The warning comes a day after the Tesla CEO doubled down on his support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in an opinion piece in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
He argued that the AfD was the “last spark of hope” for the country. While the conservative Christian Democratic Union is leading the polls with 30 percent, the far-right AfD is in second place with 19 percent, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.
Musk’s comments caused major political backlash.
“Elon Musk is attempting nothing less than Vladimir Putin,” Lars Klingbeil, the leader of the ruling Social Democrats, said to German publisher Funke Mediengruppe. Both Putin and Musk want to see anti-democratic forces succeed in the elections, causing Germany to be “plunged into chaos,” he added.
The tech titan’s goal is to increase his wealth, another Social Democrat politician, Saskia Esken, said Monday. “He wants to become even richer. And everything he does, he does with precisely this goal in mind.”
Friedrich Merz, the lead candidate for the conservative Christian Democrats, criticized Musk’s comments as “intrusive and presumptuous.”