Episode Details

Time magazine has named Elon Musk as its 2021 “Person of the Year,” calling him “the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit.”

Oh, please.

This is the man who downplayed the pandemic — predicting in March 2020 that there would be “probably close to zero new cases” in the United States by the end of April, and that “the coronavirus panic is dumb.” As infections surged, he called quarantine measures “fascist” and demanded that officials return people’s “freedom.” He then kept his Tesla plant open in defiance of public health orders, with the result that over a hundred Tesla workers contracted COVID. They said the company covered up the outbreak. Then he fired workers after telling them they could take unpaid time off if they didn’t feel safe coming to work.

This is the man who, when the epidemic plunged millions of Americans into near poverty, railed against coronavirus relief packages — claiming government aid wasn’t “in the best interests of the people.” Yet he’s been benefiting from government aid for years. He got a cool $465 million low-interest loan from the Department of Energy in 2010 to help kickstart Tesla. His Nevada Gigafactory was launched with the promise of $1.3 billion in tax breaks over two decades. And so on.

This is also the man who threatened to rescind his employees’ stock options if they unionized. He broke 11 other labor laws by harassing pro-union employees. A court ruled that Musk and other company executives illegally sabotaged employee efforts to form a union -- harassing workers, passing out union pamphlets in the parking lot, banning employees from wearing pro-union T-shirts and buttons, repeatedly interrogating union organizers and eventually firing one of them, and distributing anti-union messages in tweets from Musk himself. Since 2010, he’s had at least 43 workers’ rights violations filed against his company.

Meanwhile, six women who worked for Musk’s Tesla are suing the carmaker for alleged sexual harassment and discrimination, adding to

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