Shownotes Transcript
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The protests are called Tesla takedown protests, and they're taking place outside of Tesla dealerships in the U.S. and now in some places internationally. Quote, sell your Teslas, dump your stock, their website says. Quote, Elon Musk is destroying democracy around the world and he's using the fortune he built at Tesla to do it. End quote.
Well, Morgan Boyer is a freelance writer in the Pittsburgh area, and Ron Mishko is a semi-retired business owner in northern Michigan. They've both joined the protests. There have been some harsh words said on both sides, but...
We have not touched any Tesla cars. We have not touched foot on any Tesla dealerships. And you're not going to change anyone's mind by damaging their property or scaring them. That's not the way you want to proceed. That's not the way to lead.
Mishko actually owns multiple Teslas, but he still got involved with Tesla takedown a few weeks ago after Elon Musk joined the Trump administration. He attended one protest with 200 people outside a Tesla dealership. Mishko is concerned about Musk's impact on the federal government, but he is not selling his personal Teslas and does not want the company to suffer.
Back in the old days, when a president won, that was it. You know, the political season stopped and then we moved forward for better or for worse, whether you agreed or not. And I want Trump to succeed. I want Elon to succeed. I want everybody to succeed in America. But policies that hurt regular Americans. I work in a rural area up in northern Michigan, you know, and I think those policies are going to hurt them.
And I don't want to see people hurting. There's no reason for that, you know? The Tesla takedown movement stresses that it is, quote, a peaceful protest movement and that it opposes violence, vandalism and destruction of property. And the protests have been vastly and mostly peaceful. Nothing, though, is 100 percent. Eddie Zipperstein grew up around cars. And when he started as a mechanic...
He was into those loud, high-horsepower hot rods. And he was skeptical about electric vehicles when they first came out. Zipperstein now owns a body shop in downtown Chicago. And because it was good for business, he got certified to work on Teslas a few years ago. And he got curious and eventually started driving customers' cars around the shop,
That got him hooked. He says he doesn't mind how quiet the Teslas are. He likes the torque on the car and he loves the technology inside. And so Zipperstein got his own Tesla sedan and eventually a flashy Cybertruck to advertise for his business.
I was one of the first ones to get it in the city. So people would be like jumping at it. Can I see it? Can I take a picture with it? You know, it has cameras. So literally all day long, it would show me people posing next to the car. So in the beginning, that was roughly June when they came out around here in Chicago. Everyone wanted to take a picture. Little kids screaming and yelling at you. Thumbs up. Zipperstein now works on a lot of Teslas. He says there are 50 or 60 in his building right now.
It's the city, so he's used to patching up dings and scratches here and there on automobiles. But in the last few months, he says he's been seeing a lot of Teslas riddled with key scratches and spray paint. One piece of graffiti directly slurred company owner Elon Musk. But Zipperstein says it could be a lot worse. Multiple customers tell him they've been rammed into intentionally because of their car choice.
He was in his own driveway, so he wasn't even on the street. And these people slow down with a big passenger van, line up so they can get him right at the right spot, reverse, and then drive right into him. He showed me the video. It's crazy. And then another customer also about two weeks ago had a brand new Model 3, the new body style, the Highland. And, uh...
He shows me someone just behind him and the lady taps it. So I'm like, OK, so you got tapped. You know, it's Chicago and it's a city. You know, it's a bump and tap. That's how they park here. He's like, no, wait a second. Then you see the lady reverse back like 15 feet and like gas it right into him again. She guts out. She looks and she walks away. In the past few months, Zipperstein has had customers ask to remove the Tesla emblem from their vehicles.
Or he's seen bumper stickers that say, quote, I bought this before Elon went crazy, end quote. When he cruises Chicago in his Cybertruck, he's not getting the thumbs up anymore. I've gotten the finger and yelled at and stuff like that. I mean, people just and it's not my driving. I'm just driving normally and people just yell at you. And they, you know, they think that it's a political statement is what I always say. A car is not a political statement. It's just what you drive.
But the point is, is that not everyone feels that way right now. Some dealerships and charging stations have, in fact, been hit with Molotov cocktails, even gunfire. And these are the stories that have been all over the news.
We're seeing more reports of vandalized Teslas from all around the country. The latest one happening in the Pacific Northwest. Law enforcement swarming this Austin dealership. Police finding and removing several incendiary devices. This college student is under arrest, accused of firebombing two Tesla Cybertrucks in Kansas City. Police say many of the vehicles are being targeted in New York City. People in Southern California are getting notes on their Teslas, calling them complicit Nazis for owning electric cars.
