It’s “easy” to paint Elon Musk as a “villain” while working in DOGE, and he could be “taking the heat” off President Trump in the process, claimed one political analyst on Ana Cabrera Reports Wednesday Morning.
“There's been this coupling between Elon Musk and Donald Trump politically, as we've seen DOGE do its work in these early days of the Trump Administration,” Cabrera said. “The New York Times did a review of several recent polls that found Americans largely like the concept of eliminating fraud and government waste. But they do view Elon Musk and DOGE negatively. Does that have any political consequences for the President himself, who gave Musk so much power to just do whatever he wanted?”
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NBC News Senior National Politics Reporter, Jonathan Allen, responded, “I think it reflects on the President, and I think it's reflected again in those poll numbers for him that are down. I think you're right, people love the idea of cutting the government and paying fewer taxes in sort of the broad, generic sense of those things.”
Allen added, “When you actually get to the specific cuts, that's why it's difficult to do it. That's why Presidents don't try to do it very often, it is unpopular when you cut biomedical research grants or you cut funding for national parks, things like that. So, I think ultimately Musk has absorbed a lot of that heat for Trump, and specifically somebody who his critics can point to as a villain, the richest man in the world, cutting government services for everyone else is a pretty easy storyline. But ultimately, I do think it reflects on Trump, and I think we are seeing that in some of the poll numbers.”