President Donald Trump said he would consider violence at Tesla locations to be domestic terrorism, The Verge reports. This happened at a White House event where the US president-elect promised to buy Tesla.
Protests against Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have increased recently, with media reports of incidents such as shootings at a Tesla showroom and acts of vandalism.
During the event, Trump said that any attack on Tesla would be stopped in its tracks. "We already know who some of them are, we’re gonna catch them," he said. Trump vowed to stop these actions, saying they were hurting a great American company.
In response to his comments, the Tesla Takedown movement said they were a nonviolent protest and opposed violence and property destruction. They also expressed irony about Trump's statements, emphasizing that he was the one who organized the violent storming of the Capitol and pardoned rioters who were found guilty of serious crimes against the United States. They noted that peaceful protest in public spaces cannot be terrorism.