The news that Rev. Raphael Warnock's now-ex-wife claimed he had tried to run her over with his car was vaguely familiar to me, but until I read this long New York Times article about him I had not realized the make of the car. From the Times account:
They argued in the driveway. Mr. Warnock later said he had wanted her to sign the divorce papers before he allowed the children to travel overseas. Soon, Ms. Warnock was calling the police to report that he had run over her foot.
Ms. Warnock, shaken but calm, tells the police that she had been leaning into the back seat on the passenger side, with the door open, fastening one of the children's seatbelts.
Both parties agree, the video shows, that Mr. Warnock got in the driver's seat and started to move the car with the passenger door still open. Mr. Warnock says he had first asked his wife to move away from the car, but she refused. He also says that when he began to drive, he believed she had moved.
Mr. Warnock says repeatedly that he did not "think" he had hit her foot. Later, he gave a more categorical denial, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "It didn't happen."
The first officer on the scene tells his sergeant that Mr. Warnock seems "like a very presentable guy in a Tesla" and that his wife is "hysterical." The police did not arrest Mr. Warnock, saying several times that they did not believe he had injured his wife, or that he had any intent to do so.
Whatever you make of the event or of Warnock, who is the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat, the part of this that made me smile was the Tesla. It's on-brand for the upwardly mobile, successful pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church to be driving a Tesla, and it's on-brand for Tesla to be driven by the upwardly mobile, successful pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church. Warnock has made it. Tesla has made it. The whole anecdote is so 2020, or 2021. One feels badly for the children involved and for the adults whose marriage did not work out, but if Warnock had to be caught moving the car with the door open, somehow it seems better that it was a Tesla than, say, a Kia, or an Oldsmobile, or a Buick. It just fits.