Is Elon Musk a Big Political Problem for Trump?
Polling shows that the public doesn't love the idea of a bunch of billionaires running our government
Since being sworn in last week, Donald Trump has dominated the nation’s attention. His ability to grab the public by the lapels and force them to pay attention is his one skill — and why he has been his party’s nominee three times and elected president twice in a decade. There is only one other person who can compete with Trump in the attention wars: his billionaire BFF Elon Musk. The Tesla founder has been omnipresent during Trump’s first two weeks, eclipsing JD Vance and every member of Trump’s cabinet. Musk is more like co-president than the head of an esoteric commission with a vague mission. He helped push out the FAA Administrator and recently gained unprecedented access to the system that controls all of the payments from the Federal government.
The public is speculating on when the Trump-Musk bromance will blow up. Trump hates sharing the spotlight with anyone — it’s why he keeps picking wet blankets as Vice President. Mike Pence or JD Vance will never outshine him on television. Trump wants all of his cabinet members to look like the cast of a Michael Bay movie, but wants his second-in-command to look like the middle manager at a mid-sized paper company.
Some Democrats have taken to calling Elon “co-president” and claiming that he is really the one calling the shots. The goal is to trigger Trump’s infamous insecurity and have him cast Musk aside. A big Trump-Musk fight would be fun — a real life Alien v. Predator matchup. There would be a substantive benefit to sidelining Musk. Even though he is an annoying internet troll with a fully pickled brain, Musk and his Silicon Valley minions are undoubtedly more effective than whatever MAGA goons would replace them.
However, recent polling shows that Trump’s relationship with Musk might be his Achilles’ Heel.
Elon Musk: Not as Popular As He Thinks
It is inarguable that Musk was a political benefit to Trump during the campaign. He reportedly spent north of $200 million on various Super PACs and other efforts to elect Trump. Musk onboarded a bunch of members of Silicon Valley’s elite, which led to millions raised and the imprimatur of support from formerly progressive allies. Musk also reportedly played a major role in convincing Joe Rogan to endorse Trump in the campaign’s final weeks. All of this is on top of Musk tweaking the algorithm to make Twitter an unabashedly pro-MAGA platform — perhaps the greatest in-kind campaign contribution in history.
But that close association comes with a political cost.
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