Elon Musk called Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a decorated Navy combat pilot and former NASA astronaut, a “traitor” this week after the senator expressed support for Ukraine, the country the United States supported with money and weapons after Russia’s 2022 invasion. “Just left Ukraine,” Kelly posted to X. “What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin.”
This was recently the policy of the U.S. government, and though tempers have since cooled after President Donald Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s Oval Office meltdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy two weeks ago, our steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression is effectively over.
Musk, Trump and their foot soldiers at the levers of power are categorizing Americans as either loyal or the enemy.
But to MAGA’s biggest financial booster and cultural icon, Kelly’s support for Ukraine and opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin make him a “traitor” to his nation. Some might argue against taking Musk seriously, but there’s something happening here. Musk, Trump and their foot soldiers at the levers of power are categorizing Americans as either loyal or the enemy, and Musk is putting a decorated veteran and U.S. senator in that second category.
Musk sees Ukraine as America’s adversary, and the self-described freethinker wants Americans to think the same way he does.
Yes, Musk, who’s on pace to publish over 500 posts just this week, is a relentless poster who’s susceptible to conspiracy theories and regularly impugns people’s reputations with factually suspect incendiary name-calling. (He also told Joe Rogan last week that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”)
But it’s fair to say that the “special government employee” who frequently addresses the media alongside the president and has an office in the White House speaks for the Trump administration.
And in 2024, candidate Trump made no secret that he intended to root out and punish “enemies within” the United States. In 2025, any Trump apologist still clinging to the claim that Trump’s words should be taken “seriously, not literally,” should literally not be considered a serious person. The same goes for Musk.
After X had an outage Monday, Musk told Fox Business Network that “there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the ecosystem with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.” (Politico reported Tuesday, “A pro-Palestinian group called Dark Storm claimed responsibility for the attack on its Telegram channel,” but no one has yet been able to confirm the group’s claim, and it appears the group’s most recent channels have been removed.)
The latest group added to Trump’s and Musk’s supposed enemy class are Americans protesting outside Tesla dealerships. Citing no evidence, Musk claimed in a post on X, “An investigation has found 5 ActBlue-funded groups responsible for Tesla ‘protests.’” He then listed five of ActBlue’s funders — all of them Jewish, two of them dead, one of them the bogeyman of the far-right, George Soros. Putting aside all of Musk’s innuendo and conjecture, ActBlue’s business doesn’t directly fund or organize protests, though it facilitates payments to left-of-center groups that do.
Musk sees Ukraine as America’s adversary, and the self-described freethinker wants Americans to think the same way he does.
But in case it wasn’t obvious, facts are beside the point. Musk is signaling to his 218 million X followers that shadowy anti-American Americans are astroturfing protests against him — “a truly great American,” as Trump called him. The “populist” president and Musk held an impromptu Tesla car show in front of the White House on Tuesday after Trump posted on Truth Social, “I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support” for Musk. Blaming “radical left lunatics” who “illegally and collusively” are boycotting Tesla, Trump also hinted that he’d be open to charging anyone who commits “violence” against a Tesla dealership with domestic terrorism — which, it should be noted, isn’t a crime currently defined by federal law.
What kind of action would justify this charge? Arson? Graffiti? Blocking the entrance? Boycotts? The answer is most likely whatever Trump says it is.
Musk’s legally questionable Department of Government Efficiency’s recklessly dismantling government agencies, ending vital programs and putting tens of thousands of people out of work — while his companies have reaped billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies — couldn’t possibly be a factor in organic rising dissent. To Musk and Trump, a nefarious, traitorous conspiracy must be afoot.
A lot has happened since Trump took office Jan. 20, but this would be a good moment to remind readers that the president pardoned more than 1,000 Jan. 6 rioters, including those who viciously beat police officers, chanted their intention to murder Vice President Mike Pence and screamed “Where’s Nancy [Pelosi]?” carried Confederate flags and, worse, wore “Camp Auschwitz” shirts. He even pardoned people convicted of seditious conspiracy. As Trump sees it, sacking the Capitol in the attempt to overturn a free and fair election earns you freedom and presidential accolades, while vandalizing or disrupting a Tesla dealership could get you imprisoned as a terrorist. We’re also seeing this week that “terrorism” can be defined as whatever Trump says it is (to be sure, all presidents do this), as in the case of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s arrest of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent U.S. resident and the spouse of a U.S. citizen. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the arrest Tuesday, saying, “Under the immigration and nationality act, the secretary of state has the right to revoke a green card or a visa for individuals who are adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the USA.” Any Trump apologist still clinging to the claim that Trump’s words should be taken ‘seriously, not literally,‘ should literally not be considered a serious person. At this point, it’s not clear whether courts will accept the Trump administration’s argument that Khalil’s involvement with a group that expresses support for Hamas’ murderous Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel constitutes “material support for terrorism” — or whether the administration has any evidence directly linking Khalil to any violence or harassment on Columbia University’s campus. (Indeed, a White House official admitted to the Free Press, “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law.”) But what is clear is that two months ago, Musk’s position on Ukraine would be considered adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States. If that’s the standard to kick foreign-born people out of the country, it’s a dangerously vague and nebulous one. You’ll give yourself a headache if you try to find ideological or ethical consistency in Musk’s and Trump’s philosophies. Despite copious evidence to the contrary, they both ridiculously claim to be hard-core free speech supporters. Free speech advocates hold the principled position that short of some narrowly defined exceptions, bad speech is still free speech. But MAGA’s rules about what constitutes free speech or “hate speech” — and what makes a real American or a traitor — are being revised in real time. We should take them seriously and literally that theirs is a zero-sum game. Free speech is whatever they say it is and isn’t. Dissent is disloyalty to the nation. And you’re either with them or you’re the enemy.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW, often covering free speech, civil liberties and extremism. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider. 
