Musk: ‘It Is Tough Sledding, But I Think We’re Doing the Right Thing Here’

It’s only Monday and Elon Musk is already having a difficult week. As David pointed out this morning, Tesla has increasingly been under attack by astroturfed protests from the left aimed at company sales outlets, chargers and even individual cars. The anger directed at Tesla resulted in a big drop in the company’s stock today.

Tesla shares plunged on Monday, hitting their lowest point since before Election Day, as investors registered the impact of falling sales and increasing protests over the high-profile political role that Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, has taken on.

At the close of trading, the electric-car maker’s shares were down more than 15 percent for the day, and more than 50 percent from a mid-December peak. The day’s loss was the biggest for Tesla stock since 2020 and far outstripped the 2.7 percent drop on Monday in the S&P 500.

None of this is happening by accident. The Washington Post has a story up today admitting that Musk is now public enemy #1 for Democrats. He is for Democrats what Nancy Pelosi once was for Republicans.

Around the country, Democrats and their allies are directing their anger at Musk and using him to motivate their base to stand up to Trump’s cuts to federal programs. They have sued him. They’ve demanded congressional inquiries. They held up “Musk steals” signs during Trump’s address to Congress. One liberal group unveiled a digital billboard in Times Square showing Musk holding the White House on marionette strings, while another launched “Musk or Us” meetings in GOP congressional districts…

Democrats see Musk as an important target because his popularity has plummeted and he’s constantly in the news. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted in mid-February found 34 percent of adults approved of the job Musk is doing and 49 percent disapproved. He fared 11 points worse than Trump, who had 45 percent approving of the job he is doing and 53 percent disapproving.

Democrats have escalated their attacks on Musk as he uses his power to force federal workers out of their jobs, and they now see him as a powerful figure to motivate their base as they eye the 2026 midterm elections. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) last month accused Republicans of “working for Elon Musk and doing the bidding of an unelected, unaccountable, out-of-control billionaire puppet master.”

If that weren’t enough, X also suffered a serious outage today which Musk said was the result of a cyberattack that appeared to originate in Ukraine.

Billionaire entrepreneur and DOGE chief Elon Musk claimed Monday that X went dark as the result of a “massive cyberattack” that originated in the “Ukraine area.”

“We’re not sure exactly what happened,” Musk told Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow about the apparent operation targeting his social media platform.

“But there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the X system, with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” the world’s richest man added…

Experts told The Post it was highly improbably that Ukrainian government actors were the perpetrator of such an audacious and far-reaching attack one day before diplomats from Washington and Kyiv meet in Saudi Arabia.

It seems unlikely to me that Ukrainians would be trying to irritate Musk at this moment when their entire communications system for the war effort is built around his Starlink satellites. Musk has already said that he has zero intention of cutting off Starlink service in Ukraine but still, why would you want to piss him off if you’re Ukrainian. On the other hand, a move like this would make perfect sense for Russian hackers who would love nothing more than to see Musk turn on Ukraine.

Musk gave an interview today to Larry Kudlow in which he was asked about all of this and laughed about it. “Always look on the bright side of life,” he said, quoting Monty Python. “Why are you doing this?” Kudlow asked. He added, “It’s tough sledding.”

Musk replied, “It is tough sledding but I think we’re doing the right thing here.” He then goes on to make the case he’s made before several times. There is a lot of waste, fraud and abuse in the government and that needs to be stopped to control spending on behalf of the American taxpayer. 

With $36 trillion in debt and debt service that now exceeds the cost of the entire defense budget, we clearly need to make changes. That should be an easy sell to everyone on both sides of the aisle, but of course Democrats only care about demagoguing this to regain power and the fringe elements on the left will go beyond harsh language to vandalism and threats. The media, as always, will be fine with all of this until such time as the collective bad behavior can be blamed on Republicans.