Over the last two months, there has been a rash of attacks at Tesla dealerships and charging stations across the country.
They started after the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, had the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force begin the work he and Donald Trump talked about doing before the 2024 elections.
As they’ve set about rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, there have been job and funding cuts at federal departments. Some departments — like USAID — have effectively been shuttered as lawsuits that question the legality of Trump’s executive orders on these matters and other related decisions play out in the courts.
While there have been your garden variety protests at Tesla locations, there’s also been vandalism, with swastikas and anti-Musk messaging spray-painted on the sides of buildings and the Tesla vehicles they have on display.
More disturbingly, there have also been incidents where gunshots have been fired into offices. There have also been Tesla vehicles at these locations that have been intentionally set on fire. In some instances, incendiary devices have been found and have had to be defused by bomb squads.
Needless to say, the threats and violence are not OK and should never be considered otherwise in a civilized society. Trump himself has been so incensed that he’s suggested the incidents be labeled as domestic terrorism.
But strangely, Democrats and media figures who have routinely banged the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot drum to falsely suggest that Republicans are OK with what happened that day have either turned a blind eye to the anti-Tesla violence or, incredibly, have sought to have it viewed as a legitimate form of First Amendment-protected speech.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was recently asked about the incidents as she was leaving the Capitol building. Instead of answering it, she said, “I’m so sorry, I’m a little bit late here right now.”
I mean, seriously. How hard could this be? It would have taken less time for her to simply say, “Violence is not the answer,” than the response she gave.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) reportedly refused to comment as well when he was asked about the issue on the same day Pelosi was. But he later issued a boilerplate statement on his website that only fanned the flames, writing, “There are legitimate ways in a civilized society to express strong disagreement with far-right extremists who are trying to dismantle the American way of life. Violence is never acceptable.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) equated the creation of an FBI Tesla task force to “politicization of the DOJ” and “lawfare.”
“This is the political weaponization of the DOJ,” he wrote on his X feed. “Trump uses his official authority to defend his benefactor Elon Musk. The FBI then creates a task force to use our law enforcement to ‘crack down’ on adversaries of Musk’s. Where are the Republicans so opposed to ‘lawfare’?”
Though Goldman didn’t explain how it was “lawfare” to investigate actual crimes that have been committed versus manufacturing “crimes” to try and hamstring a potential presidential opponent’s campaign, it should be noted for the record that the headline he was responding to very clearly read “FBI launches task force to crack down on violent Tesla attacks, mitigate threats.”
Does Goldman, who once called for Trump to be “eliminated,” believe anti-Tesla terrorists are above the law? Only he can say for sure, but the silence and obfuscation coming from Democrats on this issue sure does make you wonder.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