So far, at least six people face federal charges for allegedly vandalizing Tesla vehicles, charging stations or dealerships. That's six people so far out of the hundreds of protests and thousands of protesters. Again, mostly peaceful.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, though, has called for harsh penalties for people who harm Tesla. She's even gone so far as to call these incidents domestic terrorism. I've made it clear if you take part in the wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, we will find you, arrest you and put you behind bars. OK, so this is why we want to do this hour today, because post January 6th,
Post the attempted assassination on Donald Trump in the last campaign, the question of what legally constitutes domestic terrorism has become and continues to remain more important than ever. And that definition relies not just on case law or legal statutes, but it also relies on our now ultra-polarized politics and on norms in a very non-normal time.
So let's talk about that. John Lewis joins us. He's a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and he's studied domestic terrorism movements from both the left and the right in the United States. John Lewis, welcome to On Point. Hi. Thanks so much, Meghna.
So first of all, just give me your initial analysis of what we have seen so far regarding this Tesla takedown protest movement. Again, I want to emphasize that it has been, you know, by far mostly peaceful, but it's
As the TV headlines tend to focus on, and I will admit we are too, some cases of vandalism or attacks on Teslas are occurring. So, I mean, is this sort of just part and parcel of what protest looks like in America these days?
Yeah, absolutely. Look, we live in the greatest country in the world and we have robust First Amendment protections on speech and assembly. You know, we can also at the same time call out violence, violence against people, violence against property, and more broadly call out political violence when we see it.
At the same time, I think it's very important to disaggregate, again, largely peaceful protest movements that are increasingly mainstream with what appear to be lone actor, isolated cases of vandalism. Yeah. But the thing, though, is, of course, it's just not cut and dry in terms of how the law is interpreted around protest anymore. Perhaps it never has been. But to be clear...
When an action moves from a peaceful protest, even if that protest might get tense, right, that happens. But if it's peaceful, nonviolent, that's, as you said, totally legal, First Amendment protected. But then when someone maybe associated with the protest or not, we'll talk about that in a second, does something else. I mean, how would you draw the line in terms of when it turns into a criminal act?
Yeah, and look, I think that's when you really have to take a nuanced look at the facts in each of these criminal cases. And again, based on the court proceedings to date, there have not been any allegations that there is some, you know, widespread, you know, George Soros funded, ActBlue, you know, globalist attempt to take down Elon Musk, despite what his posts online might say. Again, we can absolutely look at
individual criminal conduct, right? Throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Tesla dealership. Luckily, we have a very robust criminal code that covers that exact situation. And so you can prosecute the individual who threw a Molotov cocktail.
without creating the conditions for what would appear to be these allegations of, again, this nationwide far-left Marxist insurgency based on some reporting. Yeah. But criminal conduct, though, is one place on the spectrum of potential charges that can be brought. We're hearing, as you heard Attorney General Pam Bondi say, this is domestic terrorism.
So let's get right to it. I mean, how is domestic terrorism defined statutorily in this country?
Yeah, it's a great question. We could probably spend most of the hour going down that rabbit hole, right? So, you know, it's tricky because there is a definition that you look at, whether it's FBI, whether it's the Code of Federal Regulation. And effectively, what it boils down to is, you know, domestic terrorism is conduct that is dangerous to human life, that are a violation of our laws that occur in the U.S. that appear to be intended to either
intimidate or coerce civilian population, influence the policy of government in some way, or to affect the conduct of that government by some kind of destruction, assassination, kidnapping. Now, I think where it gets blurry is the fact that unlike with foreign terrorist organizations where we can criminalize the material support to a designated terrorist group overseas like Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS,
There is no domestic analog to that, right? Because again, of those very robust protections on speech and assembly. And so what you're left with is a situation where members of this administration or previous administrations can look at an act and can label it as domestic terrorism. The FBI can put it in their tracker of the number of domestic terrorism cases they investigate in a given year.
But what you will never see is a standalone criminal charge in a case that says, you know, this person violated this statute, which is domestic terrorism. There is no policy for that. OK, so when we come back, I want to talk about why. So, John Lewis, hang on for just a minute. We're talking about, as you heard, how this country defines, and I should say under various administrations, what domestic terrorism actually is. More in a moment. This is On Point.
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Stick around until the end of this podcast for a field trip to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. John, you had mentioned just before the break that we almost never in cases, criminal cases that are brought to court, see specific language in the charging documents that say for X, Y and Z reasons, this person committed acts of domestic terrorism. Can you give me more detail on that and clarify? Sure.
