Tesla CEO Elon Musk has publicly raged in recent weeks about the protests being lodged against his flagship electric car company, and Mother Jones writer Timothy Murphy believes that the demonstrations have been successful beyond their organizers' wildest dreams.
Murphy in particular points to a recent rant from Musk demanding that billionaires whom he baselessly suspects of funding the protests to be arrested.
"This is a bit authoritarian, yes, but just as importantly it is pathetic," Murphy contends. "Suggesting that George Soros and the founder of LinkedIn should be arrested after an old lady shouted at a car is one of the softest moments in recent American history. This is not the gesture of a man who is impervious to protests. It is the response of an oligarch who is being driven visibly insane by them."
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He also thinks that Democrats need to start using Musk's angry ravings about the protests against him.
"Musk’s spiraling is an asset," he writes. "He is both deeply unpopular and out of control; his response to opposition is to descend deeper into the paranoia that got him there."
For evidence of this, Murphy points to the way that Musk injected himself directly into the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race by holding rallies in the state where he handed out $1 million checks in a scheme that many legal experts say likely breaks the state's laws against paying people in exchange for votes.
"Musk made the election a referendum on himself, turnout surged, and the Democrat won in a landslide," he argues.
All of this leads Murphy to conclude that Musk "cannot take the heat" and recommends that his opponents wage psychological war against him.
"He has not just the taste and sensibilities of a boy, but the temperament of one," he writes. "He throws a fit out when things don’t go his way. He wilts. This is someone who can be beat."