Sorry, that wasn't clear. Tesla/Musk have blamed a lot of bad press and negative comments on smear campaigns, which they say are orchestrated by short sellers.

Sorry, that wasn't clear. Tesla/Musk have blamed a lot of bad press and negative comments on smear campaigns, which they say are orchestrated by short sellers. If that's true (which it probably isn't), SpaceX doesn't have any short sellers that would want to orchestrate anything. They don't because they can't, as you said. So the general PR situation for SpaceX is wildly different from Tesla in every way. People still love SpaceX.