Rage against Elon Musk turns Tesla into a target

In an image provided by the Tigard Police Department shows, where shots were fired at the Tesla dealership in Tigard, Ore. The backlash against the electric vehicle company has turned violent at times, as its billionaire chief executive parlays his support for President Trump into consequential influence over the federal government. (Tigard Police Department via The New York Times)

By Adeel Hassan and Tim Balk

Tesla charging stations were set ablaze near Boston last Monday. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon after midnight Thursday. Arrests were made at a nonviolent protest at a Tesla dealership in lower Manhattan on Saturday.

The electric vehicle company increasingly found itself in police blotters across the country this past week, more than seven weeks after President Donald Trump’s second inauguration swept Tesla CEO Elon Musk into the administration as a senior adviser to the president.

Musk, 53, is drawing increasing backlash for his sweeping cuts to federal agencies, a result of the newly formed cost-cutting initiative Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency.

During a demonstration Saturday at a gleaming Tesla showroom in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, protesters joined in chants of “Nobody voted for Elon Musk” and “Oligarchs out, democracy in.” One held a sign saying, “Send Musk to Mars Now!!” (Musk also owns SpaceX.)

Several hundred protesters remained there for two hours, organizers said, blocking entrances and shutting down the dealership.

Some protesters entered the building, and six were arrested, said Alice Hu, an organizer. The New York Police Department said five people had been issued summonses for disorderly conduct, while one faced a charge of resisting arrest.

The demonstration came at the end of a week in which employees at a Tesla dealership in Tigard, Oregon, near Portland, arrived at work Thursday and found gunshot damage.

Police said they believed that at least seven shots had been fired, damaging three cars and shattering windows. One bullet went through a wall and into a computer monitor, police said.

And on Monday, seven Tesla charging stations were intentionally set on fire at a shopping center outside Boston, police said. In another Boston suburb, police arrested a man Wednesday who had tagged six Tesla vehicles with decals of Musk in a raised-arm pose.

Police in Brookline, Massachusetts, released a video of the man saying that he had the right to deface the cars because it was his “free speech.” When Musk saw the video, he responded, “Damaging the property of others, aka vandalism, is not free speech!”

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment Saturday about the protest and vandalism.

In Colorado on Thursday, federal prosecutors charged a person with malicious destruction of property. She is accused of spray-painting “Nazi” onto the side of a Tesla dealership and planting a Molotov cocktail near a vehicle, according to a news release from the United States attorney in Colorado.

At Trump’s inauguration, Musk slapped his right hand on his chest before shooting his arm diagonally upward, palm facing down, a gesture that resembled a salute used in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. But Musk responded in a post on his social platform X: “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

On Tuesday in Salem, Oregon, a man was arrested and charged with setting fires in front of a Tesla dealership and to a Tesla car in the lot on the day of Trump’s inauguration, causing at least $500,000 worth of damage, authorities said. He was also charged with firing shots at the same dealership one month later.

The protest at the showroom in Manhattan was in one of the city’s most liberal neighborhoods. Protesters have gathered there for weeks, with each weekend’s protest larger than the previous one, according to state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat who represents the district.

He said that it was “cathartic for New Yorkers to go to the streets” and that it was important for Musk and Trump to “see that cutting the federal government off at its knees is going to hurt a lot of people.”

Tesla has been subject to the backlash, with some vehicle owners now selling their cars and trucks to distance themselves from Musk and his political activities.

“I’m sort of embarrassed to be seen in that car now,” an owner told The New York Times before trading in the car.

The anger against Musk this past week also crossed borders.

In Berlin on Tuesday, several fires broke out at a construction site for the expansion of a Tesla factory. Police in Germany said they were investigating it as an arson.

And in France, a dozen Tesla cars were set on fire near the southern city of Toulouse on Sunday night. The blaze was “not at all accidental,” the prosecutor’s office said.