Speaking on Friday from the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump suggested the Capitol rioters were tame compared with the people responsible for setting Tesla vehicles ablaze in protest of billionaire Elon Musk’s meddling in the federal government.
“I view these people as terrorists just like others,” Trump said of the Tesla vandals.
“When I looked at those showrooms burning, and those cars — not one or two, like seven, eight, 10 burning, exploding all over the place — these are terrorists,” he said.
“You didn’t have that on Jan 6, I can tell you. You didn’t have anything like that Jan 6,” Trump went on, referring to the 2021 riot that left several people dead.
A police officer was among those who died either during the riot or directly afterward. Trump notably issued a mass pardon for hundreds of Jan 6 rioters in the first days of his new term, regardless of whether their crimes involved physical violence.
The president suggested earlier on Friday that people who attack Teslas should be sent to prison in El Salvador, where his administration recently transported over 250 migrants.
Attacks on Teslas ramped up across the nation and around the world after Musk made an arm gesture at Trump’s inauguration rally that resembled a Nazi-era “Sieg heil” salute. (Musk denies the comparison.) The world’s richest man has since taken on a prominent White House role guiding the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which has pressured agency leads into making sweeping, unpopular cuts to the federal workforce and government services.
Dramatic footage of burning Teslas in Las Vegas went viral this week. Similar incidents have been reported at a Tesla dealership in Missouri, a charging station in Canada, a service center in Oregon, a dealership in Colorado and a charging station in South Carolina, among other places.
Trump and his administration officials have been heaping praise on Musk in response to the backlash, with Trump even briefly transforming the driveway of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into a Tesla showroom last week. In a made-for-TV moment, the president said he was purchasing one of Musk’s vehicles.
This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi promised “serious charges” and harsh punishments for the individuals behind a recent high-profile string of arson attacks on Tesla dealerships, calling their actions “domestic terrorism.”
Bondi said on Thursday that three individuals had already been charged in connection with various Tesla attacks, although her office did not specify what those charges were.
Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, has also been urging Americans to support Musk by buying Tesla stock, appearing to disregard federal ethics law in doing so.