Elon's Rug Pull, Hollywood's Un-Cancel Culture, and The Macker Post-Mortem
Good afternoon, and welcome back to The Daily Courant, surfacing the latest and most tantalizing reporting at Puck.
Below the fold, Matt Belloni reports on the latest twist in the Hollywood agency saga of Morgan Wallen, the country music star who was kind-of, sort of cancelled by WME last February—only for Wallen's WME rep, Austin Neal, to strike out on his own with Wallen as his marquee client. Plus, don't miss Peter Hamby's unsparing autopsy of Terry McAuliffe, the failure of Virginia's Democrats, and how Critical Race Theory could become a stalking horse for Trumpism in 2022.
Plus: The triumph of private equity, Shari vs. Succession, the Glassman prophecies, and "Stage 6" of of the George Soros market melt-up. Tesla’s valuation is totally out of control. The company’s stock price is certainly overvalued. But whether it is overvalued by $1 trillion—meaning it should be valued at $200 billion, rather than $1.2 trillion—is a matter of nuance.
There is no reason on the face of the earth that Tesla, which makes most of its money selling carbon credits, not cars, should be worth more than the entire automotive industry combined. Elon Musk could buy all of GE’s stock himself, and still have more than $200 billion left over. Does the word insanity mean anything to anybody anymore? Musk himself has acknowledged repeatedly that Tesla is almost certainly overvalued. (“What am I supposed to do?” he asked Kara Swisher in September. “I’m not the one making it go up.”) On Saturday, he tweeted a poll asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell 10 percent of his stock, ostensibly to pay more tax, but also, conveniently, after Tesla’s market valuation jumped more than 50 percent in the past month. I think Musk’s tweet is a way to give him cover to allow him to sell Tesla stock without causing the stock price to crater. After all, how would it look if he suddenly decided to sell 10 percent of Tesla unannounced?
The irony of the Tesla stock is not only that it is catastrophically overvalued...
FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT 
It’s a classic Hollywood story, illustrating the dichotomy that has engulfed the entertainment industry during this age of accountability. MATT BELLONI 
Yes, Critical Race Theory helped Glenn Youngkin defeat The Macker. But the behind-the-ballot-curtain reality is far more complex. PETER HAMBY 
The Puck podcast team brings you the inside story at the intersection of Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. PETER HAMBY, JULIA IOFFE, MATT BELLONI, DYLAN BYERS 
Apollo has long been identified with its co-founder Leon Black. Now his successor Marc Rowan is on a mission to change that narrative—pronto—and to make a killing in the process. WILLIAM D. COHAN 
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