Yeah, absolutely. So when you look at a case like Dylann Roof, right? He was charged with murdering numerous people at the church in South Carolina. There was no standalone domestic terrorism charge. It was a simple case of state murder charges. And I think that usually when we look at domestic individuals, individuals who are operating in the US without direction or inspiration from one of these foreign terrorist groups. So when we look at domestic ideologies, right?
white supremacy, anti-government extremism, anarchist violent extremism. Those charges are very often
Really kind of ticky tacky, right? You'll get gun charges. You'll get drug charges. You'll get felon in possession of firearm charges And that's again because there is no domestic terrorism statute, right? You can't criminalize Domestic support for a domestic group and that that's right and left as well You know You can't criminalize support for a domestic group like the proud boys or the Oath Keepers in the same way that we can't designate a
Antifa as a domestic terrorist group because there simply is no constitutional mechanism to do so. Let me ask if that's okay, though, because if we have robust potential charges that fall short of specifically domestic terrorism, doesn't that, in terms of the outcome, if those people are found guilty through, you know, legal proceedings, doesn't that sort of essentially bring us to the same ends as a domestic terrorism charge would?
Sure. And look, you know, I think what we've kind of created here in this post 9-11 counterterrorism framework is almost this two-tier system, right? Where if you have someone operating in support of the Islamic State, you know, trying to shoot up a synagogue, you can charge them, arrest them, prosecute them for materially supporting the Islamic State. And that's usually going to be a 13, 14-year prison sentence, pretty open and shut. Where at the same time, if you have a
neo-nazi who's trying to plot a mass shooting in support of a white ethnostate and
that individual may get, you know, again, a gun charge, a drug charge, but will not be called a domestic terrorist in legal filings, will certainly not be prosecuted as a domestic terrorist for plotting that mass shooting. And so, again, I think that that goes back to the question at the top of, you know, the government is responsible for adjudicating and deciding who is a terrorist and who's not. And I think we should be very careful about that.
I promise that in a few minutes we will get to sort of the left-wing, right-wing question here. But I want to push on this a little bit. That what you're saying is if the person when doing these heinous acts is saying that they're doing it on behalf or due to beliefs ascribed by a foreign entity –
That therefore, it's very easy to put the domestic terrorism charge on there simply because it's foreign. And so therefore, the presumption is that it's to affect the U.S. government. But you can't make that assertion if the act is done on, you know, due to beliefs of, for example, white supremacy in the United States.
Yeah. So, look, I mean, it comes down to a really straightforward kind of legal situation. Right. Secretary of State can designate specific foreign groups as foreign terrorist organizations. Right. And so we again, we talk about the big groups that you and I are familiar with ISIS, al Qaeda, groups like that. We can charge an individual in the U.S. with trying to materially support, whether in the form of their body, money, guns, provisions, anything like that.
with trying to materially support that foreign terrorist group. So again, that charge, 18 U.S. Code 2339B, material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
There is no domestic analog to that, right? So there is no U.S. code. There's no charge in the U.S. code that pertains to material support to a domestic terrorist organization or material support to a domestic ideology, right? And again, because if you look at the domestic cases that we're talking about here, the ideology can really almost never come into play because the ideology is not at the core of terrorism.
The criminal conduct, right? Yeah. It's not illegal, for better or worse, right? In the United States, it's not illegal to be an extremist or to hold views that you or I might consider abhorrent. It's interesting, though. So then basically what you're saying is that the choice of whether or not to call something domestic terrorism, once it becomes a –
an act that you can't just say it's al-Qaeda. It becomes a political choice, right? Because I'm looking at a report from 2023. So it's under the Biden administration from the GAO, right? You probably know this report really well. And in this report, it says that domestic terrorism investigations, that's what they call it, domestic terrorism investigations have doubled since 2020. And that was according to the FBI. And the GAO found that, um,
that cases of domestic terrorism grew by 357 percent from 1981 to 9049 by the time we hit the year 2021. So at least under the Biden administration, they were saying there's this like mushrooming of domestic terrorism in this country.
And again, you know, getting into the weeds of that, like it's so interesting because, you know, the FBI would count every single January 6th case under their domestic terrorism bucketing. Now, again, I think it's an important distinction here. What you didn't see in the Biden administration is
You didn't see, you know, head of the FBI, head of DOJ coming out and saying that, you know, every single January 6th is a domestic terrorist. You didn't see January 6th defendants prosecuted as domestic terrorists. There were very specific criminal charges for, you know, assaulting law enforcement, for seditious conspiracy in isolated cases for Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. But
You didn't have political pressure to paint every January 6th defendant as a domestic terrorist, which I think is an important distinction here as well. Okay. So this gets us back to what Attorney General Pam Bondi said in that clip that we played earlier, right? Because she said, if you take part in the wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, we will find you, arrest you, and put you behind bars. But, I mean, she didn't specifically say, we will charge you with domestic terrorism. Right.
