Jimmy Kimmel isn’t letting Elon Musk off the hook. The same goes for the conservatives who are apparently outraged at Kimmel for continuing to joke about Tesla owners destroying their cars in protest of Musk.
The Tesla owner tried to blame the vandalism on “some kind of mental illness,” but Kimmel noted that people are just mad at Musk for seemingly giving the Nazi salute twice at an inauguration event for Donald Trump. The late-night host also reminded Musk that he waved around a chainsaw earlier this year to celebrate the Department of Government Efficiency cutting government spending, which has resulted in thousands of job cuts from the federal workforce. So yeah, people just don’t like Musk and are taking it out on their Teslas in protest.
“Tesla is not having a good week,” Kimmel said in his latest monologue on March 20. “Today they issued a recall of nearly all 46,000 of their Cybertrucks. That’s the eighth Cybertruck recall since they came out in November of 2023. It’s 15 months — 8 recalls.
“I mentioned last night multiple Teslas were burned at a Tesla facility in Las Vegas. Authorities are now investigating which Teslas were set on fire — and which set themselves on fire,” Kimmel then quipped. “And while no one should be setting anything on fire, ever, people are mad at Elon Musk for randomly and gleefully putting thousands of Americans out of work, including veterans. But the MAGA gang — which has been very against any kind of violent protest since January 7, was it? 2021? That’s when they started being against it — they are highly upset.”
Kimmel then cut to conservative hosts and guests on Fox News and News Nation condemning “left-wing lunatics” (as Sean Hannity called them) for burning their Teslas and warning: “If you’re gonna touch a Tesla, we’re coming after you.” One host said “we should be loving” Musk, while another said that “maybe it’s time we go full Kyle Rittenhouse-style security” on those people destroying their Teslas.
“Right, right. But if you try to taser a cop on the steps of the Capitol, ‘We’ve got your back,’“ Kimmel fired back, mocking the conservative defense of Musk. “Everyone just needs to crack open a Bud Light and relax already.”
During the March 19 episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the host roasted Musk for trying to “drum up sympathy” for Tesla in the wake of its cars being vandalized. Musk said, “Tesla is a peaceful company,” and “I’ve never done anything awful. I think we just have a deranged… there is some kind of mental illness thing going on here. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, let me see if I can explain it for you,” Kimmel responded. “When you pull out a chainsaw to celebrate firing thousands of people, they get mad. My god. I mean, this poor guy. You do one, maybe two Nazi salutes, everybody gets all bent out of shape!”
“Here’s the thing, I get that people are upset,“ Kimmel then wisecracked about the rise of burning Teslas. ”Burning a car might not be great for the environment. I don’t think that’s what they had in mind when they invented the electric car. In Las Vegas yesterday, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at a Tesla service center. At least five Teslas blew up, one from the Molotov and four because that’s just what Teslas do sometimes.”
“No one should be setting fires. You could kill somebody, you could hurt somebody,” he continued. “Elon Musk might not care about other people, but decent Americans should.”
Watch Kimmel’s March 20 monologue in the video below.
