Elon has been pushing conspiracy theories about short sellers for years. As a direct consequence of this, there are many commenters on this site who believe that short selling is generally nefarious and some who even think it should be banned altogether.
Funny how the possibility of a lying short seller gets all their consternation while lying CEOs do not.
In case of Tesla we have pretty well document case of short-sellers doing exactly what Elon said. Paid anti-Tesla articles were absolutely a thing that happened. Not to mention a constant stream of other FUD and accusations of fraud.