Elon Musk blames Tesla protests on shady payoffs—all while he makes shady payoffs in Wisconsin

After yet another round of protests disrupted hundreds of Tesla dealerships over the weekend, Elon Musk, the carmaker’s CEO/ ">presidential sidekick, fumed on the social media platform he owns. In a series of tweets and retweets, Musk characterized those taking part in the demonstrations as paid “protesters,” sparking sympathetic replies on X, such as: “How pathetic is your political party when you need to hire people to support it?”

Musk then went on to spend Sunday night orchestrating a rally for his political party’s candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, during which he gave away checks for a million dollars to two voters, as previously promised.

Much like Walt Whitman, Elon Musk contains multitudes.

Acting hypocritically is not against the law—which is probably for the best, since nearly everyone is guilty of it in one way or another. What makes Musk’s double standard so egregious, however, is that he has presented no hard evidence of the allegation he broadly lobs at others—offering payouts to affect a political outcome—while flagrantly engaging in the very activity he claims to find so repugnant. (Not to mention its questionable legality—despite the Wisconsin Supreme Court declining a request to stop Musk.)

Ever since protests started springing up at Tesla charging stations and showrooms back in February, a response to DOGE’s haphazard firing and defunding spree, Musk has claimed these protests are bought and paid for by shadowy forces. It’s apparently inconceivable that citizens would object to having their Social Security payments threatened or cancer research disrupted, and organically decide to put pressure on the DOGE head’s stock portfolio. Musk even implied that the tens of thousands attending Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent rallies are similarly paid protesters “the Dems” are moving around from one staged event to the next.

This brand of political accusation is nothing new. During his first term, Donald Trump regularly accused the many hordes or protesters responding to his actions of being paid agitators. (Notably, the protests kept coming, despite the accusations.) The tactic extends back far beyond Trump, though. According to historian Kevin Kruse, segregationists claimed the high schoolers who desegregated Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, had been paid for their efforts. 

If protest movements are meant to reflect the shared values of a diverse community with a common cause, such claims muddy the purity of participants and delegitimize their purpose.

Among those aiding in the quest to cast suspicion on the staggering number of Tesla protests breaking out around the globe are Fox News and Joe Rogan, both of whom Elon Musk retweeted during a marathon griping session Sunday on X. But none of the evidence any of them have offered proves that a single protester has been paid to attend a Tesla demonstration. Indeed, the headline of the Fox News article that Musk tweeted on Sunday uses the words, “Critics speculate,” to frame its claims. 

What the accusations all boil down to is that Democrat-aligned groups such as Indivisible have become involved in the planning and execution of some of these protests. This is true, and those groups neither deny nor try to hide that. Seemingly because the truth does not sound nefarious enough, however, Musk and various media outlets instead claim these groups are leading the charge rather than connecting with already existing protest energy to make it even more powerful. Musk also contorts himself into logic pretzels to link these groups to 94-year old, left-leaning philanthropist George Soros, a longtime boogeyman for conservatives. (He also blamed Soros for hecklers showing up at his million-dollar giveaway on Sunday.) 

As for the allegations that these protesters must be paid operatives—they couldn’t possibly be sincere in their demonstrating outrage—the smoking gun appears to be on an Indivisible web page offering reimbursements of up to $200 for any “eligible expenses” that local chapters incur during Musk-related protests. Keen observers of how money works may notice that a reimbursement is not exactly the same thing as a payout. Still, when an X user suggested that those supposed $200 payments to protesters are being funded by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Musk jumped in to agree, claiming “the probability is 100% that Reid is funding them.” (Hoffman’s response: “The probability many, many people don’t like you? 100%.”)

While Elon Musk cannot seem to imagine a world in which left-leaning billionaires are not paying off citizens to engineer a political outcome, he is simultaneously paying off citizens to engineer a political outcome. (A win for Musk’s preferred candidate in Wisconsin’s special election Tuesday could affect abortion and voting rights in the state, along with, uh, whether a Tesla dealership will be allowed to open there.) Beyond the million-dollar checks he handed out Sunday, Musk is offering $20 payouts for anyone—even those out of state, he explicitly mentions—who will help get the word out for his candidate in Wisconsin.

Musk’s cash infusion in Wisconsin not only represents a continuation of his $270 million effort to elect Trump in November, which also involved hefty giveaways, but it’s a test run for the primary challenges he’s vowed to fund against any Republicans who cross Trump. The irony is, part of what the Tesla protesters object to is the Tesla CEO using his vast fortune to influence politics. Musk keeps asking who’s paying to fund these protests, when the simple answer is: It’s him.

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https://www.fastcompany.com/91308723/elon-musk-blames-tesla-protests-shady-payoffs-while-making-shady-payoffs-wisconsin?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss