It was not so long ago that Elon Musk was regarded, in certain credulous sectors of the liberal imagination, as a shining hope. Here was a rare pro-environment billionaire, whose commitment to making electric cars might help solve capitalism’s planetary crisis. Sure, he was a weird guy, with weird politics, but perhaps less offensive than the tech oligarchs who had helped Donald Trump to power in 2016. Musk never loved unions, or taxes, or regulations — he was a Silicon Valley libertarian and auto tycoon, after all — but he was liberal on gay rights. He supported Obama in 2012, Clinton in 2016, and Biden in 2020. For a time, he even saw himself as a mitigating influence on Trump. “He was very much like: ‘I need to be here to change Trump’s mind. Only I can change it,’” reported tech journalist and C-suite stenographer Kara Swisher, who spoke to Musk after he joined a circle of corporate advisers to the President in 2016. Musk left the group less than a year later, when Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement. “Am departing presidential councils,” Musk tweeted. “Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
It couldn’t last. Though the press continued to fawn over Musk long after enthusiasm for the likes of Travis Kalanick and Mark Zuckerberg had waned (Walter Isaacson’s best-selling hagiography of Musk was published in 2023), his politics caught up with his authoritarian disposition. Covid, the gender transition of one of his fourteen children, mutually exacerbating penchants for ketamine and posting, not being invited to Joe Biden’s 2021 electric vehicle summit because Tesla workers aren’t unionized — these were some of the contingent forces that pushed Musk toward MAGA. Though he said in March 2024 that he would not donate to any presidential candidate, he endorsed Trump only four months later, eventually spending more than $200 million to get him elected. In August he hosted Trump on X for a long and glitchy live chat, during which he soft-pitched the candidate on a commission to rein in federal spending. “I’d be happy to help out on such a commission if it were formed,” Musk offered with an air of magnanimity. “I’d love it,” Trump replied. “You — you’re the greatest cutter!”
By the time he appeared at CPAC in February, waving a red chainsaw onstage in tribute to Argentina’s Javier Milei — another right-wing fan of prop comedy — Musk had already delivered on the epithet. In the four months since Trump took office, Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has fired tens of thousands of federal employees, dismantled USAID, gained access to sensitive data systems across the government, and used that data to help Trump deport thousands of immigrants on little to no legal basis. DOGE claims to have saved the government $165 billion in “wasteful” or “fraudulent” spending so far, a fraction of the $2 trillion Musk claimed he expected to cut by the end of the fiscal year; but as NPR, the BBC, and others have reported, less than $70 billion in savings have been itemized, and only a fraction of those have receipts. One estimate, from the newsletter MuskWatch, puts the verifiable savings around $5 billion. (Just $1.995 trillion to go.) Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service projects that the cuts could cost taxpayers $135 billion in expenses related to “firings, rehirings, lost productivity, and paid leave for thousands of workers,” the New York Times reported in April. PPS’s estimate doesn’t include the $323 billion in tax revenue the Yale Budget Lab estimates the IRS could forgo in the next decade thanks to DOGE’s cuts.
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