By Tobi Raji and Joe Heim, Washington Post
About 10 years ago, Tom Blackburn became one of the first 100,000 people to buy a Tesla Model S. The purchase was part of a broader effort to adopt a more environmentally conscious lifestyle, which also included installing solar panels on his Virginia home.
Now, the 76-year-old is worried about the message his car might send to others: that he supports Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has embraced right-wing politics, boosted antisemitic conspiracy theories on his personal X account and become a central figure in President Donald Trump’s administration. As a small act of protest, Blackburn purchased a bumper sticker that reads, “I bought this before I knew he was crazy.”
Marylander Carla Harne, 41, has watched the tide turn against Tesla and Musk from the front seat of her sleek, fiery red Model 3. Harne’s interactions with others over her car had mostly been positive — until last year, when, hours after Trump was elected president of the United States, someone threw “probably a dozen” eggs at her car as she drove home from work.
“My windshield was just covered,” Harne said.
Andrew Loewinger of Northwest D.C. sold his Model S in November to protest Musk and his “abhorrent politics and actions.”
“After I sold the car, I got a customer satisfaction survey from them, and what I wrote, which I still believe, is that Musk has irretrievably damaged the brand, and I would not associate with that brand again, period,” Loewinger, 71, said.
Across the decidedly blue Washington region, some Tesla owners — once seen as part of a pioneering sustainability movement — are grappling with the CEO’s emergence as one of the most powerful right-wing political figures in the country. Musk, the world’s richest person, spent at least $288 million to help elect Trump and other Republican candidates, making him the 2024 presidential election’s biggest donor.
Now, as head of the newly created U.S. DOGE Service, Musk has raced to execute his vision of a dramatically smaller government, wiping out swaths of the federal workforce, slashing diversity and inclusion efforts, and ripping up deals with government contractors. The broad-brush bludgeoning of federal agencies and programs has been cheered by Trump’s MAGA base, but it has also run in to a flurry of lawsuits and legal challenges seeking to halt what critics view as an unconstitutional process. Even some of Trump’s senior advisers have been surprised and frustrated by the seeming freedom of DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, to do anything it wants, according to Washington Post reporting last week.
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