How Tesla Dealerships Became the Epicenter of the Trump Resistance
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
4.2 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
Sarah Larson joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Tesla Takedown movement, protesting Elon Musk and Donald Trump, along with the political efficacy of targeting an electric-car company and why some protesters are borrowing tactics from the AIDS activist group ACT UP.
This week’s reading:
- “Fighting Elon Musk, One Tesla Dealership at a Time,” by Sarah Larson
- “The Fired Student-Debt Relievers,” by E. Tammy Kim
- “What Marine Le Pen’s Conviction Means for French Democracy,” by Isaac Chotiner
- “How Donald Trump Throttled Big Law,” by Ruth Marcus
- “Why Benjamin Netanyahu Is Going Back to War,” by Bernard Avishai
To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Sarah, thanks so much for being here. |
| 0:08.5 | Hey, Tyler. Thanks for having me. |
| 0:10.2 | I'm wondering if we can just start by having you tell us what was going on at Tesla dealerships |
| 0:15.6 | over the weekend. |
| 0:16.7 | Yes, it was a lot of anger, a lot of solidarity, and a lot of very funny and upsetting signs. |
| 0:24.5 | A lot of kind of funny costumes, really sad, fascist-related imagery of Elon doing the sort of Nazi |
| 0:33.3 | salute and things saying, this is the immigrant taking your jobs reasonably, that kind of thing. |
| 0:39.8 | But it was people of all ages chanting and being emotional and a lot of cops standing around |
| 0:48.1 | looking at everyone kind of warily, but it never felt like things were going to get out of control or confrontational |
| 0:58.8 | in a bad way. |
| 1:00.8 | There was even a moment where a sort of nutty protester was swearing at a cop, and she kept calling |
| 1:07.1 | him Quaker Oats, and he just was sort of shaking his head. And she was wearing a bikini. Yeah. And she was filming it all. I don't know what was happening, but he just kind of took it in stride. And then another person there was vociferously thanking the cop for everything cops do. I don't know what was going on with that guy. |
| 1:28.3 | Might be like a never-Trump Republican or something. I don't know what. Yeah. And the goal is to, |
| 1:34.9 | you know, get people to sell Tesla stock and their cars and to stop buying Teslas, of course, |
| 1:41.0 | but also just to raise awareness of how angry people are and how much they want Elon to stop doing what he's doing with Doge and trying to dismantle the government. |
| 1:55.5 | Last Wednesday on the political scene, we did a deep dive into Elon Musk's company, SpaceX. But it's Musk's |
| 2:02.3 | other company, Tesla, that's the big flashpoint in American politics right now. More than 200 |
| 2:08.0 | protests took place at Tesla dealerships across the country over the weekend, and Musk himself |
| 2:12.6 | has become the lightning rod for left-wing ire. New Yorker staff writer Sarah Larson has been covering the |
| 2:18.8 | Tesla takedown movement. Today, she's here with me to explain why Tesla has become target |
| 2:23.6 | number one for the Trump resistance, whether it should be a target at all, and whether it's |
| 2:28.1 | now more effective to protest Musk than Trump. You're listening to the political scene. I'm Tyler |
... |
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