DOGE deflated: Elon Musk has lost his political power

[marmar]

DOGE deflated: Elon Musk has lost his political power
He's still sickeningly rich — but the Musk bubble has floated down to Earth

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published May 21, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) 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.

....(snip)....

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.

....(snip)....

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.) .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/05/21/doge-deflated-elon-musk-has-lost-his-political-power/

[Irish_Dem]

1. The damage is done. And Musk won.

Musk destroyed the US government, the federal workforce.
Eliminated all the agencies investigating him.
And landed very lucrative federal contracts.

[mwmisses4289]

2. Yes, this.

Especially destroying agencies that were investigating him and it.