DOGE chief Elon Musk expressed shock Tuesday at the “hatred and violence from the left” over his government cost-cutting measures that have sparked arson attacks and vandalism against Tesla vehicles.
“It’s really comes as quite a shock to me that there was this level of, really, hatred and violence from the left. I always thought the left, the Democrats, were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring and yet they’re burning down cars, they’re firebombing dealerships, they’re firing bullets into dealerships, they’re just, you know, smashing up Teslas,” Musk told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The Tesla CEO argued that his electric car company has always been “peaceful” and that he’s personally never done anything so “harmful” or “awful” to warrant such a backlash.
“I’ve only done productive things,” Musk said. “So, I think we just have a deranged – there’s some kind of mental illness thing going on here because this doesn’t make any sense.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday called the recent spate of targeted attacks against Tesla vehicles “nothing short of domestic terrorism.”
Bondi made the declaration after five Tesla vehicles were damaged after a fire broke out at a Tesla Collision Center in Las Vegas on Tuesday morning. Local authorities blamed an arsonist hurling Molotov cocktails for the fire, noting the word “RESIST” was spray-painted across the doors of the facility and that gunshots were fired at other Teslas.
“I think there are larger forces at work here as well,” Musk said. “I mean, I don’t know, who’s funding this and who’s coordinating this?”
“This is crazy,” he added. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Musk attributed the violence to his success in rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in federal government through his work leading the Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to slash $2 trillion in government spending.
“It turns out when you take away people’s – you know, the money they’re receiving fraudulently, they get very upset,” he said.
“They basically want to kill me because I’m stopping their fraud. And they want to hurt Tesla because we’re stopping this terrible waste and corruption in the government,” Musk continued, noting that “bad people will do bad things.”
“This extreme amount of hatred and violence is because we’re actually succeeding in getting rid of corruption and waste. If we were not succeeding in getting rid of corruption and waste, they wouldn’t care,” he argued.
Musk, who also owns rocket company SpaceX, also celebrated the return of stranded NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both of whom safely splashed down in a SpaceX capsule Tuesday after spending the last 9 months floating aboard the International Space Station.
“We’re really testing the very edge of human ability here, the very edge of material science, and it’s kind of amazing that humans can do this at all,” the tech tycoon said.
“But, hopefully for people out there this is a moment of optimism about the future, a moment of excitement about the future, and it portends great things for America and humanity in space.”
