Democrats Talk of Arresting Musk and Seizing SpaceX. Trump Says He'll Protect Him, Pardons Included

President Trump says he will protect Elon Musk and others if Democrats come after them, and he is ready to use preemptive pardons to do it. When the New York Post's Miranda Devine raised Democratic talk of arresting Musk, seizing his factories and nationalizing SpaceX, Trump brushed it off on Pod Force One. "It's talk," he said. "But if it is talk, we'll have to protect them."

Devine asked how. Could he pardon them ahead of time? Trump pointed to his predecessor. "That's what Biden did. He gave everybody a pardon," he said, calling the House Jan. 6 panel "the unselect committee" and "a corrupt committee."

"Will you do that?" Devine asked. "I would if I needed to, sure," Trump said. Everybody who worked for him? "I would not even think about it. I'd do it. I did it for J6."

The talk he's answering

Arrest. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) told Raw Story in October that Musk should face arrest over his America PAC's VoteSafe.org voter site. "It's also something that should be illegal, you know, should be arrestable," Tlaib said. "Like, he should be arrested for putting misinformation out there about people voting."

Nationalize. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said on his Coffee Klatch podcast Oct. 24 that Democrats ought to "defund Musk" and lay "the groundwork for nationalizing" Starlink and SpaceX, as he restated on his Substack. Musk answered on X: "Stealing companies is a serious crime. Prison for Reich."

Staff. Devine said Democrats also want to arrest Edward Coristine, the DOGE staffer known by a crude nickname, and "anyone around you who enabled you." Trump's answer: "We'll just have to protect those people."

"I think he's not wrong"

Devine read Trump a warning Musk has made: that if Democrats win the House and the Senate and then the presidency in 2028, the country is over and the borders will be overrun. "Could be. I think he's not wrong," Trump said. "If they had a sweep, yeah, the country would be, I think it would be maybe forever destroyed."

The Biden precedent

Trump is describing a move Biden already made. In his last hours in office on Jan. 20, 2025, Biden preemptively pardoned Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the members and staff of the House Jan. 6 select committee and the police officers who testified before it, saying they did not deserve to be targets of "unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions." The same day he pardoned five members of his own family.

Hours later, Trump began his second term by pardoning people convicted over the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the case he pointed to when he told Devine, "I did it for J6."

Trump told Devine he expects Republicans to beat the polls on Tuesday. "We'll know on Tuesday night," he said.