‘Sewage Pipe of Lies’: Elon Musk Attacks WSJ Article Reporting On His Factory Dumping ‘Toxic Pollutants’ Near Austin
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk ripped into the legacy media yet again on Monday night in response to a story in the Wall Street Journal about “environmental problems” at his Tesla facility in Texas.
Musk shared a headline from the Rupert Murdoch-owned Journal that read, “Musk Says He Wants to Save the Planet. Tesla’s Factories Are Making It Dirtier.” He captioned it writing, “Legacy media is a sewage pipe of lies.”
The report that clearly sparked Musk’s anger contained details of alleged environmental damage caused by Tesla in Austin, Texas. “The door to the plant’s giant casting furnace, which melts metal to be molded into the Model Y’s parts, wouldn’t shut, spewing toxins into the air and raising temperatures for workers on the floor to as high as 100 degrees. Hazardous wastewater from production—containing paint, oil and other chemicals—was also flowing untreated into the city’s sewer, in violation of state guidelines,” wrote the Journal, a publication highly regarded for its factual journalism. The Journal added:
Tesla left the costly problems largely unaddressed during the critical ramp-up. As a result, the company’s 10 million-plus square foot plant—among the largest car factories in the world—dumped toxic pollutants into the environment near Austin for months.
Susan Pulliam has the lead byline on the report, which also was penned by Emily Glazer and Becky Peterson. Pulliam joined the Journal in 1990 and has since won a “Pulitzer Prize as part of a team for her story on corporate fraud; two George Polk awards and a Gerald Loeb award,” according to her biography.
Musk has embraced President-elect Donald Trump’s penchant for attacking the media, taking particular aim at stories critical of him or his business practices. While embracing alternative media sources, Musk has repeatedly shared inaccurate information, conspiracy theories, and hoaxes.
In late October, Musk shared a doctored image of a fake headline in The Atlantic that read, “Donald J. Trump is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.” In August, he shared another fake news headline, this time from the Telegraph, which claimed that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted to build “emergency detainment camps” for those engaging in the race riots in the country. In July, Musk shared a video claiming to show polling sites being raided in Venezuela with gangs carrying out voting machines, which were in fact air conditioners. Musk also shared and deleted in 2022, a conspiracy theory article alleging that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked with a hammer by a male prostitute he hired and not a man intent on harming his wife.
