DOGE: Have we passed 'peak Musk'?

"Money can buy a lot of things," said Allison Morrow in CNN.com. The $288 million Elon Musk spent to help elect President Trump and other GOP candidates, for instance, secured him a job heading the previously nonexistent Department of Government Efficiency, with apparent authority to fire 280,000 federal workers and shutter entire agencies. But money can't buy all things, as shown by the "parade of humiliations" Musk suffered in the space of 24 hours last week. First, Wisconsin voters rejected the conservative judge whom Musk spent $25 million trying to install on the state Supreme Court. Hours later, Tesla reported a 13 percent sales slump, its largest drop ever. Soon after, anonymous White House insiders told Politico that Musk had "overstayed his welcome in Washington," and President Trump told his inner circle that Musk would soon be "stepping back" from DOGE. Musk dismissed that report as "fake news," said Aaron Blake in The Washington Post, and the White House issued a "non-denial denial," saying Musk was always scheduled to step aside "once his incredible work at DOGE is complete." But with Republican lawmakers privately grumbling that they're paying the price for the Tesla CEO's high profile and personal unpopularity—voters dislike him by 60-38 percent—it's getting harder to deny that the "Musk experiment looks like a political failure."

Musk may be a liability, said Jonathan Swan in The New York Times, but White House sources say Trump "has no intention of cutting ties." For a president who "avoids blame at any cost," the deeply unpopular Musk is a useful "heat shield" who can absorb voter anger over Trump's anti-government rampage. Add Musk's unlimited resources, his promise to fund primary challenges against disloyal Republicans, and his ownership of X—"the most important media channel in GOP politics"—and there is "far more upside than downside" for Trump in keeping Musk close and engaged. "I suspect we haven't seen peak Musk just yet," said Richard Waters in the Financial Times. Trump still needs Musk's money, and with Tesla in trouble, Musk needs "his influence in the Oval Office" more than ever.

Democrats hope he sticks around, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. In the final days of the Wisconsin race, Musk wore a "cheesehead" hat and presented Wisconsin voters with oversize, legally dubious $1 million checks...only for his candidate to lose in a 10-point drubbing exceeding every polling estimate. In the charisma-free Musk, Democrats may finally have found a "Republican bogeyman" who can drive their own voters to the polls "while not turning out right-wingers at a similar clip." Some Republicans still think Musk is a net positive for the GOP, said Joe Lovinger in Bloomberg. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) this week described the White House's chaotic tariff debate as a battle of "angels and demons," and declared that the anti-tariff "Elon is one of the angels."

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Why would he want to stay in Washington? asked Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. After the last week, Musk can surely see the lesson of his failed political adventure: that "most forms of genius are nontransferable" and that "a figure of his authentic talents belongs in the private sector," building technology that dazzles and changes the world. That would be nice, said Richard L. Hasen in Slate. But the more likely lesson Musk and fellow billionaires will take from Wisconsin is that overt displays "of money being converted to raw political power" can backfire, and that they can distort and control our politics far more effectively by retreating "into the shadows."