The Washington Post spent years lecturing America about misinformation.
Now Ron DeSantis caught them running it.
And the reason they're doing it was hiding in plain sight the whole time.
The Crash the Media Blamed on a Car
On June 19, 2026, Michael Butler drove his Tesla Model 3 into a brick home in Katy, Texas at more than 70 miles per hour.
The speed limit on Rose Hollow Lane is 30.
Martha Avila, 76 years old, was inside that home.
She died.
Butler told police the car was in autopilot mode.
Reporters typed that up and ran it.
https://twitter.com/XCorpHub/status/2078591266653417945?s=20
Within hours, headlines across legacy media blamed Tesla's technology for the death of a grandmother.
Here's what those same reporters did not run: Butler's phone contained Google searches for "Tesla FSD too timid" and "Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026."
That's not a man victimized by his car – that's a man who decided the car wasn't fast enough and fixed it himself.
The Federal Government Confirmed It
The National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary findings on July 15, 2026.
Electronic data pulled from Butler's vehicle showed he pressed the accelerator to 100 percent before the crash, disabling Full Self-Driving entirely.
The brake pedal was never touched.
Butler has since been charged with manslaughter.
The NTSB findings matched exactly what Tesla's VP of AI Software, Ashok Elluswamy, said publicly within days of the crash: the driver overrode the system by flooring the accelerator.
Tesla was right from day one.
The Washington Post's headline after all of this came out: "Newly released photo shows wreckage of Tesla crash that killed grandmother."
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2078585510591885547?s=20
Not "Driver charged with manslaughter after flooring Tesla past 70 mph."
Not "NTSB confirms driver overrode FSD before fatal crash."
Tesla crash.
DeSantis Asked the Question Every Conservative Already Knew the Answer To
Ron DeSantis went on X and asked a simple question: do legacy media outlets typically name the car brand in crash stories, or is that treatment reserved specifically for Tesla?
Everyone paying attention already knew the answer.
Ford F-150s kill people every year – you read "pickup truck slams into home."
Chevy Silverados run red lights and flatten pedestrians – you read "fatal car crash kills pedestrian."
Nobody at the Washington Post runs a headline blaming the RAM 1500.
But when a man floors a Tesla through a residential neighborhood at more than double the speed limit – overriding the system that was slowing him down – the headline calls it a "Tesla crash."
That is not journalism.
That is a campaign.
Here Is Exactly Why the Washington Post Is Running It
The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos owns Blue Origin.
Blue Origin competes directly against Elon Musk's SpaceX for billions of dollars in government contracts.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2078194970893406350?s=20
The Washington Post's own reporters confirmed in 2025 that DOGE – the cost-cutting operation Musk ran inside the Trump administration – had access to Labor Department files containing sensitive workplace investigations into Tesla and other Musk companies.
The newspaper owned by Musk's biggest business rival has been running negative Tesla crash coverage ever since.
Tesla's own 2025 Impact Report shows vehicles using FSD logged 0.19 major incidents per million miles – roughly eight times fewer than the national average.
The Model Y ranks among the safest vehicles in IIHS and NHTSA testing.
None of that makes their headline.
A grandmother dying in a house makes their headline – with Tesla's brand name attached – because Tesla is run by the man who helped Trump win, ran DOGE, and whose rocket company is eating Bezos's lunch on government contracts.
Martha Avila deserved better than being a prop in Jeff Bezos's business war.
If this were actually about her, the headline would say Michael Butler killed her.
Sources:
- Cris Tolomia, "NTSB: Tesla Driver Overrode FSD in Fatal Katy, Texas Crash," Quartz, July 16, 2026.
- "Tesla Driver in Fatal Texas Crash Pressed Accelerator 100%, NTSB Confirms," TechCrunch, July 15, 2026.
- "NTSB Findings on Fatal Tesla Crash Tell a Very Different Story," Teslarati, July 16, 2026.
- Joey Klender, "Ron DeSantis Calls Out Media Bias in Tesla Crash Coverage," Teslarati, July 18, 2026.
- "DOGE Has the Keys to Sensitive Data That Could Help Elon Musk," The Washington Post, June 30, 2025.
