Tech reporter and podcaster Kara Swisher on Monday said tech billionaire Elon Musk’s dramatics over the last two weeks as chair of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency and pal of President Donald Trump is what one would expect from the world’s richest man who she’s closely followed for years.
“It’s very typical,” Swisher said Monday night during an interview on CNN. “This is how he conducts himself all the time. He's always in a state of high drama, high agitation.”
Swisher made the remarks when asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins what her takeaways have been from her observations of Musk – who Trump tapped to lead DOGE – integrating himself inside Capitol Hill over the last two weeks.
“He thinks he's the center of the universe, which is really strange,” Swisher, a frequent CNN contributor, said on the network. “He's very into video games, and so I think he thinks he's sort of ‘Ready Player One.’ He thinks nothing can happen without his existence. He often used to say 'if Tesla failed, the human race was doomed' to me on a number of occasions, things like that. So, you know, it's massive narcissism with a lot of talent and a lot of PR and a lot of drama, and that's what you're seeing right now.”
Swisher also used the moment to caution congressional Democrats, who she believes don’t know how to respond to Musk being suddenly at the helm of the federal government, before offering them a piece of advice.
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“This is a guy who blows up rockets to get it right,” she said. “Like he goes to the extremes — he’s a high-risk individual. I have been texting and writing them all for weeks, like, ‘Look what he's going to do, he's going to come in there, he's been at Mar-a-Lago, he was preparing himself,’ everyone thought it wouldn't last when Trump got to D.C., and there were more strictures around him, but that's precisely what happened.”
She noted that Musk quickly moved from Mar-a-Lago to Washington D.C. and is now “moving into federal buildings,” and added that his “manic nature is a benefit for him, given how slow the Democrats have been.”
As an example, Swisher said, just tonight Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “was like, ‘this is a hostile takeover of government,’ which a lot of us have been saying for a week.”
“And so, they have to be more intense with this guy, because he's very intense, and he will outrun them and out-dramatize them,” Swisher said. “And he has Twitter to do that – he has X to do that – he has the bully pulpit, he's got the president. They've got their – they've got a match in front of them.”
