“President” Musk has deployed his loyal White House occupant Donald Trump to announce today a shocking new initiative: Tesla deaths, apparently already worse than domestic terrorism, are to be officially increased.

I wish I were kidding. Tesla products causing an alarmingly high-rate of deaths are to be deployed more widely as a matter of some kind of federal priority? We’re hearing a Trump initiative that will kill more Americans, and damage more property, as near as I can tell.

What could possibly be behind this cruel misdirection from the White House, where Trump seems increasingly comfortable serving as an oligarch’s spokesperson instead of an American president? Does anyone remember the style and history of their campaign messaging going back to 2016?

The results from this original tryst (2016-2020) have been very clear, given how Tesla “Autopilot” was deregulated enough to go on and kill more people than even domestic terrorist vehicle attacks:

Let’s go now to the Trump stage of 2025 to hear the exact latest clown-around performance.

Donald Trump said he will label violence against Tesla dealerships domestic terrorism as he appeared with Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, to show support amid recent anti-Tesla protests and the slump in the company’s stock price. Several Tesla vehicles were parked in the driveway of the White House for the US president to pick from, accompanied by Musk and his young son.

The irony is impossible to miss: Trump is ready to label protests against potentially dangerous Tesla vehicles as “domestic terrorism” while standing next to the very man whose products the data suggests might be the bigger threat. But who’s really calling the shots in this bizarre press conference?

Imagine if the White House proudly displayed VBIEDs (Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices) in the driveway while American troops were being killed by the same weapons in combat zones.

This isn’t just dangerous political theater, it’s moral abdication. When Tesla vehicles are claiming more American lives than domestic terrorism according to statistics, why is our government criminalizing those who raise concerns rather than addressing the clear and present Tesla death danger?

The Trump jelly platform seems disturbingly clear: American lives are apparently worth less than protecting Musk’s fake wealth from his fake stock price.

Furthermore, when I hear Trump talk about a worry that people freely throw “Molotov cocktails” at the authoritarian Tesla brand, a certain history fact comes immediately to mind.

The “Molotov” label comes from Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who had brazenly claimed that bombs exploding in Finnish civilian neighborhoods in 1939 were “humanitarian food deliveries.” The Finns, in their cold and bitter irony, named improvised bottles of fuel lit on fire as “Molotov cocktails”, because they said it was just a “drink” to go with the explosive authoritarian “bread baskets.”

Fast forward to today and Trump fills the driveway with machines implicated in hundreds of American deaths saying they deserve special government protection as if Molotov’s bread baskets, while those who protest them with cocktails are “domestic terrorists.” See what I mean about history?

Orwell would recognize Trump’s corrupt use of language immediately. Hopefully it also should be recognized by anyone still able to read 1984 (e.g. Trump’s Secretary of Defense Hegseth has literally ordered Orwell’s books urgently axed from military libraries and reading lists).

I’d say the cruel White House performance of domestic terrorism doublespeak has tell-tale smells of Russia’s Putin influence, but the security community surely by now knows the awful “Musk” of such autocratic theater.