Spin up the Wayback Machine. Remember back when our nation would get upset when car defects needlessly killed people? The danger from a Ford Pinto was a running joke. That was when we believed that letting people burn to death in cars was ‘bad.’ When did we stop that? Anyone remember? Was it under President Biden? I think so.

Tesla cars use electricity to open the doors. Some have manual levers, but Cybertrucks don’t. If battery power fails (say, in a crash), the doors and windows are frozen shut. Last November in California, a Cybertruck crashed. All four people inside survived the crash, but the doors wouldn’t work.

The Washington Post chose an ambiguous headline:

They survived a Cybertruck crash. An inferno led to a race against time.

What, too scared to tell people the truth? The design flaw trapped them inside. It was a Cybertruck, so they couldn’t even smash out the heavy windows. A friend outside found something heavy enough to break a back window and rescue one person. The other three people in the car were burned to death.

In a functioning democracy, we’d fix that. We know what happened: a design defect trapped people in their burning cars. It used to be that we’d recall that car in a heartbeat. We’d be falling over ourselves to get it off the street and fixed. Politicians would be patting themselves on the back.

In America these days? It’s fallen out of fashion. The Washington Post is afraid to tell you about it. The GOP won’t talk about it, even to save their own people. They can’t offend Elon, after all. (He’s rich, you know.)

And that tells you all you need to know about Republicans, wealth, and power.