When he took the stage in downtown Eau Claire, Wis., on Tuesday night to rev up Democrats ahead of a critical State Supreme Court race, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said he didn’t think name-calling would help things.
Then he called Elon Musk a “dipshit” and, later, a “South African nepo baby” with the power to cut government programs. The crowd roared.
Mr. Walz, his party’s nominee for vice president last year, is one of several Democrats who have referred to Mr. Musk’s immigrant background as they ramp up attacks on the billionaire’s powerful role in the Trump administration. At times, their language, casting Mr. Musk as a foreign outsider, has echoed aspects of President Trump’s own xenophobic insults of his political foes — although Mr. Trump’s remarks were typically directed toward elected officials of color, not white billionaires.
At a news conference last month, Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio said she wondered, “Which country is he loyal to? South Africa, Canada, or the United States?” Representative Nydia Velázquez of New York declared Mr. Musk should “go back to South Africa” at a recent protest. At a different protest, Representative Don Beyer of Virginia said, “We’re going to send Elon back to South Africa.”
Mr. Musk was born in South Africa in 1971, moved to Canada in 1989 and then to the United States during college. He obtained Canadian citizenship just before moving there and became a naturalized United States citizen in 2002, according to his biographer, Walter Isaacson.
Mr. Walz made his remarks at a town-hall-style event that coincided with the first day of early voting for a State Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. That election, which will be held on April 1, pits a liberal candidate against a conservative Trump ally who has drawn more than $13 million in backing from Mr. Musk. Wisconsin Democrats have seized on those contributions to cast Mr. Musk as the election’s main villain.
It was at least the second time Mr. Walz has tagged Mr. Musk with the phrase “nepo baby,” slang for someone who inherited wealth or status. (Mr. Musk’s father was a successful engineer and developer in Pretoria.) At a town-hall event Friday in Des Moines, the governor criticized Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency for recommending cuts to the Veterans Affairs Department.
“There’s nothing conservative about an unelected South African nepo baby firing people at the V.A.,” he said.
Mr. Trump has frequently insulted his political opponents by suggesting they are somehow foreign or different from Americans. He began his political career partly by questioning whether President Barack Obama was a citizen. During his first term, he told a mostly American-born group of congresswomen of color to “go back” to their home countries. While campaigning against Vice President Kamala Harris last summer, Mr. Trump frequently mispronounced her name and cast her as an outsider by questioning her ethnic background.
All of those attacks prompted waves of outrage from Democrats. But some of them seem to be willing to dip into Trump’s playbook in their efforts to portray Mr. Musk as a foreign interloper.
The question of Mr. Musk’s origins and immigration status occasionally came up on the campaign trail during the 2024 election. After The Washington Post reported, in the closing days of the presidential campaign, that Mr. Musk had worked in the United States while on a student visa during the 1990s, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called him an “illegal worker.”
It’s not just Democrats taking aim at Mr. Musk’s immigrant status. Stephen K. Bannon, one of Mr. Trump’s chief White House strategists during his first term, last month derided Mr. Musk as a “parasitic illegal immigrant” who lacked “respect for the country’s history, values or traditions.”
That seemed to be a reference to The Post’s report about Mr. Musk overstaying his student visa, which Mr. Musk has referred to as a “gray area.” He later denied that he had worked illegally in the United States.
Mr. Musk has made immigration status a major focus of his political rhetoric, frequently deriding illegal immigrants and baselessly suggesting that Democrats are using Social Security and other benefits to draw them to this country.
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