Vanity Fair UK - 10.2019

t was a Saturday night last

March in Buffalo, and Den-

nis Scott was sitting at home.

A stocky veteran with salt-and-pepper

hair and a close-cropped beard, Scott

had been laid off from Tesla’s factory

in Buffalo two months earlier as part of

a global reduction in the company’s

workforce. Since then, he had taken to

sending Elon Musk emails and point-

blank tweets, describing the pain the

layoffs were causing.

Ten days after Scott was let go, Musk

had tweeted a goofy picture of himself

posing with what looked like a machine

gun. Scott retweeted the image and

called Musk a clown. “If I were CEO and

someone told me my company wasn’t

working right,” he explains, “I wouldn’t

be clowning around. I’ve got people

counting on me for their livelihood.”

Now, around 10 p.m., his phone rang.

The call was from an unmarked number.

Scott answered.

“It’s the clown,” the person at the other

end informed him.

Scott, unfazed, figured that Musk

must have gotten his number from the

company. For the next 20 minutes, he

recalls, he and his former employer had

a civil conversation. “When are you

going to fix your company?” Scott asked.

Musk was pleasant but offered no

specifics about the Buffalo plant. Scott

continued to ask frank questions. “You

took $750 million from New York,” he

told Musk, referring to the taxpayer

money that the state handed Tesla

as part of its Buffalo Billion program

to revitalize upstate New York. “You

gave us hope that you were going to

do something.”

Musk’s responses left Scott unim-

pressed. “Musk is a nice guy when

you talk to him,” he says. “But I think

Elon Musk promised that his $5 billion gamble on solar energy would

revolutionize the world. Instead it could bring down Tesla

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN PATRICK LONG

Goodbye

Sunshine

Mr.

by BETHANY MCLEAN

I

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