“Do not buy swasticars.”
“Constitution, yes. Musk, no.”
“No one elected Elon Musk.”
These are a sample of the messages that targeted Elon Musk over the weekend, as thousands of protesters across the country flooded local Tesla dealerships to express their outrage over the tech CEO’s escalating war on the federal government.
From Ohio to California, people demonstrated outside Tesla showrooms, some attracting large police presences. In New York, where at least nine NYPD officers were seen protecting a single Cybertruck, at least six protesters were reportedly detained. Instances of property damage against Teslas were also reported. Meanwhile, Tesla’s numbers have taken a significant dip amid Musk’s illegal takeovers and mass firings. NBC News reports that February was the electric vehicle company’s “worst month on the stock market since 2022.”
Musk responded to the protests on X Saturday, claiming, without evidence, that an unspecified “investigation” had discovered that ActBlue, a Democratic political action committee, was behind the protests.
The protests targeting Musk come as Democrats struggle to find their political footing under Donald Trump’s administration. As my colleague David Corn wrote, “The Democrats are bringing a teaspoon to a gunfight. This is not how a party battling for its survival and the survival of the nation behaves.”