He's really not. The banks are only involved so that he doesn't have to sell as much of his Tesla shares. And that's to say nothing of his private ownership of SpaceX, probably also worth a decent chunk.

The covenants on a low leverage transaction are likely highly limited: a)make interest payments, b) make principal payments, c) don’t make illegal dividends, d) don’t cross certain covenants such as EV/EBITDA, fixed charge coverage ratio, or similar, and e) get an audit every year and submit financials to the banks every 90 days.

Not exactly onerous since they were a public company before.

What I learned from Donald Trump's business dealings.

If you owe the bank 200,000$ and can't pay it, you are in trouble.

If you owe the bank 1.2 billion dollars and can't pay it, THE BANK is in trouble.

This very very very much applies here.

Yes, but imagine him having to liquidate Tesla and Ford or GM makes an aggressive bid?