Op-Ed: Don’t Be Fooled by Elon Musk’s Plan to Vote GOP — He Is Not a Conservative

In light of the recently leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion, Elon Musk’s Tesla just announced that it will cover travel costs for employees seeking out-of-state abortions. Few issues mark the divide between liberals and…

IJR SyndicatedMay 27, 20223 min read

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In 2020, when the president suspended foreign work visas to prioritize American employment during the coronavirus situation, Musk wrote to his 94 million Twitter followers that he “very much disagree with this action.”

In 2017, when the Trump administration left the Paris climate accords, Musk resigned from Trump’s business councils in dramatic public fashion, stating that “climate change is real” and “leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”

Given his recent purchase of Twitter on supposed free speech grounds, the First Amendment is one area in which conservatives might expect Musk to be strong, but his record is squishy at best.

When Lawrence Fossi, a Manhattan portfolio manager, wrote articles critical of Tesla, the billionaire threatened a lawsuit rather than contacting Fossi about any disagreements or errors (probably because there were none). That’s rather strange for someone who claims to be a free speech advocate.

A more striking violation of his alleged free speech absolutism involved asking communist China to censor criticism of Tesla altogether.

Tesla opened its first international factory in China in 2018. In fact, Musk has a pretty cozy relationship with the largest authoritarian state in the world.

He called China “smart” and “hardworking” while characterizing Americans as “entitled” and “complacent.” “China rocks!” the billionaire said of the genocidal communist regime. He also said that he wants to go to the country more often, which prompted Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to offer him permanent residency. The last time I checked, conservatives weren’t too keen on China.

Despite his close alliance with a genocidal state, Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX have powerful “diversity, equity and inclusion” divisions that regularly train employees. This training — based on critical race theory — assumes inherent racial biases, drawing the ire of most on the right who believe in judging people based on their character rather than the color of their skin.

Although Musk recently claimed that he will start voting Republican, his record of standing for leftist ideals leaves no doubt that he shares little ideology with most Republican voters.

Frankly, the man is not a conservative, and we shouldn’t treat him as one — not in our policymaking and certainly not in our public discourse.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.