the press and the president, who said he planned to buy one.
Presidents and vice presidents are exempt from federal conflict of interest rules.
At the event, Trump revealed he had purchased a
Tesla Cybertruck for his granddaughter, Kai Trump.
On Thursday, Tesla issued a recall of nearly all of it
s Cybertrucks in the United States, to repair an exterior panel at risk of detaching when the vehicle is being driven.
During Trump's first term in office, his then-White House senior advisor Kellyanne Conway was criticized for a Fox News appearance in which she urged viewers to "go buy" products made by a brand owned by Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter.
"Go buy Ivanka's stuff, is what I would tell you. I'm going to. I hate shopping and I'm going to go get some myself today," Conway told "Fox and Friends" in February 2017.
"I'm going to give it a free commercial here," Conway said.
The U.S. Office of Government Ethics later warned the White House that it had "strong reason" to believe that Conway violated ethics rules with her comments.
In response, the White House ethics office wrote that it had looked into the matter and "concluded that Ms. Conway acted inadvertently and is highly unlikely to do so again."