Right, yeah, and look, it's a nice TV clip. I mean, it's a good soundbite, without a doubt. But I mean, look, there was another case, I think, when you look at the press release from Ed Martin, the D.C. Attorney General nominee. You know, he's talking about, you know, this one case that's domestic terrorism and we have to protect Tesla. And when you look at the charges, it's a misdemeanor offense. And
The guys, you know, it's going to end up in no jail time, probably like a probationary period, some some fine or something like that. And so, you know, it's hard to comport that with, you know, this this kind of claim that there is this big shadowy, you know, again, far left attack on Tesla's going on when.
The charges themselves simply don't reflect that. Okay. So since you mentioned Ed Martin, we're going to hear a little bit from him because we spoke with him yesterday. But first, let's get the voices of some of the peaceful Tesla takedown protesters back in this show. You heard a little bit from – well, actually, let me say, this is Morgan Boyer who lives in Pennsylvania. And as you'll hear in a second, she does not like Elon Musk to say the least.
least. She wants federal workers who have been fired by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to be rehired. And she does want to see Tesla feel the financial consequences of its founders' political actions in the Trump administration. It's a scary time. And I understand why people are angry. I'm angry. I'm
But by taking it out on the cars themselves, it's not about the cars. It's about Elon. So don't take it out on the cars themselves. They're just a symbol. We want to hurt Elon's bottom line, which is his money.
Boyer organized a Tesla takedown protest outside of Pittsburgh in what she considers to be Trump country. And she says about 30 to 40 people joined her, but also 20 counter protesters and some of them with guns. It was tense, she says. And at one point, threats were made. The police were called. She had to get on a megaphone to de-escalate things. She had received some advice on training on how to do that.
Now, as we've been talking about, conservative commentators, including Elon Musk, are claiming that protest organizers are paid to cause trouble. But Boyer says, in her case at least, that is not true. No, we did not get any money.
We hate Trump for free, trust me. We hate Trump and Elon for free. And if anything, I've spent more money doing these protests, getting signs, getting equipment, you know, like markers and fresh water for everyone. I have not been paid. It's kind of ridiculous to suggest that. A lot of the protesters are older. They've already retired.
they're not even working anymore.
That's not stop. That's not stopping, I should say, some people from calling the protests. And again, specifically when property is damaged or attacked as domestic terrorism. So here we go with Ed Martin Jr., because as John Lewis noted, this story comes as some attorneys are bringing charges against people who are accused of committing acts of vandalism against Teslas. And Martin is the Trump appointed interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
He announced last week that he is pursuing charges against a man who allegedly defaced the private property of several Tesla vehicles. 49-year-old Justin Fisher has been released on his own recognizance and will face a misdemeanor initial status hearing later this summer.
Now, Martin told us he's concerned about the treatment of Tesla and vehicles and dealerships in his district and will continue to investigate acts as potential domestic terrorism.
to be honest, maybe make a little news here. We're looking at the organizations that have put this together. You know, just because you're an entity that says we're going to organize a protest, if you know or should have known that the protest would lead to violence and targeting, you got a problem. And there's a number of entities now that are bragging about being involved in these Tesla protests or Tesla takedowns. So, you know, I think that's pretty clearly a
domestic terrorism. It's pretty clearly meant to terrorize the community and terrorize owners of vehicles. And so we're, you know, we're not going to stop short in identifying that.
Tesla takedown describes the protest movement very differently. And here's what Martin told us when we pointed out to him that the Tesla takedown protests have been almost exclusively peaceful and that the website itself condemns violence right at the top.
That's the same thing that we had experienced when the mafia said that they were just doing, you know, they were organizing communities and they weren't about violence. I mean, when the actors of an entity, when actors of a movement act in a violent way repeatedly, you can say what you want on your website. The question is whether there's, you know, an expectation that this is what's going to happen. Clearly, there has been.
It's very clear. This didn't happen one weekend. This didn't happen one day. This happened over a period of weeks. And so, again, we want to be very careful that the right to assemble is protected, of course, in America. The Constitution says that. The right to free speech, even ugly speech, is protected. But there is a point where you're watching systematic actions
Martin did also bring up allegations that an outside entity was supporting financially Tesla takedown, but he did not have evidence to support that claim. Now, we spoke with Martin yesterday, and we should briefly note that he was also questioned this week in the Senate over his previous praise for a pardoned January 6th Capitol rioter.
