{"id":36023,"date":"2025-07-03T18:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T18:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36023\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T18:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T18:54:09","slug":"im-no-fan-of-elon-musk-but-trumps-threat-to-deport-him-is-sickening-justice-malala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36023\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m no fan of Elon Musk. But Trump\u2019s threat to deport him is sickening | Justice Malala"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk is an utterly deplorable human being. He has unashamedly flashed an apparent Nazi salute<\/a>; encouraged<\/a> rightwing extremists in Germany and elsewhere; falsely claimed<\/a> there is a \u201cgenocide\u201d in South Africa against white farmers<\/a>; callously celebrated the dismantling of USAID<\/a>, whose shuttering will lead to the deaths of millions<\/a>, according to a study published in the Lancet this week; and increased misinformation and empowered extremists<\/a> on his Twitter\/X platform while advancing his sham \u201cI am a free speech absolutist\u201d claims. And so much more.<\/p>\n

So the news that Donald Trump \u201cwill take a look<\/a>\u201d at deporting his billionaire former \u201cfirst buddy\u201d Musk has many smirking and shrugging: \u201cCouldn\u2019t happen to a nicer guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

I like a good comeuppance, but this doesn\u2019t please me at all. It sends a chill down the spine. It is the use of law enforcement agencies as a tool to chill debate, to silence disagreement and dissent, and to punish political opposition. Democracy is dimming fast<\/a> in the United States, but threats to deport US citizens for disagreeing with the governing administration\u2019s policies are the domain of authoritarian regimes such as Belarus<\/a> or Cameroon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Coming just hours after his officials raised the possibility<\/a> of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York who was naturalised in 2018, of his US citizenship, Trump\u2019s threat should have all of America \u2013 a country of immigrants \u2013 appalled, afraid and up in arms. As the Guardian reported<\/a> on Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared to pave the way for an investigation into Mamdani\u2019s status after Andy Ogles, a rightwing Republican congressman for Tennessee, called for his citizenship to be revoked on the grounds that he might have concealed his support for \u201cterrorism\u201d during the naturalization process. Trump has branded Mamdani \u201ca pure communist<\/a>\u201d and said \u201cwe don\u2019t need a communist in this country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has not broken any laws. His sin? Running for office.<\/p>\n

In his threats against Mamdani and Musk, the president comes across like the notorious Republican senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. McCarthy was, according to the Harvard law dean Ervin Griswold, \u201cjudge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one<\/a>\u201d. Trump\u2019s threats to Musk and Mamdani are a departure from the administration\u2019s modus operandi of targeting foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian organizing on US college campuses. It is now targeting people it disagrees with on any issue. The threats are not based on any generally applicable laws but on the whim of the president or other administration leaders. It is an escalation of the assault on civil liberties using government entities to arbitrarily investigate and potentially punish critics.<\/p>\n

Over the past four weeks Musk\u2019s sin has been to vehemently oppose Trump\u2019s sweeping spending bill<\/a>, calling it a \u201cdisgusting abomination<\/a>\u201d. Musk is of course not concerned about the bill\u2019s slashing of health insurance<\/a>, food stamps and other aid for the poor, but that it does not slash enough and that its cuts to green energy tax credits may cost his company<\/a>, Tesla, about $1.2bn.<\/p>\n

But Musk is a US citizen with the right to oppose a piece of legislation without threats from the highest office in the land and the fear of deportation. When Musk poured $288m of his money<\/a> into Trump and other Republicans\u2019 2024 candidacies, no one raised a hand to question his credentials as an American. Instead, the administration gave him the run of the White House<\/a> including midnight ice cream binges and a job as a glorified bean counter<\/a> at the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge).<\/p>\n

The hypocrisy and the corruption embedded within Trump\u2019s deportation threats is mind-boggling but unsurprising given his track record. The consequence, like the McCarthyism of the 1950s, is a climate of fear and a chilling of political discourse and action. Proud Americans who arrived here recently, such as Mamdani, are fearful of running for office, of speaking their minds in true American tradition, despite having the same responsibilities and privileges as every other American conferred on them. Trump\u2019s threat does to Musk what it does to every immigrant: it shuts them up, it holds over their head the possibility of made-up charges and deportation to El Salvador or some other country.<\/p>\n

Musk and his like were chortling when the Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil<\/a> was cruelly detained for months. It is in the nature of those who like to tweet about freedom but do not think about it deeply enough, such as Musk, to not realize that their silence when the rights of a Khalil or a Mamdani are trampled upon will come back to haunt them. The Republican rump is silent today as Musk is threatened with deportation, just as it has been when masked men have come for Khalil and others who dared exercise their first amendment rights.<\/p>\n

There will be silence when they come for the Republicans<\/a>. That\u2019s because we will all be gone by then, after no one else said a thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk is an utterly deplorable human being. He has unashamedly flashed an apparent Nazi salute; encouraged rightwing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-36023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114790823545325473","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}