"It is hard to imagine someone whose instincts for politics are worse than Elon Musk's," writes Francis Fukuyama in an anti-paean to self-immolating Elon Musk.
As the DOGE leader, "Neither he nor the engineers he hired (many of them in their twenties) had the faintest idea what the government actually did."
Trump cleverly played Musk, and when the departmental eviscerations were met with public outrage, a nonplussed Musk got the blame and was ejected from the White House inner circle. "He went from being the darling of almost everybody, including the pro-environmentalist left who loved his electric cars, to being one of the most hated men in America."
The damage has spread to Musk's "one outstanding creation, Tesla":
Trump's MAGA base is unlikely to shell out big bucks for an electric vehicle, a product category that Trump himself has trashed. The Chinese are building very competitive models far more advanced than Tesla's aging product line, and legacy car companies are catching up. Musk has lately implied that robotaxis and humanoid robots will take up the slack from Tesla's falling sales in the United States and Europe, but he has made repeated promises along these lines for many years now.
Previously:
• 'They're such NPCs' — Why Elon Musk thinks you're not real
• NYT describes a struggling, drug-addled Elon Musk