That Capitol rioter is Timothy Hale Cusinelli, who is an overt Nazi sympathizer. He is dressed up as Adolf Hitler. He was prosecuted for being involved in the January 6th attack on
on the Capitol. Martin himself was an organizer of the Stop the Steal rally. Martin told the Senate he did not know about Hale's extremist views. But yesterday, according to new reporting from CNN, in a previous podcast, and we have a tape from it here that CNN had discovered, Martin basically said Hale was his friend.
We'll miss her, but she subbed out with a great friend of ours too, Tim Hale. The only thing you did that was really egregious to me was at one point on camera, you were sort of dancing in one of the areas as Celebrating America. It wasn't your best dance moves. Our next guest is my friend Timothy Hale. He's an amazing guy who has gotten through all that and has a great perspective. So welcome back, Tim. How are you? Okay, so that is Ed Martin in a previous podcast professing that Timothy Hale is
Nazi sympathizer and January 6th rioter is a good friend. Okay, John, we wanted to play all that because Ed Martin did agree to speak with us yesterday and just your response to what you heard.
Yeah, look, I mean, given Ed Martin's background as a stop the steal activist, someone who's promoted some of the most outlandish and easily debunked January 6th conspiracies, who has fought now for to get reparations for January 6th defendants who assaulted law enforcement on that day. It's not it's not a surprise, unfortunately. And, you know, I think what's what's concerning here is the the veneer of legitimacy.
that someone like that can give these conspiracies, right? We've already seen the far right response to these claims, right? We had pardoned January Sixers showing up at Tesla dealerships with firearms to protect them. We had Proud Boys and white supremacists showing up to Tesla Shield counter protests.
And look, I mean, unfortunately, we've seen how this kind of, you know, vigilante call to arms ends. Right. We've seen, you know, cases like Kyle Rittenhouse's and others. I mean, the conditions here are pretty clear. And I feel like, unfortunately, it's only only a matter of time before this kind of situation continues to deteriorate as these far right conspiracies continue to get this kind of mainstream attention.
You know, Martin said, though, in that first clip that we played that he wanted to make a little news here with us and say that they are, his office is looking at the organizations that are presuming, you know, Tesla takedown, organizing these protests. I mean, what exactly would they be looking at, you think?
Well, and again, look, I mean, this is, you know, I think very, very similar to a lot of the right wing outrage around the BLM protests in 2020. Right. There are going to be claims that George Soros and Act Blue and, you know, any other, you know, left wing organizations that have have caught the ire of this kind of right wing rage machine.
And look, you know, I think it's a again, it's a good good soundbite. I'm sure there'll be a official letter on letterhead that Ed Martin sends out that's leaked to right wing news stations beforehand. But it's yeah, it seems like a lot of noise at this point. OK, but noise because there are actually some acts of vandalism or attacks against vehicles and dealerships. So I want to pursue that a little bit more when we come back. This is on point.
And John, I kind of want to get straight to the politics of this now, because I heard you say a bit earlier that the right really focused on some of the acts of power.
of vandalism or arson that happened in association with or during the time of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. But as I remember that time and the coverage of it, I have to say mainstream media, including NPR, left-wing commentators tended to really minimize the
some of the more violent activities that happened. I'm not saying they happened by...
BLM activists, but there's no doubt that there was there were acts of arson. There were acts of vandalism that happened in many cities across the country. And by sort of diminishing that, that in fact made the Black Lives Matter movement really subject to a lot of criticism from not just the right, but even, you know, Americans in the center. Is there not the same risk here with
With the Tesla takedown movement? Yeah, no, it's an important question. Look, I think, again, two things can simultaneously be true, like you said.
individual acts of violence, of property damage should be called out whenever we see them, right? At the same time, yeah, there is a massive chasm here between, you know, lone actors who, again, are clearly inspired by these mainstream narratives.
who are mobilized to violence or towards some criminal conduct for some reason, right? But who are not connected in any tangible way to any organized group or movement.
and what's being kind of painted here already as, again, as has been the case before, this interconnected web of kind of George Soros-funded globalists who are trying to take down Elon Musk. But I guess I'm wondering if people who ascribe themselves as being on the left
should be quite honest with, as human beings, their possible ability to sympathize or at least not condemn acts of political violence when those acts are done wrong.
