Elon Musk says shadowy “larger forces” are working to ensure his demise—and that of his automotive company Tesla—because of his role as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The billionaire Trump ally and Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the claims in an interview Tuesday with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
He spoke against a backdrop of vandalism and arson attacks against Tesla vehicles, which appear to be in response to DOGE’s efforts to slash the federal workforce.
Early on Tuesday, a Tesla facility in Las Vegas was set ablaze by an individual armed with a gun and Molotov cocktails, in what authorities said was a “targeted” attack. At least five Tesla vehicles were damaged.
“It’s really come as quite a shock to me that there is this level of, really, hatred and violence from the left,” Musk, the world’s richest person, told Hannity.
“I always thought that the left, you know, Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring, and yet they’re burning down cars, firebombing dealerships, they’re firing bullets into dealerships, they’re smashing up Teslas. Tesla is a peaceful company.”
“We’ve never done anything harmful. I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things,” Musk went on.
“So I think we just have a deranged…there’s some kind of mental illness thing going on here because this doesn’t make any sense.”
Musk alleged there are “larger forces at work” targeting him and Tesla for his work at DOGE.
“I mean, who’s funding and who’s coordinating it? Because this is crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.
Hannity displayed one of Musk’s X posts from earlier that day which said: “This level of violence is insane and deeply wrong. Tesla just makes electric cars and has done nothing to deserve these evil attacks.”
In his post, Musk was referring to the recent spate of attacks on Tesla vehicles.
Hannity asked the billionaire if he thinks the violence is simply because “you’re aligned with President Donald Trump.”
Musk has been on a mission since Trump returned to the White House to slash the federal workforce, and claims to have cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending so far—partly by firing thousands of federal workers across multiple agencies.
The mass layoffs have seen some legal setbacks.
Musk has also overseen the gutting of United States Agency for International Development, and U.S. government-funded media outlets such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty.
DOGE has claimed to have slashed $115 billion in wasteful spending since Jan. 20, through a combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.
“Has it really come down to the basic, you’re aligned with President Donald Trump, who also is a friend of mine, and that you have identified well over $100 billion of waste fraud abuse that our federal government never should have been spending? Is that what it comes down to?” the Fox News host asked.
“Yeah, it turns out, when you take away people’s money that they are receiving fraudulently, they get very upset,” Musk replied.
“And they basically want to kill me because I’m stopping their fraud and they want to hurt Tesla because we are stopping this terrible waste and corruption in the government. Well, I guess they’re bad people. Bad people do bad things.”
