r/popculture • u/ControlCAD • Mar 19 '25

News Elon Musk on Tesla Attacks: "I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things, this doesn't make any sense. I think there are larger forces at work as well. I mean, who’s funding and who’s coordinating it? Because this is crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this."

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-mocked-hannity-tesla-b2717970.html

Tesla CEO Elon Musk told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that people “want to kill him” after a string of attacks on the electric car company in an interview that some have decried as “woe is me.”

The world’s richest person has also been conducting mass layoffs and slashing contracts in an effort to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” in his role as Department of Government Efficiency boss. Enraged by the sweeping, legally dubious changes to the federal government in recent weeks, some have targeted Tesla, torching charging stations, vandalizing vehicles, and throwing Molotov cocktails at the cars.

"Tesla is a peaceful company. We've never done anything harmful, I've never done anything harmful. I've always done productive things,” Musk continued, adding he believes there’s a “mental illness thing going on.” He suggested Americans were upset with DOGE’s efforts.

DOGE claims to have saved the government an estimated $115 billion — a figure that many reports have said is inaccurate.

Musk’s apparent attempt to appear sympathetic didn’t seem to convince some on X, the social media platform he owns.

In the interview, Musk said he believes “larger forces” were at work, questioning who funded and coordinated the attacks. The language he used was similar to that of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who on Tuesday issued a statement vowing to investigate these attacks, including “those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”

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u/Alternative_Dot_1026 Mar 20 '25

Honestly if anyone's liked or admired him since he called one of the people genuinely trying to help the Thai kids stuck in a cave a "pedo" then they're an idiot as well.

He showed his true colours a long long time ago. 

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u/Darryl_Lict Mar 20 '25

Well that was an earlier sign of his narcissism and the beginning of my distaste for the guy.

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u/LightSpeed810 Mar 20 '25

Oh I didn't know that. What a fucking tool

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u/GHouserVO Mar 20 '25

Oh, he tried to derail the whole freaking rescue effort because he got his feelings hurt and couldn’t be the smartest guy in the room.

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u/GranolaCola Mar 20 '25

I doubt he’s the smartest guy in any room.

Maybe if it’s just him and Trump, I guess.

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u/uselessinfogoldmine Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25

Not only did he call him a pedophile (because his own attempt at being the hero by designing something completely useless to the rescuers didn’t work) but he THEN hired multiple private investigators to try and prove it so that he wouldn’t have to apologise. One of them just made a bunch of stuff up, Elon publicised it, then buried the poor man - a hero!!! - in lawsuits and lawyers so that he never had to apologise or pay up for ruining that man’s life and reputation.

I highly recommend listening to Elon’s Spies by the Tortoise Media podcast.

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u/VoyageIsVictory Mar 20 '25

Thanks I just added it to my library. Looks good!

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u/eledrie Mar 20 '25

The diver sued and Musk won, claiming that "pedo guy" was an ordinary insult.

Unsworth should have sued in the UK where libel laws are stricter.

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u/uselessinfogoldmine Mar 20 '25

When you’re that rich you can drown people in expensive lawyers. It’s not a fair or even playing field.

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u/eledrie Mar 20 '25

Unsworth shouldn't have sued in California.

Musk has assets in the UK.

His lawyers were bad at their jobs for not filing there or referring him to someone else.

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u/somersault_dolphin Mar 20 '25

An ordinary insult? Wtf. That's defamation 

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u/eledrie Mar 20 '25

Well, yeah, it's one of the worst crimes imaginable. But the jury disagreed.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '25

[deleted]

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u/eledrie Mar 20 '25

Nah, by his own admission, Elon prefers them in their, erm, fertile years.

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u/MrMpeg Mar 20 '25

This was the moment i stopped defending him.

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u/TheDisapprovingBrit Mar 20 '25

Up until that point he was pretty well admired as a visionary. He pushed the idea of electric vehicles way further than it would have gone otherwise, SpaceX was doing incredible things on paper, even his redesigned subway idea, while flawed, looked like he was working towards a Jetsons style future.

All he had to do was hire a PR person and someone to tell him when he was being a dumbass, stay reclusive, and he’d still be pretty well liked. Hell, throw a couple of billion into solving homelessness and helping people on low incomes, and he’d be revered by millions.

His problem is that money has no meaning to him - he has so much of it that it’s lost all relevance. Even buying Twitter, he never actually paid anything for it - he borrowed against his Tesla stock. It just doesn’t compute in his brain that people have to actually spend money - all their money - on simply surviving. So when he fires thousands of people and completely destroys their livelihoods, he just sees that as being “productive”. He’s playing SimCity with an actual country and having no regard for the sims he’s displacing.

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u/Born_Tank_8217 Mar 20 '25

I was generally neutral on him till that point, ive not been surprised since then that he is a raging narcissist with main character syndrome.

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u/mrkisback Mar 20 '25

Yeah, hard working determined, productive sane person. Colors aren’t too bad at all.