Trump Buys A New Tesla From Elon Musk
Summary
- Tesla shares pop 4% on Trump’s support for Musk
- Protests against Tesla linked to Musk’s political role
- Trump says perpetrators will “go through hell”
- Musk promises to build two-year doubling of Tesla production.
WASHINGTON, March 11 (JV Political) – Any act of violence on Tesla dealerships will be considered domestic terrorism and the perpetrators will ‘go through hell,’ said U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday in what seemed like a support for the electric car maker’s CEO, his friend Elon Musk.
The company’s stock price rose by nearly 4 percent on Tuesday, after falling by the most in more than four-and-a half years on Monday, after the president joined Musk at the White House to pick a new Tesla for his staff to use.
In the recent past, activists have convened so-called Tesla Takedown protests to express their concerns over Musk’s role in massive down sizing of the federal workforce at the request of Trump and the cancellation of contracts that support humanitarian programs around the world. Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, is leading the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
He’s hurting a great American company,” Trump said at the White House, referring to the protesters, as he was accompanied by Musk who was wearing a black “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. Nearby, a number of Tesla(tsla.o) cars were brought to the driveway between the mansion and the south lawn.
“If you harm a Tesla, we will get you, and if we catch you, you are going to go through hell.”
Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, said, “Continued and heinous acts of violence against Tesla by radical Leftist activists are nothing short of domestic terror.
About 350 demonstrators protested outside a Tesla electric vehicle dealership in Portland, Oregon, last week, and nine people were arrested during a raucous demonstration outside a New York City Tesla dealership earlier this month.
There have also been media reports of vandalism on Tesla vehicles and showrooms that are under investigation.
In response, a group that said it was an organizer of the Tesla Takedown protests issued a statement on social media platform Bluesky, opposing violence.
“Peaceful protest on public property is not domestic terrorism. They are trying to intimidate us. We will not let them succeed,” the group said, urging people to join the protests.
At the federal level, Trump could ask the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute Tesla dealership vandals under terrorism statutes, although such charges are unlikely to survive legal challenges, according to legal scholars.
