Snapshot: Poor Elon Can’t Understand the Anger

Tesla owner Elon Musk says he's "shocked" by the "hatred and violence" from the left and claims he's "never done anything harmful"

Elon Musk and a chainsaw: “I’ve only done productive things,” he said yesterday. (Photo by Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)

Elon Musk went on Fox News last night and cried a river. He’s apparently shocked that his illegal violations of our constitutional government, his stripping away funding that’s causing grave damage, his strutting around our Oval Office, his false attacks on Social Security, his Nazi salutes while standing behind the presidential seal, his platforming of Nazis on his abusive social media site, his endorsing neo-Nazis in Germany, his increasingly hostile rhetoric sent out to 220 million followers—that all this is causing a backlash from Americans who’ve had enough. As if they’d have no reason to be upset with the world’s richest man, Donald Trump’s top donor and an unelected co-conspirator in dismantling our democracy.

We’ve seen that play out in the declining stock price of his electric vehicle company, Tesla, which has dropped by half since mid-December and about a third in the last month. That anger has been increasingly visible in protests at Tesla dealerships, Tesla owners getting rid of their cars or stripping off the branding on Cybertrucks, as well as vandals spray-painting or otherwise damaging Tesla vehicles. Protestors have thrown Molotov cocktails at Tesla showrooms in Oregon, Colorado and Missouri. Yesterday at a Tesla showroom in Las Vegas, a cluster of cars were set on fire, bullets were fired and the word “resist” was spray-painted on the store’s window.

Until now, it’s seemed Musk has been having so much fun helping undermine America and set the world on fire. Fun, that is, until he’s finally grasping his empire is at risk. His response is so telling—as if he can’t understand why in the world people would be so angry. “It's really come as a shock to me that there's this level of hatred and violence coming from the left,” he told Sean Hannity on Fox while standing in front of our White House. “I always thought the left, the Democrats, were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring.”

This from the person who, three weeks ago on Joe Rogan’s podcast, asserted, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

Then, demonstrating his utter lack of self-awareness, he not only took no responsibility, he presented himself as only doing good. “Tesla is a peaceful company. We've never done anything harmful,” Musk said. “I've never done anything harmful. I've only done productive things.”

Refusing to recognize what his reckless hostility has unleashed, he began lashing out and searching for sinister forces to blame. “I think we just have a deranged, some kind of mental illness thing going on here,” he said. “Because this doesn't make any sense. And I think there are larger forces at work as well. Who's funding it and who's coordinating it? Because this is crazy. I've never seen anything like this.”

Let’s not be uncertain. Musk is nervous, even running scared. The rising anger, the protests, the hits on his bottom line, the personal hatred toward him are all having an impact. It might eventually lead to his removal from his unelected role as co-president.

But Musk has the most powerful backing of the Trump regime. It’s not just appropriate investigations by the FBI into criminal, violent behavior, it’s the Attorney General Pam Bondi prioritizing Musk’s business. “If you’re going to touch a Tesla, go to a dealership, do anything, you better watch out because we’re going to come after you,” Bondi asserted yesterday. Rather than investigating the attacks as arson, the FBI is considering them as possible terrorism. And then there’s Trump himself: “I’m going to put a stop to it. Because they’re harming a great American company.”

Who is the “they” who’s harming “a great American company?” Perhaps Musk and Trump should consider looking into the mirror. They can find the answer there.

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