President Donald Trump on Friday appeared to compare people attacking Teslas and dealerships to January 6th insurrectionists.
“When I looked at those showrooms burning and those cars — not one or two, but seven, eight, ten burning, exploding all over the place — these are terrorists. You didn’t have that on January 6th,” Trump said during an unrelated news conference in the Oval Office.
The Justice Department has so far charged three people with using Molotov cocktails to set Tesla cars and charging stations on fire in incidents in Colorado, Oregon, and South Carolina. Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have called the arson and vandalism against Tesla vehicles, charging stations, and dealerships in recent weeks across the United States “domestic terrorism,” but it’s not yet clear whether the defendants face terrorism-related charges.
While many protests at Tesla showrooms have been nonviolent, Trump and conservatives have railed against them and called for defendants to get lengthy prison sentences without the possibility of pardons — a very different tone than how the president spoke about January 6th rioters. For years, Trump has attempted to whitewash the events of that day, falsely proclaiming the attack on the Capitol to be mostly peaceful. And on his first day back in the Oval Office, he pardoned almost all the insurrectionists, releasing some violent attackers from prison.
