While the billionaire messes, illegally, with our federal agencies, no one seems to be minding his store.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk leaves a meeting with House Republicans in the basement of the US Capitol on March 5, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Samuel Corum / Getty Images)
Admirers call Tesla CEO Elon Musk a technology “genius.” Tesla was a genuine innovation, producing an electric car in 2008 that doubled as a smooth-riding, luxurious status symbol. Though he’s now devoted himself to cutting government waste, fraud, and abuse, Musk doesn’t much talk about how much federal money went into Tesla and his other businesses, the interplanetary SpaceX project and Starlink, his global communications empire. The Washington Post estimates he took in a total of $38 billion from the federal government for those three enterprises.
Now, while he’s running the Department of Government Efficiency for Donald Trump (though claiming he’s not), Musk is clearly mucking around in the workings of federal agencies and putting much less energy into his businesses. That might not be paying off for him. Musk’s social media site X, formerly Twitter, has been offline most of Monday due to a “massive cyberattack.” Tesla stock has lost a third of its value this year—12 percent on Monday alone. SpaceX launched yet another rocket that exploded, this time throwing off dangerous debris and forcing South Florida airports to close. Who wants Elon Musk in charge of staffing the Federal Aviation Agency? Not me.
Few Americans seem to think Musk is a genius anymore. His approval ratings are underwater, and polls show that Musk, and DOGE’s incursions into federal agencies, are unpopular. It’s not just Musk’s problem; Congressional Republicans are forgoing home town halls, claiming that George Soros is paying Democrats to attend. (He is not.)
Could that be adding to Musk’s business woes?
The #TeslaTakedown movement might be the most vibrant anti-Trump opposition in the country, and it’s spreading to other countries. (Outside Toulouse, France, a Tesla dealership was torched a week ago.) Here in Manhattan, hundreds of people “occupied” a Tesla showroom on Saturday and shut it down. Six were arrested. The almost exclusively nonviolent protests stretch from Boston to Pasadena, Charlotte to Seattle. Liberal Tesla owners have complained that they’re being identified as Nazi-adjacent, when they bought the revolutionary electric car out of concern about climate change. Some are selling their cars; celebrities like Sheryl Crow are donating theirs to charity.
Musk is also, reportedly, facing serious backlash within Trump’s cabinet. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, last seen on an Oval Office sofa having his soul sucked out of him during Trump’s brutal verbal assault on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, apparently snapped at Musk for his meddling in the USAID budget. Musk snapped back, telling Rubio that he’s “good on TV,” damning with faint praise. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy accused Musk of trying to lay off air traffic controllers during a historic acceleration of plane crashes—none of which can be laid at Trump’s feet, but it will be if Musk and others continue slashing the FAA. Musk denied that he was doing that, for what it’s worth.
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Trump, like a Mafia don, listened to his various capos, and then settled them down. He said Musk can’t directly fire their personnel, but also defended his DOGE boy. After the meeting, on Truth Social, Trump called for more precise staff cuts: “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’”
Of course, Musk brandished a chain saw at the Conservative Political Action conference. That’s his MO. He shows no sign of reaching for a scalpel. He wants to cut as much as possible before his time as a temporary White House staffer comes to an end in roughly 80 days. We’ll see if he destroys his own companies before he destroys the federal government.
Donald Trump’s cruel and chaotic second term is just getting started. In his first month back in office, Trump and his lackey Elon Musk (or is it the other way around?) have proven that nothing is safe from sacrifice at the altar of unchecked power and riches.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
