When he went on stage in the Clear Water Center, Wisconsin, Tuesday evening to cover the Democrats before a critical race of the Supreme Court of the State, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota said that he did not think that insults would help.
Then he called Elon Musk as “Dipshit” and, later, a “South African Baby” with the power to reduce government programs. The crowd roared.
Walz, his party candidate for last year’s vice-president, is one of the many Democrats who have referred to the history of Musk’s immigrants while increasing the attacks on the billionaire’s powerful role in the Trump administration. Sometimes their language, throwing Mr. Musk as a foreigner, echoed the aspects of President Trump’s xenophobic insults to his political enemies – although Mr. Trump’s remarks were generally directed to colored elected officials, not white billionaires.
During a press conference last month, Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur representative said she was wondering: “In what country is it faithful to” South Africa, Canada or the United States? ” Representative Nydia Velázquez de New York said that Mr. Musk should “return to South Africa” during a recent demonstration. During another demonstration, representative Don Beyer de Virginie said: “We are going to send Elon to South Africa.”
Mr. Musk was born in South Africa in 1971, moved to Canada in 1989 and then in the United States during the college. He obtained Canadian citizenship just before moving there and became a naturalized American citizen in 2002, according to his biographer, Walter Isaacson.
Mr. Walz made his comments during a municipal style event that coincided with the first early voting day for a Supreme State Court in Wisconsin. This election, which will be held on April 1, Stose a liberal candidate against a Conservative Trump Ally who attracted more than $ 13 million in Mr. Musk’s support. The Wisconsin Democrats seized these contributions to launch Mr. Musk as the main bad elections.
It was at least the second time that Mr. Walz marked Mr. Musk with the “Nepo Baby” sentence, the slang for someone who inherited wealth or status. (Mr. Musk’s father was a successful engineer and developer in Pretoria.) During a city of the city on Friday at monks, the Governor criticized the Department of Effectiveness of Mr. Musk for recommending cuts to the Department of Veterans.
“There is nothing conservative about a baby from the non-elected South African nepo who draws people in the va,” he said.
Trump frequently insulted his political opponents by suggesting that they are somehow foreign or different from Americans. He started his political career in part by wondering if President Barack Obama was a citizen. During his first mandate, he told a group of American origin of women of color to “go back up“In their country of origin. During the campaign against vice-president Kamala Harris last summer, Trump often pronounced his name and launch it like a stranger by questioning her ethnic history.
All these attacks caused waves of indignation on the part of the Democrats. But some of them seem ready to dive into Trump’s game book in their efforts to portray Musk as a foreign intruder.
The question of the origins and immigration status of Mr. Musk posed from time to time on the campaign track during the 2024 elections. After the Washington Post reportedIn the last days of the presidential campaign, which Mr. Musk had worked in the United States during a student visa in the 1990s, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called him an “illegal worker”.
It is not only the Democrats who aim at the immigrant status of Mr. Musk. Stephen K. Bannon, one of Mr. Trump’s main strategists in the White House during his first mandate, last month ridiculed Mr. Musk as an “parasitic illegal immigrant” which lacked “respect for history, values or traditions of the country”.
It seemed to be a reference to the post report on Mr. Musk going beyond his student visa, which Mr. Musk called “gray area. ” He later refused that he had worked illegally in the United States.
Mr. Musk has made immigration status a major objective of his political rhetoric, frequently mocking illegal immigrants and invigorating May Democrats use Social Security and other advantages to attract them to this country.
