US President Donald Trump said the wave of vandalism targeting his adviser Elon Musk’s Tesla cars and showrooms is worse than the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters four years ago.
“When I saw those showrooms burning, and those cars — not one or two, but seven, eight, 10 burning, exploding all over the place — these are terrorists,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
“You didn’t have that on January 6, I can tell you. You didn’t have anything like that January 6,” he added, referring to the 2021 Capitol riot, when his supporters stormed the building in a failed bid to overturn his election loss.
Trump had previously incited the crowd with baseless claims that the election had been fraudulently stolen from him.
Tesla vehicles have increasingly become targets of vandalism in the US, driven by anger at CEO Musk, who is currently leading a sweeping purge of the US federal government on Trump’s behalf — despite holding no official political office.
Trump called for those responsible to be prosecuted as domestic terrorists, warning they could face up to 20 years in prison. “These people are going to be caught … and they’re going to be prosecuted,” he said.
One of Trump’s first acts after taking office for second term in January was pardoning all those convicted over the Capitol attack — including violent rioters who assaulted police officers and far-right extremists who helped orchestrate the assault.