In concert with beliefs they hold. And let me give you an example. This is an obvious one. When UnitedHealthcare's CEO was murdered, I still have to say allegedly, by Luigi Mangione, I mean, one of the more kind of disturbing things was a lot of people online who say they're from the left were cheering him on.
Sure. Now, but what I would say to that is, you know, despite, I think, a lot of the reporting, a lot of the hair on fire kind of commentary,
We didn't see a copycat impact, right? We didn't have a wave of healthcare CEOs being gunned down in the street across the country. We didn't have some kind of organized, you know, anti-institutionalist, anti-capitalist, you know, mob outside the United Healthcare building. We had some online posts from some terminally online leftists and look,
That's what the left wing is going to do, right? They're going to be very loud, very mad online in much the same way that the reactionary right is going to be very angry online. And I think that's the echo chamber that we live in, right? That's going to happen. I think it's, again, it's a question of nuance. It's a question of
What is the call and response here? Do you have mainstream politicians, individuals with massive platforms calling for violence? Because, again, when we look at any of the far right conspiracies here, the great replacement theory, this invasion rhetoric, we can we can see a very clear causal link there. Right. I mean, we look at the.
The string of mass shootings, right? Pittsburgh, Poway, El Paso, Buffalo, Charleston. Very clear kind of through line there, white supremacists who are motivated by this idea that the Jews and the globalists are conspiring with the left to replace the white people in this country. And that's something that's being repeated by Elon Musk, by Donald Trump, by politicians with massive platforms.
i have yet to see uh you know a a left-wing a democrat uh anyone who is uh you know actively calling for violence against elon musk violence against tesla's and i think that again it's it's very important that you know we we recognize and call out political violence when we see it that we look at these individual actors who are committing criminal conduct and um you know call
call it what it is, again, which is criminal conduct. But again, I think it's a very slippery slope here if we concede to this kind of, you know, red-pilled kind of brain-rotted set of conspiracies that have everyone to the left of Bernie Sanders as some kind of threat to national security. Point taken, right? So that's why we wanted to start with this, what is domestic terrorism, right?
the definition of it. We want to start the program with that. But it does get us to something sort of deeper, which I think potentially has changed in the United States. And that is
an overall acceptance, an increase in the acceptance of political violence as an actual tool in this country. Because it was just, what, last year, I believe, or maybe 2023 and 2024, there was a series of polls. I'm looking at a Marist PBS NewsHour poll that was released in 2024 that found that one in five Americans...
had indicated at that time that violence could be necessary to secure political objectives that year. And that one in five included roughly equivalent portions of Democratic and independent respondents saying that they saw violence as an option. And 28 percent of Republicans agreeing. So, I mean, it's not just exclusively a right wing thing.
thought anymore. No, and you're absolutely right. And look, I think when we look at the societal factors here, right, COVID, isolation, the increase in kind of discontent with society, people feeling rightfully or wrongfully that
liberal democracy has failed, the government's not working in their best interests. All of these things conspire to create these conditions for political violence. And I think, look, when we look at the mobilization, folks who actually have gone offline to try and commit this violence, whether it is the Trump assassination attempt or any of these other cases, we see a common profile, right, which is someone who
is barely ideological, who, whether either has some sort of mental health issues or something in their background that has them primed for violence. And they're just looking for the right justification, right? That secret sauce that can get them up off the couch and convince them that this is their moment to achieve whatever they're hoping to achieve.
And that has spiked in recent years on the left, on the right, everyone in between because of this. I mean, they call it salad bar, but like this kind of picking and choosing, right, looking for the right mixture there. But look, you know, I think there's a reason that we're not sitting here talking about, you know, a mass wave of mass shootings related to Tesla takedown. It's because we're
we simply it's it simply isn't there right there there isn't a you know a wave of vigilante violence that seeing uh you know tesla owners get swatted and doxxed and um you know uh there aren't you know mass bombings at tesla stations this is this is petty vandalism this is lone actor anarchist uh you know extremism if you want to call it that in some cases um but you know to to try and paint it uh as if it is a you know
you know, mass mobilization event, or if this is something that's sweeping across the country and that, you know, every Tesla station in the country is, you know, all of a sudden in a war zone, I think is, you know, just...
fuels that fodder. Yeah, no, no, point well taken, completely. I can't take issue with anything you said about that. But, I mean, I consider part of our job here at On Point is trying to look around the corner, right? And if we have more and more people, you know, across the political spectrum saying, well, in order to enact the policies that I want, I don't necessarily think violence is off the table. That's
Both disturbing and compelling to me to try and understand better. But given what you said, let's take this back to the domestic terrorism question, right? Because, yes, Ed Martin hasn't yet charged anyone with domestic terrorism. Pam Bondi is not clear on what she would actually charge people with. But going back to your original definition of obviously it's an act of violence designed to coerce a population or influence government action.
