TOI Correspondent from Washington: Tesla is getting torched — both in showrooms and on the stock market. And President Trump, his major domo Elon Musk, and MAGA are getting real mad.
Once viewed as an icon of liberals, the world’s most famous electric vehicle maker is literally under attack, allegedly from the left, triggering a warning Tuesday from the Trump administration : Incidents of vandalism and arson on Tesla vehicles in the US will be viewed as acts of “domestic terrorism.”
“The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences,” Attorney General Pam Bondi announced today after a Tesla showroom was torched in Las Vegas, one of several attacks by protestors angry at Elon Musk’s purported torching of the old order, including by culling government personnel and spending.
Bondi also pledged “severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.” President Trump was more direct with the blame, saying, without offering any evidence, “I think that you will find out that they are paid by people that are very highly political on the left.”
Musk, on his part, played innocent, glossing over the gutting of government departments and the tens of thousands of job losses that has caused — steps he, Trump, and their MAGA acolytes say is necessary to get the U.S out of a debt spiral and restore American primacy.
“Tesla is a peaceful company, we’ve never done anything harmful. I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things. I think we have a deranged mental illness thing going on here because this doesn’t make any sense,” he said in an interview with MAGA media maven Sean Hannity.
“It’s come as quite a shock to me that there’s this level of hatred and violence from the left. I always thought that Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy and caring and yet they’re burning down cars, firebombing dealerships, firing bullets into dealerships, and smashing up Teslas,” he added in a more direct attack on a constituency he once embraced, and which in turn, embraced his cars and his companies.
Tesla owners of MAGA persuasion are now posting videos, captured by the vehicles’ sentry mode cameras, of malingerers surreptitiously scratching and even pissing on Teslas. In liberal enclaves, Tesla vehicles are getting honked at — a sign of disapproval in America. Five Tesla Cybertrucks transporting marshals in New Orleans Mardi Gras were booed, jeered, and pelted with beer cans.
But Tesla is also getting trashed beyond US, ostensibly because of the Trump-Musk dispensation’s demagoguery and disdain for rest of the west. On Tuesday, the Vancouver International Auto Show removed Tesla from its line-up, citing safety concerns, as Canada continued to push back at the Trump trash-talking even as Europe revolted against Musk and his vehicles.
Tesla sales in Europe have fallen between 45 percent to 50 percent compared to a year ago, including by a staggering 76 per cent in Germany, whose people appear to have taken exception to Musk’s interference in their election and his essaying of what looked like a Nazi salute. Even on its home turf in California, Tesla sales have dropped by 12 percent.
The domestic decline aside, the biggest blow to Musla came in the past 24 hours from China’s electric vehicle maker BYD which unveiled a new charging system for its cars that takes five minutes to charge — twice as fast as Tesla’s supercharger and about as much time it takes to refill at a gas station/petrol bunk.