The End of the Elon Experiment

E arlier this February, at CPAC’s annual gathering, Elon Musk walked onstage to a cheering throng of young admirers and was presented with a chainsaw by Argentine president Javier Milei for his efforts with DOGE. I wrote about the moment with a tone that, in retrospect, reads like a man realizing too late he had downed the wrong cup of “water” at a Grateful Dead concert and was now embarking on an unplanned trip:

It was almost narcotically disorienting, and crystallized something that had been naggingly out of reach for me as a writer up until I saw the clips: . . . Milei, looking lupine as always, quasi-ennobling Musk with a giant chainsaw. (Musk: “GROAAR! This is the Chainsaw for Bureaucracy! CHAINSAAAW! NYEAAAARLGH!” — you must hear it, the mere words on the page do not suffice to capture the Lynchian surrealism.)

Back then Elon was riding high on more than just ketamine, celebrating his “bro-crush” on Donald Trump, attending cabinet meetings, unleashing political pronunciamentos from atop his perch at Twitter/X (which still guides news cycles even in the present era), pondering policy like the disbursement of DOGE “savings checks” to all Americans, and generally basking in the pleasures of being both the richest and second-most important man on planet Earth. It was easy enough to see at the time that Musk was both drunk on his own power and unable to curb his worst public instincts. It seemed rather clear to me that hubris was on the verge of breeding nemesis, and that he was cruising for a fall.

Fast-forward to “liberation day,” April 2. According to Politico, on that day — already newsworthy for other ill-starred reasons — Donald Trump also privately informed his cabinet that Musk is going to be officially stepping back from his DOGE duties to return to the private sector, from which he will provide a “supporting role” instead. The bromance may not be over, but the president apparently embraces the imperative, “If you love someone, set them free.” The Elon Experiment has ended.

Musk and the Trump administration both insist that this departure was preplanned, of course, and indeed Trump’s initial appointment of Musk as the head of DOGE was pitched as a 130-day stint as a “special government employee.” (Assuming the clock began running on January 20, that would put the terminus at the end of May.) But everybody paying attention to White House messaging since Trump took office knew this to be yet another one of his official pretenses: The administration had previously insisted, while good vibes were running high, that Musk’s tenure would in fact be ongoing and renewed if necessary — his mission would “continue until complete.”

Whatever else one thinks of DOGE’s efforts, the mission is certainly not yet complete, nor will it be by June 1. (It is worth stipulating that nobody seems quite able to agree on what the results of DOGE’s tear through the federal workforce are — not only how permanent they might be once the next federal budget is passed, but whether such results even exist in measurable form.) But Elon can read the writing on the wall, and he’s decided to push the big red button and hop into his escape pod. It wasn’t as bad a breakup as I had feared, to be honest.

And good for Musk. The reasons for his exit at this point are overdetermined — the man does have multiple high-stakes businesses to run, after all — but I think we can all agree that a figure of his authentic talents belongs in the private sector doing amazing things like catching rockets in mid-plummet, rather than remaining entangled with the Trump administration as the face for a task he proved to lack the required experience or political savvy to execute. (Most forms of genius are nontransferable, and this is yet another example of error in self-assessment, an entrepreneurial-level variant of the Peter Principle.)

But another reason Musk has to leave is that he is making himself toxic among the national electorate, with consequences for Republicans down-ballot. When he first became Trump’s public best friend, many speculated that he was acting as a “sin-eater” of sorts for Trump, bearing the brunt of public disapproval of or discomfort with Trump’s initial actions in office (while acting as his fierce booster). Whether one buys that theory or not, Musk has little room left to absorb either Trump’s sin or his own: He now sports a −17 national approval rating, far worse than Trump’s.

On Tuesday night, Republicans got shellacked in a hugely important race for the Wisconsin state supreme court. Musk, to his credit, had invested nearly $23 million of his own fortune on behalf of the conservative candidate and came out to campaign for him. For his troubles, he himself became the focus of attention in the race, and a wildly unpopular one at that, with an approval rating in the state of −12. Images of Musk bobbing awkwardly onstage wearing a cheese-head and staging million-dollar giveaways of questionable legality to induce rallygoers to vote became a key public narrative in a race where already-motivated Democrats in a swing state were served yet another powerful reason to overwhelm Republicans at the polls.

Will Musk be able to disassociate himself from Trump’s brand, even should he desire to? Doubtful. But then again, I also doubt he wants to — I certainly give him enough credit for the courage of his convictions — and I don’t think it matters; a man of such natural intellectual energies will inevitably turn them back to productive work once given the opportunity to focus on his business. I hope he spends more time on that than recriminating about his experiment in federal government or his experience as a political bogeyman, and I hope he succeeds beyond the world’s expectations yet again. For there are two Elon Musks, after all. There is the public controversialist, and there is the man on a mission to Mars. The world has benefited significantly from the latter — and perhaps will again.