Okay. So with that second one in mind, let's just listen to what Elon Musk has said recently regarding Tesla's financial sort of nosedive that it's taken recently. And I'm not saying that's because of the Tesla takedown protests. I'm not ascribing that correlation at all. But it's happening at a time where Musk himself, his actions at Doge, perhaps Tesla sales, and the protests are all coming together. That's led to a...
drop in profits of 71 percent in the first quarter of 2025. So Elon Musk said in a basically in an earnings call that he will be shifting his focus from political work back to business. I'll have to continue doing it for probably the remainder of the president's term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stopped does not come roaring back.
But starting next month, I'll be advocating far more of my time to Tesla now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done. So, John, the reason why I want to play that is obviously in a certain to a certain sense, the protests, plus all the other negative focus on Musk's actions right now.
are working, right? The Tesla takedown is saying that they want to push Musk to stop doing what he's doing at Doge by hitting him where it hurts, which is in his wallet. But when you said that domestic terrorism needs to also have an impact on influencing government policy, do a thought experiment here with me, okay? Okay.
If Elon Musk, who's running Doge, says, well, I have to go back to Tesla and spend less time working on this government policy, in part because of these protest movements, you know, could a Pam Bondi as AG use that as evidence of the protests influencing government operations or policy and so therefore qualifying as domestic terrorism?
Yeah, I expect they will. And where I think you will see that is in, so again, as we discussed, there's no domestic terrorism statute. Where the government can try and put their thumb on the scales a bit here is when it comes to sentencing in these cases, right? And so the government can seek, you know, at sentencing an upward departure, they can seek what they call a terrorism sentencing enhancement.
And they, I'm sure, will argue much like you did that these have been designed to damage Elon Musk. Again, his historic unpopularity and the White House advertisement for Tesla notwithstanding, I'm sure they will try and connect these two things together as you did there. And again, fortunately...
at the time of recording, we have an independent judiciary. And so that will come down to... It will be put in front of the judge or, I mean, in some cases, the jury, but mostly the judge, to rule on whether that enhancement will be accepted or not at sentencing. Again, I think it remains an open question, and I am, as you are, eagerly awaiting those court documents. Yeah, but I like to think through these things so that we're not caught off guard, right? When decisions...
I just wonder overall, John, do you think that because politics is so much infused in the way that domestic terrorism is even conceived of in this country, that do we need statutory, I'll say that specifically, do we need statutory guardrails?
to be sure that the definition of domestic terrorism isn't sort of mutated to become a weapon, simply just a political weapon.
Yeah, absolutely. Look, I mean, that's the reason why there is no domestic terrorism statute at this point. I mean, previously I've argued in favor of it and in very limited specific conduct, but it is a slippery slope, right? I think when we look at the history of what we call terrorism in this country, it's, you know, the government has a monopoly on state violence and they also are the ones who will tell us, the American people,
who is in our in-group and who is not, right? Who's the other and who's not? And I think far too often in this post 9/11 framework, we've kind of just been conditioned to accept that we are patriots, we love America, and anyone who is a terrorist surely must be someone, inevitably in this case, someone scary from outside this country who doesn't look like us, who doesn't sound like us, who hates apple pie and democracy and baseball and our freedoms.
And I think, again, it's a very tough reckoning that I think we all have to face now, which is, yeah, what do we do when the call is coming from inside the house? What do we do when domestic terrorism has an American flavor to it? And I don't think we've ever –
had an answer to that in the last 20 years or so. And I think, yeah, cases like this certainly show why it is such a complex puzzle to unwrap. You know, you have said something a couple of times, which just flew by me, but I want to repeat it. Post 9-11 framework. So actually, it's getting hard for me to believe that it's been close to a quarter century, right, away from 9-11-2001.
What was the sort of pre-9-11 framework for conceiving of domestic terrorism?
Well, yeah, look, it's really interesting. I mean, look, you know, obviously the immediate, you know, kind of thing that comes to mind is the Oklahoma City bombing. I think that's when we think about domestic terrorism and, you know, that led to legislation that I think, you know, became what we would call the material support statute, which was obviously amended, you know, with the Patriot Act shortly after 9/11. And, you know, I think we've never really looked back from that, right?
We got really good as a government, as a country at prosecuting what we would call foreign terrorists, international terrorists. We began calling them homegrown violent extremists around the time that the Islamic State came into the play.
