What did Donald Trump do today?

He said it was illegal not to buy things. UPDATE: He said it was terrorism not to buy things.

In a post he made at 1:14 AM, Washington time, to his boutique social network, Trump complained that consumers were "illegally and collusively" refusing to buy Teslas to spite Elon Musk.

It is not illegal to not buy things.

If Trump is worried that consumers are punishing Musk for the job he's doing as the person to whom Trump has delegated apparently unlimited executive authority, he has good reason. Tesla's stock, the main bulwark of Musk's standing as the richest person in the world, took an absolute beating on Monday. Sales are plummeting, Americans are exercising their freedom of speech by protesting outside of Tesla dealerships, and Musk himself—who bought and paid for a reputation as an eccentric genius—has become even more polarizing than Trump, and even less popular.

One possible explanation for Trump's claim that it's illegal not to buy a Musk product is that Musk told him it was, and Trump believed him. Musk has made a similar claim about ads on Twitter, arguing that if companies had bought them before he bought Twitter, they're legally obliged to continue buying them indefinitely, no matter what else happens. Not long after buying the company and firing most of the content moderation staff in the name of "free speech," advertisers began pulling out in droves for fear that their product would be associated with, for example, posts written by out-and-proud Nazis. He publicly told advertisers to "go fuck yourself"—then sued them for not doing business with him.

At a White House press conference later in the day, where he appeared in front of a lineup of Tesla models with Musk, Trump labeled people who choose not to buy Teslas "domestic terrorists."

REPORTER: …Some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists—

TRUMP: I will do that. I'll do it. I'm gonna stop them. We catch anybody doing it—because they're harming a great American company. …Those people are gonna go through a lotta problems.

Musk also provided Trump with a sales pitch to read, complete with pricing information, which Trump did. Shortly afterwards, it was leaked that Musk will make a $100 million contribution to Trump's political action committee.

Why does this matter?

• Again: it is not illegal to not buy things.

• It is not terrorism to not buy things.

• Freedom of speech also means it is not illegal to encourage other people not to buy things.

• It's bad if the President of the United States can be made to read ad copy on demand for his political backers.

• People who don't want their politics to affect their business shouldn't mix the two.

• Asking Americans who may have lost months or years from their retirement savings over the past two days to feel sympathy for the financial plight of the world's richest person might be a bit much.