Re: Sure, deny it and point to the evidence that supports your position...
"The thing is, Musk wails about "short sellers" all the frigging time. Anytime Tesla gets any kind of not-totally-rave press, it's malicious lies planted by short sellers. It's getting old."
To be fair, they tend not to let up for even a moment. Every possible bit of bad news and Tesla is doomed. Last year we had someone cry about a "demand cliff" in California, they turned out to be very wrong. Now this year the exact same person is claiming there is a demand cliff in California and he made sure he got quoted by all of the media. Never mind that Tesla is back ordered 5 weeks and prioritized deliveries to make sure customers in the Netherlands didn't lose out on rebates before they expired. Some of the other hit pieces from Dec/Jan: "excluding the Netherlands, Tesla sales are down."
So now we have a guy, who trolled the NHTSA database for things to complain about. Most of these were already investigated.. One of the highlighted complaints is something the car can't physically do for regulatory and safety reasons. Another case is where the data recovered from the car showed no break press and 45 degrees on the accelerator when the "unexpected acceleration" happened. And of course, he goes out and contacts the media and of course, he just happens to have a short position in Tesla. Why exactly should we take him at his word?
Somewhere short selling became a game to drive the stock down and it's not just Tesla that has suffered from this.