But look, you know, it's really it's always been about, you know, deciding who were acceptable labeling as as a terrorist and, you know, in many ways, almost dehumanizing, right? Setting at a layer that is that is lower than us because they are terrorists. They are not Americans because they're terrorists. And I think that that framework, that that conceptualization has, I think,
haunted us a bit as we sit here today with domestic terrorism. Yeah, well, that Oklahoma City bombing, I'm just refreshing my memory on it. Timothy McVeigh was charged in the federal trial only with the murder of eight federal agents who were killed in the bombing. And it took, it was upon the state of Oklahoma to bring charges against him and Nichols, Terry Nichols, for the death of the 160 other people that were killed in that bombing.
But still no domestic terrorism charges as far as I can see. So John Lewis, research fellow at the program on extremism at George Washington University. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This is On Point.
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Support for this podcast comes from It's Revolutionary, a podcast from Massachusetts 250. Listen on for the story of the revolution that is basketball. Yeah, we're finished! Thank you.
You're listening to It's Revolutionary, a podcast celebrating 250 years since the shot heard around the world was fired right here in Massachusetts. I'm Jay Feinstein. From revolution to revolution, we're exploring the people and places in Massachusetts that shape America. Today, we're in the birthplace of basketball, Springfield. Nice shot!
The game was founded at a YMCA in 1891 as a way of keeping kids busy during Massachusetts winters. Man, the game just took off right from there. I think within three, four years, the game was already being taught in different countries, like India. It was awesome. Alex Pedro is the curatorial assistant and historian at the Basketball Hall of Fame, which is just a few miles down the road from the original site that started it all.
He showed me around and he says he does that because he can't play for himself. I am terrible at basketball.
As I like to say, those who cannot do, teach. But he is pretty much the biggest basketball enthusiast I've ever met. You know, it's just so exciting because there's always constant action. There's excitement. You can see the emotion on the player's face. I feel like there's more of a personality. James Naismith was the physical education instructor who invented the sport. The original game had no dribbling, and players would shoot into peach baskets with enclosed bottoms.
Janitors had to fetch the ball every time a player made a basket. It was a slower game, but it was an exciting game from the start. When Naismith designed the game, I don't think he even knew. I mean, he knew it was going to be popular, but I don't think he knew it was going to be this popular, right? Like, he made a game...
so great for television. You know, you can see the players' face, you can see their emotion, you can see them getting hurt or seeing their agonizing pain or just at any given moment, anything can happen in a basketball game. It's just so exciting. You know, it's just no matter what, if there's a second on the clock, there's still a chance to win. ♪
But is excitement enough to make basketball revolutionary? At the very least, it inspired revolutionaries, like Lenny Wilkins, the first black player on his team. They wanted to use the game of basketball and say, hey, I belong here. It doesn't matter the color of my skin or my sexuality. It doesn't matter. Basketball is basketball. Or Georgian Wells, the first woman to dunk in a game. We see dunks and we still get excited because it's just...
Such a raw athleticism, right? We're seeing somebody just jump in the air and do something so creative with their hand just to dunk the ball. It is really fun. But for the women's game, I feel like it's just showing that, hey, we're the same. We can do what you guys do. Or any of the number of Celtics hoop stars who have played right here in Massachusetts, featured in a new exhibit at the Hall of Fame called The Vault.
So when you first walk in, you give you that feel of a bank vault, right? This is like a bank vault door. It's all secure. This is all items that have never been together in one place. So it's pretty remarkable. There we were looking at Bob Cousy's All-Star jersey,
John Havlicek's 25,000 point ball, Cedric Maxwell's MVP finals trophy, and more. The history is so rich with the Celtics. I mean, there's so much lore. There's so many stories, so many iconic moments. And personally, to see all these championship rings and to see the evolution of them over the years and to have them in one place...
Man, that's just special. But basketball isn't just a professional sport. I met up with James Gee, a coach at Springfield Central High School, who says he sees the tangible difference basketball makes in the lives of kids.
And perhaps there's nothing more revolutionary than that.
But for Alex, it's really the game's history that makes the sport special. From a game that started in Springfield, Massachusetts at a YMCA with just 18 kids in a class to now this global game where people want to come from Europe and Asia to play in the NBA or to play for their national team and to see it, it's just, that in itself is revolutionary.
It's Revolutionary is a podcast from MA250. For more stories, check out Massachusetts250.org or WBUR.org slash MA250. Oh, God, it's been a while. Told you. Those who can't do, teach.