- Tesla salesworker Matthew LaBrot was fired after he published a website protesting Elon Musk.
- LaBrot said he grew frustrated by Musk's political involvement and its impact on Tesla sales.
- The carmaker has recently faced slumping sales, mass protests, and a brand crisis.
Matthew LaBrot seems like an unlikely face of the Tesla resistance. He drives a Cybertruck and a Model Y and powers his home with the company's solar energy system. He trained Tesla employees how to sell the electric cars across North America. If you've watched one of the automaker's customer support videos, you might have seen him.
He called it his dream job.
But over the last two years, LaBrot, a self-described Democrat, became increasingly disenchanted with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. His feelings began to turn after Musk's purchase of Twitter, and soured further over Musk's work for President Donald Trump. On April 24, LaBrot set up a website protesting Musk's leadership at Tesla. The next day, he took his Cybertruck to a Tesla Takedown protest in California. Less than 24 hours later, he was fired.
"I wasn't planning on working anywhere else," LaBrot told Business Insider. "I was very happy with my position, and I could have continued to work in that role my whole life."
While hundreds of protests outside Tesla facilities have sprung up across the country, Tesla employees have largely refrained from speaking publicly on the issue. LaBrot wants to change that.
Pro-Tesla, anti-Musk
LaBrot, 35, joined Tesla in 2019 after stints at Best Buy, Starbucks, and in real estate. He rose quickly at the carmaker, eventually stepping into a program management role for sales and delivery training in North America.
He was initially drawn to the company because he believed in the mission of sustainable energy. He had always been impressed by Tesla's products and the people who work there, he said. It also afforded him tremendous opportunities: He moved up the corporate ladder, and the company's stellar stock performance helped him purchase his first house in 2022.
He first began to question Musk's leadership after the billionaire took over Twitter in 2022.
"Unfortunately, at that time, I chose the route of just stick my head in the sand," he said.
He said he found it harder to ignore when Musk began donating to Trump's campaign. Musk spent at least $277 million in political contributions to Trump and other Republican candidates ahead of the presidential election. He also held $1 million giveaways for voters who signed his super PAC's petition. Musk formally endorsed Trump on July 13.
He was especially offended by a salute Musk made during Trump's inauguration celebration in January, which LaBrot and other critics believed was a veiled Nazi salute.
"When your CEO makes one of those decisions, it pulls the company along with it," LaBrot said.
After the salute, Musk suggested in a post on X that Democrats were behind the criticism. He later said in an interview with Joe Rogan that he's "not a Nazi."
Tesla's sales slump as Musk gets further into politics
In October 2024, Musk said he didn't think his political activities would affect Tesla, saying sales were at an all-time high. "I think people really care about the quality of the product as opposed to whether they agree or disagree with the CEO's views. The CEO of any given company is going to have political views," he said. "At the end of the day, what matters is if Tesla makes a great product, and people like buying great products."
LaBrot said his on-the-ground experience didn't support Musk's prediction.
"By election time, we really started to realize that these customers we'd expected to see weren't coming," LaBrot said. The end of the year is typically when Tesla sales are highest, he added, and said the company had been aiming to overcome lackluster summer delivery numbers in the fourth quarter.
As foot traffic began to drop, LaBrot said Tesla's sales training team was told it was more important than ever to win over each customer that came through the doors. Tesla began pushing more sales promotions and incentives, which was unusual, LaBrot said. Sales staff normally had to work through a backlog of customers; if one decided not to purchase, there was someone ready to take their place. Now, salespeople were fighting to close on every reservation.
LaBrot said he was used to handling the typical EV hurdles: range anxiety, misinformation, user error. But a CEO who had alienated left-leaning voters was a whole different challenge altogether.
"We didn't have to do a ton of overcoming objections because those customers just stopped coming," LaBrot said.
Earlier this year, LaBrot said, Tesla's sales team hit another level of panic as EVs began piling up in sales lots. Even Tesla's refreshed Model Y wasn't selling like they'd hoped, he said. Tesla released the vehicle in January and already has a surplus of inventory, LaBrot said. It released a cheaper version of the refreshed Model Y on May 6.
In April, Tesla reported that its first-quarter delivery numbers dropped 13% from the same period the previous year. In California, a key market for the company, Tesla registrations fell more than 15% during that first quarter.
Analysts say there are multiple factors at play when it comes to Tesla's sales, including customer alienation over Musk's political views, the company's aging vehicle lineup, increased competition from companies overseas, and the overall US electric vehicle market.
A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
An earnings call and the website
By early 2025, LaBrot was growing increasingly frustrated with Tesla. He was unhappy with the company's lack of internal communication about how Musk's political views may be affecting sales numbers, as well as scant guidance around how salesworkers should handle protests and vandalism.
"They're talking about struggling sales and how do we increase the close rate, without talking about this humongous elephant in the room," he said.
As the months went on, LaBrot said he began to voice more of his concerns to his coworkers and in a meeting with other corporate sales staff. The tipping point came on April 22, when Musk announced that he would be spending less time on DOGE and turning his attention back to Tesla.
Two days later, he posted his website, which he kept anonymous. It contained an open letter calling for Tesla to find a new CEO.
"When it went live, I felt so relieved, like a weight had been lifted," LaBrot said. "This statement I've been trying to put into words, been expressing in company meetings — finally publishing it was a really good feeling."
While the open letter was written as if it came from multiple Tesla employees, LaBrot said he was the only author — but that some coworkers had expressed similar sentiments to him.
In conversations with more than a dozen current and former employees, many told BI they had concerns about Musk's leadership and political focus. Others largely shrugged off Musk's behavior. One longtime engineer said that while Musk may be the face of the company, his role is far removed from the day-to-day of the average Tesla employee.
On April 25, LaBrot spray-painted his Cybertruck with information about his website and the slogan "Pro Clean Energy Pro Sustainability Pro EV Pro Tesla Anti Elon" and displayed it outside a Tesla facility. He said it felt like a logical next step and a good way to draw attention to the letter.
The next day, he said he received a call from Tesla's Human Resources department. He said he was told his employment was terminated for using company resources to build a website that did not align with the company's perspective. LaBrot denied that he used Tesla resources to build the site.
Since his firing, LaBrot has continued to attend Tesla protests and says he has received support from some former Tesla employees. Leaving Tesla has been a bitter pill to swallow, he said, but he understood the risks when he launched the website.
Musk's politics aside, LaBrot said he remains a cheerleader for the brand.
"I still firmly believe in the company and what we're working towards," he said.
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