White House officials have publicly condemned tweets made by Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk promoting antisemitic speech and conspiracy theories. Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita and Rachelle Akuffo weigh in on the issue and observe how Musk's comments could impact Tesla stock and its business.

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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, the fallout from Elon Musk continues after the Tesla CEO endorsed his anti-Semitic post as the actual truth.

The White House being the latest to respond, saying, "We condemn this abhorrent promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans."

So Rachelle, this certainly not abating in terms of a controversy for X, formerly Twitter, with the White House now weighing in as well.

I mean, for those who have not been following, this was a repost that Elon Musk had.

But it was an anti-Semitic post.

He essentially elevated that by commenting it's the actual truth.

And that has really set off things for X, making it very difficult, by the way, for the new CEO Linda Yaccarino.

You had IBM suspending its advertising.

X reportedly getting calls from other advertisers who are saying, why is my advertisement-- why is my ad showing up next to anti-Semitic comments?

And then you've got the issue of Tesla, right?

I mean, any time Elon Musk says something, you inevitably tie that to Tesla because he is the face of the company.

And by the way, one of the biggest bulls on the market, Ross Gerber, last night on CNBC talking about this, saying-- I mean, this is a complete brand destruction.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: I mean, it's true.

And he was saying that he-- he's tweeted or I guess X that he was getting all these calls from clients trying to dump the Tesla stock.

He himself was saying he was going to get rid of his Tesla, was going to switch to-- to a Rivian, one of the competitors.

He went on to tweet, "I've never had this with any company I've ever invested in ever in my life where the CEO of the company himself does so many detrimental things that is destroying the brand."

Because it goes beyond this idea of purchasing X as being a distraction.

It's now Elon Musk himself and the words that he's saying on this massive platform in X, then now having a domino effect.

And as we saw, immediately after some of that pushback, after we saw that he wasn't going to appear at the APEC Summit anymore, a lot of people were wondering, was it because of those comments.

At first, the public comment was that it was a scheduling conflict.

But you have to wonder now the backlash and how this is going to play out, or whether investors will just focus on the fundamentals of the company and somehow separate Elon Musk, the person and-- and that brand, from what's happening with Tesla's shares.

AKIKO FUJITA: And what's only, sort of, added to investor concerns is where Tesla is right now.

We were just having a conversation about the strength in the hybrid.

But really, when you look at the EV market, there are concerns about increasing competition, the price cuts that will have to come with it, you know, more competition for Tesla.

What does that mean in terms of the market share they already have?

So Tesla is trying to navigate all of challenges right now.

Certainly from an investor standpoint, not helpful when you've got the CEO, the face of the company out there advertising-- or elevating, amplifying anti-Semitic comments when you've got real issues with the company.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: No.

And it's true.

And I mean, despite Linda Yaccarino coming out and saying, look, we don't support any sort of anti-Semitic comments, we have to go back to their guideline that said awful but lawful is the standard by which they're going to be gauging free speech.

And so really putting themselves in a precarious position here.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah.

It certainly feels like we're back to that conversation in the early days after Elon Musk purchased X.

And there were concerns about what it would mean for advertisers.