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In a breaking news story, apparently Trump has privately said Musk will step back from his role in the admin.
Of course, this has been claimed multiple times before somewhat falsely, so take it with a grain of salt! However, over the last couple of months it does seem that Elon has been wearing out his welcome in the admin, as many posters here predicted might happen.
I'm curious what exactly the problems have been internally - do you think it's just that Elon hasn't been able to defer to Trump enough? Or to put it more bluntly, to flatter Trump's ego?
Or is it more of an issue of a lack of cuts? I haven't been able to get good numbers, but I do think that the general 'vibe' is that Elon's cutting has been disappointing so far. Perhaps this is because of the coordinated media attack against him, but it also could just be that cutting the federal government is a beastly task. Personally I'm of the opinion he should have more time, but sadly that may not be the case.
The ostensible reason Elon is giving is apparently to focus more on business interests. This could be the case, as I'd imagine running multiple giant companies while also trying to head a govt. department is... basically impossible. That being said, it goes against a lot of the messaging Elon and Trump put together when they first started DOGE.
Either way, this turn of events, if it bears out, seems bad for team Trump as a whole, given how many eggs were put in the cutting government spending basket. Without Elon cutting hardcore, I fail to see how their admin can get even close to balancing the budget.
I think the answer is simpler: Elon is becoming a political liability. A Quinnipiac poll back on 3/13 found Elon and DOGE even less popular than Trump. Trump is under water by about 11 points (42-53) but Elon is under water by 21 points (36-57). Especially among independents, he's under-water 2:1 (31-63). A pretty solid majority also indicate they believe DOGE is hurting the country more than helping (40-54) and disapprove of the way Elon and DOGE have been treating federal workers (36-60). Heck, back in February an Economist/YouGov poll found that a plurality of respondents (46%) wanted Elon to have no influence in the administration. Compared to 25% who wanted him to have "a little" influence and 13% who want him to have "a lot."
This brings us to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election last night. Elon inserted himself pretty directly in the election, doing a $1 million dollar giveaway to promote the Republican candidate. In addition he spent upwards of $25m dollars to campaign for the Republican candidate. The democrat ended up winning anyway. I've also seen some analysis that Schimel (the Republican candidate for judge) did worse state-wide than other Republicans running, which some are attributing to Elon's prominence.
People have seen what Elon Musk has on offer and they mostly don't want it!
I wouldn't call him a "political liability"-- I'd call him the "fall man." Associating elon with the cuts means that as soon as elon is gone low-information voters will think the cuts have "stopped" and will forgive trump (and the republican party) as a consequence. Elon's role is to absorb the reputational hit for carrying out what the republicans already wanted to do.
This is another area where the opposition seems horribly unable to do its job -- most of the grassroots anger I see is directed at Elon Musk personally and not Trump, when all his power comes from Trump and the president has gone on record saying he believes in what Musk is doing at DOGE. Before the tariff debate, it seemed like we were in full Rasputin mode: it's not the tsar, it's his crazy advisor! I recall the "Elon Musk is AN UNELECTED MAN creating a coup against the government" thing from major Democratic politicians even early on in the Trump administration... it made no sense then and makes even less sense now. Everything Trump's opposition seems to say is exactly the opposite of what you'd want to say if you were working hard to stage a strong opposition and put pressure on the executive. It seems like everything the GOP is doing comes straight from Trump's mind, and everything the Democratic party is doing comes straight from grassroots anger and not strategy.
Those are two separate issues.
Musk creates anger because of his perceived or real (or trolling) far right views, because he’s the richest man in the world (naturally evil according to economic leftists) and because he was responsible for firing a lot of federal government workers directly and a lot of NGO types indirectly (by cutting spending), who are a core progressive class.
Trump himself doesn’t seem to care much about government efficiency, he only cares about tariffs.
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