As Tesla CEO Elon Musk leads President Donald Trump’s relentless purge of the federal government’s workforce via his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a string of attacks and vandalism have hit vehicles and dealerships bearing the automaker’s logo.
Musk and several DOGE top aides sat down with Fox News host Bret Baier on Thursday, pitching to America their supposed earnest efforts to cut costs and reduce government waste. The conversation eventually led to Musk addressing the recent vandalization of Tesla property across the country, with Musk backing earlier statements from Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi condemning the attacks and threatening legal action. On Monday, the FBI announced that it has created a task force to “crack down on violent Tesla attacks.”
“People are committing violence. They are firebombing Tesla dealerships. They’re shooting guns into stores. They’re threatening people,” Musk told Baier. “Why? What’s happening, it seems to me, is they’re being fed propaganda by the far left, and they believe it.”
“The president has made it clear, we are going to go after them. The ones providing the money. The ones pushing the lies and propaganda, we’re going after them,” Musk claimed. “I think there’s some real evil out there. We have to overcome it.”
Earlier this month, a federal judge found that Musk and DOGE “likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways” when they shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, America’s foreign aid bureau, and terminated thousands of employees.
Musk previously appeared on Fox News and claimed the political backlash against him was happening because he and DOGE are uncovering fraud.
“It turns out, when you take away people’s, you know, the money they’re receiving fraudulently, they get very upset, and they basically want to kill me because I’m stopping their fraud, and they want to hurt Tesla because we’re stopping this, this terrible waste and corruption in the government,” Musk said, adding: “Bad people will do bad things.”
So far, Musk and DOGE have found exceedingly little fraud. In recent months however, they have eliminated tens of thousands of federal workers, and threatened the stability of essential government services like Social Security.
