TThe oval office was crowded, with warned journalists not to collide with the office resolved. Standing next to them, dressed in black, was Elon MuskDonald Trump billionaire and head of his government efficiency campaign.
“Elon is from South Africa – I do not want to involve Elon,” the American president told his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, During a discussion on crime against white farmers. “He came here on a different subject: sending rockets to Mars. He likes it better.”
Musk’s silence during the difficult meeting of an hour was a small but revealing his change in Trump’s orbit. It remains close to the president and welcomes in the west wing. He also made a second visit to the Pentagon this week. But a relationship that many forecasts would end with a Explosive collision of Egos Rather seems to undergo an inexorable collapse.
Monday, the Politico website published an analysis Under the title “Why did Elon Musk disappear from the spotlight?” He found a sharp drop in the number of times that Trump published on Musk on his social platform Truth, four times a week in February and from March to zero since the beginning of April.
In February, Politico said, Trump’s fundraising operation invoked Musk in the fundraising emails almost every day, with a message reading: “I love Elon Musk! The media want to separate us, and that does not work. It is great.” But such mentions suddenly interrupted in early March, with the exception of an email in May announcing a “Gulf of America” hat that Musk had worn.
In addition, the managers of the White House no longer fill their social media flows with content linked to musks. Journalists rarely pose on him during the White House press briefing. Congress members give its name a large berth.
Musk seems to take the clue. This week, the director general of Tesla confirmed that he had reduced his role as unofficial chief of the so-called “Department of Effectiveness of the Government” (DOGE) to only two days a week, and also Cut your political expenses In essence – The last public signal indicates that he will give his attention to his commercial empire in the midst of the growing concerns of investors.
It is a dramatic change compared to the first weeks of Trump’s second term, when Musk attended the inauguration, was a constant presence in Mar-A-Lago, appeared alongside Trump in the oval office and gave a joint interview On Fox News full of mutual admiration. DOGE dominated the titles of the media because he made a chainsaw at the federal bureaucracy.
It seemed that Trump was dazzled by the richest person in the world, who sends rockets in space and spent at least 250 million dollars to support his electoral campaign last year. In March, the president even transformed the southern lawn of the White House into a Tesla temporary exhibition halldisplaying five of electric vehicles and promising to buy one itself.
But the polls told their own story. Last month, A national survey of the Marquette University Law School found the approval of how Musk manages his work at DOGE at 41% with disapproval at 58%. About 60% of those questioned himself had an unfavorable vision of Musk, against 38% who were favorable to him.
Ro KhannaA democratic member of the congress who has known Musk for more than a decade, said: “As his number has decreased, Trump’s interest too. Trump rejects people when their notes fall and it’s very transactional. It is nothing more than an initial fascination and a feeling of being rejected. ”
Khanna, whose congress district is at the heart of Silicon Valley in California, had predicted from the start that Musk was not going to last more than four or five months: “I said he was going to be frustrated, exhausted and Washington will win – not him – in terms of the city’s functioning.”
At that time, Khanna hoped that Doge would make pentagon cuts. Instead, he flouted the Constitution to reduce the American Agency for International Development (USAID), the Ministry of Education, the Internal Revenue Service and other objectives.
“I said that there was no way that he obtained anywhere almost 2 tn of cuts; He did not even approach a trillion; It’s about $ 81 billion. He learned the lesson that many very prosperous business leaders learn, that democracy is much more difficult than they imagine and do not lean on their will “,” Said Khanna.
Indeed, Musk continues to hit roadblocks. Wednesday, the American Institute of Peace regain control of its seat After a federal judge said that the dismissal of his board of directors and employees by DOGE was illegal. On Thursday, a federal judge of San Francisco said that Trump could not restructure and reduce the United States government without the consent of the congress and that it probably expands its regulation blocking federal agencies to implement mass layoffs.
Even thus, Doge has already promulgated deep cuts on labor and expenses and, in some cases, has sought to close entire agencies, causing incalculable damage to the fabric of the government.
For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “is not ready” for the start of the hurricane season next month, according to a review by the agency reported by CNN. The rescue agency in the event of a disaster, which employs more than 20,000 workers, has lost around 30% of its full -time staff with Dogeying and buyout.
Khanna warned: “We are going to live with the consequences for the coming years because unfortunately they have managed to completely destroy USAID, they destroyed the NIH (the National Institutes of Health), they destroyed the FDA (The Food and Drug Administration), they destroyed the EPA (the environmental protection agency), they dug a large part of the state department and it will be a generation.
“I hope the damage will stop. We must see what will continue, but I hope there will be no more hammer at these institutions. ”
Even the conservatives who believe in reducing government staff share concerns. Rick TylerA political strategist that has worked on republican campaigns, said: “What they are trying to do is making the government smaller, what I applaud, but they do not make it more effective because there has been no vision, no plan for the government to work with fewer people and less money and less money. There is no overhaul. It’s just an oblique bar and a burn.
Tesla, which is the main source of Musk’s wealth, has suffered significant damage to the brand and lost sales due to her political work, especially with Trump. He also expressed his support for the far right and anti-immigration to Germany. Tesla dealers have become scenes of protest and vandalism in the United States and beyond.
Musk may have met his political waterloo in Wisconsin. Its expenses of at least $ 3 million have helped to race at the Supreme Wisconsin Court The most expensive of its kind in American history. He even made a personal appearance in Green Bay the weekend before the elections wearing a cheesehead hat – popular with fans of NFL Green Bay packers – and personally distributed $ 1 million checks to supporters.
But the candidate he supported lost 10 percentage points. The Democrats had used his intervention to successfully mobilize the voters during an election nicknamed “People vs Musk”.
This week, Musk told Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha: “In terms of political expenses, I will do much less in the future.” The president of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Ben Wikler, told the Associated Press: “The people have won. The largest funder in republican policy is to take their toys and return home.”
Obviously, Musk and his chainsaw have become a political responsibility for the Republicans requesting a re -election in the middle of next year. Democrats in races across the country should use musk as A political Boogeyman in attack ads on their opponents.
Tyler observed: “The ballot numbers, Trump suffering politically, which would harm his party, which will harm his program, caused enough conflicts for me to be sure that he hears enough members to say, could we simply no longer talk about Elon Musk?”
Wendy SchillerA professor of political science at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, added: “It was a test ball on the way they would reduce federal employees. If it worked and people thought it was great, maybe they would continue with or without musk, but they used it as a person before for that and the punching bag. When he turned around, they overturned him.
“There is no one you can sincerely believe Donald Trump Think that it is important for its popularity or position in a positive way because it believes generates everything that is itself. And I don’t think he’s wrong about it. But if you become a responsibility, you left fairly quickly.