Elon Musk isn’t as publicly, obviously involved in Washington as he used to be, that much is clear. But celebrations of his political exile are premature.
Sure, it’s true that Musk and Donald Trump’s bombastic joint press conferences have faded. Trump is no longer shooting Tesla ads on the White House lawn. And Musk has said that he’ll be stepping away from government and focusing on Tesla.
But Musk loves to lie. He’s said he’ll spend “a lot less” on politics in the future, but I am also old enough to remember “funding secured.” The government is still infested with his lackeys, such as Steve Davis, Chris Young, and Jehn Balajadia. Even in an announcement that was widely reported as Musk stepping back from DC, Musk made it clear he’d spend “a day or two per week” on politics for the rest of Trump’s term.
I tend to view the credulous political obituaries people have written as wishful thinking, but I do understand the impulse. So much of Musk’s whole thing is spectacle that when he’s no longer publicly performing, it’s possible to believe nothing is happening. This is a mistake. We don’t even know the extent of what DOGE has done so far, and in the absence of a serious GAO report, we may never know.
DC is famously Hollywood for ugly people, which meant a lot of big egos were not particularly amused by Musk
Musk’s use of spectacle, up to this year, had saved Tesla a need for a marketing budget. (Why would you need to buy ads when your celebrity CEO is hosting Saturday Night Live?) He cultivated an intense fan base, who bought Tesla stock and sent it sky-high. For much of the world — and much of the tech industry — Musk was a synecdoche for Silicon Valley’s success. Even Steve Jobs wasn’t this famous; you’d have to go back to Howard Hughes to find someone remotely comparable.
But Musk’s spotlight — and his Inauguration Day gesture that rather resembled something I think we’ve all seen before — put his IT Renfields under a glare. It was obvious that DOGE was not saving anyone money and targeting the regulators that oversaw Musk companies. And DC is famously Hollywood for ugly people, which meant a lot of big egos were not particularly amused by Musk being the center of attention.
Trump, ostensibly president of the United States, has a long history of hiring people who hate each other and watching them fight; it was a hallmark of his first administration. And so reports of clashes between Musk and his various officials seemed inevitable — no one wants to become, say, treasury secretary and then discover that Musk will be making all the decisions. Even Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, managed to show some semblance of a spine when Musk encroached on Rubio’s turf. This has now spilled into the public eye, becoming part of the Musk circus; because Trump is just as media-addled as Musk, reports of boldly standing up to Musk could even lead to real political clout.
And Musk wasn’t just beefing with bureaucrats. Because Musk so publicly associated himself with Tesla — which had been a marketing bonanza throughout the 2010s — expressing disapproval with Musk was easy: target Tesla. There was also a series of extremely funny protests against Tesla. Tesla owners have been slapping bumper stickers on their cars in the hopes of avoiding social opprobrium. They complain about mean-mugging, middle fingers, and worse.
Musk has still got plenty of power and influence
Tesla’s sales have slumped. So has its stock price, down about 11 percent this year, as of this writing. And that’s a problem for Musk, whose money (and thus power) is intimately tied to Tesla’s share price. Plus, Musk has admitted he takes this personally. That makes sense — he wouldn’t have cultivated such an enormous public persona if that weren’t important to him.
But the spectacle is merely a tool. Musk is capable of moving quietly as well.
The thing with the chainsaw was not Musk’s first rodeo, just his weirdest. He’s flexed political muscles before more quietly, mostly through his money. It’s part of how he got friendly deals for his factories — something he was so effective at that Jeff Bezos attempted to imitate him — and his government contracts, most notably at SpaceX.
Lying low for a while may benefit Musk. DOGE has spawned a vast array of lawsuits and has been handed repeated defeats in court — including recently, when after DOGE broke into the US Institute of Peace, aided and abetted by the DC police, a judge ruled that the takeover was illegal. The building, worth $500 million, and the rest of the USIP’s property, including its endowment, had been handed off to the General Services Administration. Those transfers must be “declared null and void,” the judge wrote.
Musk has still got plenty of power and influence, accompanying Trump to foreign countries and joining meetings with international leaders. Any Republican elected official who upsets him still has to worry about a petty and vindictive Musk-funded primary challenge. There’s a supposed 130-day time limit on temporary government employees, but it won’t matter to Musk, whose default stance is defying the law to see if it has teeth. I see no reason his behavior will change in the Trump era, particularly since law no longer seems to apply to anyone who’s a Trump supporter.
Meanwhile, all the focus on Musk has obscured the roles of other Silicon Valley luminaries in DC. Peter Thiel proteges have landed in several cushy jobs, including at Health and Human Services, which has awarded Thiel’s Palantir juicy contracts. And Thiel, of course, is the majority owner of Vice President JD Vance, who not only worked at Thiel’s Mithril Capital, but also had his Senate run financed by the billionaire. Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, and Palmer Luckey also have friends in the administration. The crypto world essentially purchased the presidency. If Musk is less public, it’s possible a new Silicon Valley punching bag will emerge.
But let’s say Musk is actually done with politics. After all the carnage he has accomplished already, what else is left to fuck up? Having created chaos, he can simply watch things crumble. The tech overlords have a pay-to-play system installed with the Trump administration, and no shortage of money. A number of key regulators have been dissolved or otherwise hamstrung. Indeed, Musk seems to recognize this. Asked if his personal leadership was necessary for DOGE, Musk replied, “Is Buddha needed for Buddhism? Was it not stronger after he passed away?”
