DOGE deflated: Elon Musk has lost his political power

Elon, we hardly knew ye. After spending the last six months stuck to Donald Trump like quick-drying cement, Elon Musk is backing away from politics and sounding mighty petulant about the whole thing. Appearing at the Qatar Economic Forum, Musk was questioned if he was going to donate more money to politics, and he said no, that he had "done enough." It's not because he's hurting for cash, of course. His car business is indeed in big trouble but he still has plenty of lucrative government contracts all over the world and remains the richest man in the world. His political contributions equal what you or I would find between the couch cushions. No, he's backing out of politics because his feelings are hurt that people don't love him the way they used to.

Here he is lamenting that people criticize him for making what appeared to be a Nazi salute (after publicly pushing for German voters to elect a neo-Nazi party to run their government) because, after all, he's never harmed a single person:

I would just point out that many thousands of the poorest people in the world who are suffering because he took his chainsaw to the USAID program that was their only lifeline for food and medication, might have something to say about whether he's "harmed" anyone.

Musk has had a very rude awakening about politics, the kind of awakening most of us have sometime in our late teens when we realize that not everyone thinks like we do. He went at politics like a college freshman, assured that he was right, that he knew everything and that everyone except the rankest moron agreed with him. He even bought Twitter so that he could have fun trolling them, secure in the knowledge that he was in the majority. He soon found out that there are millions of people in this country who are not impressed with his adolescent philosophizing.

And apparently, it never occurred to him that mercilessly attacking the left and the center left might impact his car sales, even though they are his customer base. Donald Trump's followers don't even believe in climate change, much less want to drive electric vehicles. What kind of so-called entrepreneurial genius wouldn't have thought about that?

It's taken its toll. Musk's approval ratings are worse than Trump's and his companies' reputations have sunk in the public mind just as much. The 2025 Axios Harris Poll 100 survey, which looks at the public approval of the most famous companies in America, found that Tesla fell 50 spots in one year to #83. Even SpaceX, his sexy spaceship company, dropped 36 spots to #84.

Sales of his cars are in the dirt around the world. They've fallen 9% in the first quarter of 2025 in the U.S., at a time when EV sales are up 11%. The Cybertruck, which some have referred to as the Edsel of the 21st century (which, for you kids who don't know what that means, it's a reference to a famously ugly car back in the 1950s that was a total dud in every way), is a disaster. The company is stuck with an inventory of somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 units to the tune of about $800 million. And they just built a shiny new factory to build 250,000 more. In the words of one analyst, the car is "hemorrhaging" sales in Europe. (In fairness, that's not just a Tesla problem, it's the Trump effect. Sales of many American brands are all being hit hard in Europe for obvious reasons.)

As you can see from the video above, Musk is very hurt that people don't like him anymore. And one has to think that might just include Donald Trump. It wasn't that long ago that he was having sleepovers at the White House and sharing bowls of ice cream late at night with the president. He seemed to appear at every press conference and Cabinet meeting and was almost always getting on and off Marine One as Trump's first bud. But lately, he's been very scarce even though his "special employee status" isn't technically expired.

It's hard to know exactly when things between them might have changed, but there is some speculation that it happened around the time that Trump's Cabinet staged a temper tantrum over Musk's DOGE crew usurping their power to fire whomever they wanted. Trump took their side, saying that Musk needed to start using a "scalpel instead of a hatchet." That was probably another hurtful moment for Elon.

His pet project, DOGE, has failed to deliver any real savings and basically just caused havoc in the federal government. For instance, their recent foray into the Social Security Administration has resulted in massive delays of service while finding essentially no fraud:

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Over the last months or so, the bloom is definitely off the DOGE rose and the administration has allowed their other henchmen, like HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to assume much of the slashing and burning of vital, life-saving programs.

But for all that, I suspect the freeze actually came from the Wisconsin Supreme Court humiliation when Musk went all in on the race, spending $100 million, making it the most expensive judicial race in history. It was expected to be very close and most people put their money on the conservative winning in the wake of Trump's nine-point victory in the state. Musk was everywhere, wearing a cheese-head hat and running contests to give away million-dollar checks. He was the face of the right wing and Trump's emissary. Yet his campaign flopped bigly. In a major upset, the liberal won by 10 points.

I think from that moment on, Musk's shine was off for Trump because it embarrassed him that they lost so badly when Musk had spent all that money. More importantly, it showed that Musk and his money were not some kind of Death Star that could automatically take out any Republican in a primary who failed to do his or Trump's bidding. It turns out that money isn't everything and Musk himself is a liability on the campaign trail.

That's not to say that Trump has actually disowned the richest man in the world. He would never do that. In fact, he brought him along on his Middle East Grift Trip where he was hawking his companies to all the same kings and potentates. And just as the Trump family has been doing ever since he got back in the White House, Musk's parents and his brother have all been over there putting together deals to further enrich themselves. Billionaire birds of a feather stick together.

I have no doubt that Elon Musk will still participate in politics. Despite his pledge to stop spending, he could very well change his mind. But he has now demonstrated that his alleged power and command of business and politics were highly overvalued. He's still sickeningly rich but the Musk bubble has floated down to Earth.