During a bizarre live ad for Elon Musk’s car company on the White House lawn Tuesday, President Donald Trump said people protesting at Tesla dealerships around the country would be treated as domestic terrorists.

A reporter asked Trump what he would do about the Tesla protests, noting that some commentators had suggested that protesters “should be labeled domestic terrorists.”

Trump leapt at the opening. “I will do that. I’ll do it. I’m going to stop them. We catch anybody doing it because they’re harming a great American company,” he said. “We’re going to catch them. And let me tell you, you do it to Tesla and you do it to any company, we’re going to catch you and you’re going to — you’re going to go through hell.”

The remarks came in the form of an unprecedented display of salesmanship with the White House as a backdrop, part press conference, part advertisement to improve stock performance for the president’s billionaire righthand man amid controversy and tumbling markets.

On Wednesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., urged the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Tesla protests. Forbes reported that in doing so, Taylor-Greene — who owns Tesla stock — may have violated House ethics rules.

Trump cannot summarily declare a class of people exercising their First Amendment rights as domestic terrorists. He can try to encourage domestic terror charges, which can be terror crimes or sentencing enhancements on other felonies, but the efforts would be unlikely to stand up in court.

“It’s absurd,” said organizer Alice Hu, executive director at the youth-led climate justice group Planet Over Profit. “It’s obvious, both legally and from a common sense perspective, that First Amendment-protected peaceful protest is not domestic terrorism.”

The response from Trump and

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