“People hate" Elon Musk — and the GOP is getting the message, according to a Politico report.
“He’s finished, done, gone. He polls terrible. People hate him,” said a GOP operative that Politico granted anonymity. “He’d go to Wisconsin thinking he can buy people’s votes, wear the cheese hat, act like a 9-year-old. ... It doesn’t work. It’s offensive to people.”
The operative is not the only GOP member now turning on the billionaire who was President Donald Trump's right-hand man — and who, as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, oversaw the firing of 200,000 government workers and a mass slashing of government spending.
GOP pollster Frank Luntz said, “The public supported the effort to end wasteful Washington spending, but they did not support the way that it was done.”
He later added, “His mission to cut the waste from Washington was certainly helpful, but the language he used wasn’t.”
Trump ally Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV) put it a little more gently. He called Musk a “patriot” and said the work he did was “good,” however, “We got too close to the fence. We mowed too far,” he said. “We just adjust. That’s the process that’s going on.”
Trump and his administration have also “shifted away from Musk,” according to the outlet.
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Advisers to Trump, as well as official White House social media accounts, have stopped posting about Musk.
Even the president has failed to mention him since April, “In February and March, Trump posted about the Tesla CEO an average of roughly four times per week; since the beginning of April, the president hasn’t mentioned Musk once on Truth Social,” they wrote.
Politico asked the White House representatives about Trump’s declining mentions of Musk, and they didn't use Musk’s name in their response.
“The mission of DOGE — to cut waste, fraud, and abuse — will surely continue,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “DOGE employees who onboarded at their respective agencies will continue to work with President Trump’s cabinet to make our government more efficient.”
Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson believes it's not about Musk himself, instead, it's about “Musk-ism.”
“He wrote their playbook,” Ferguson said, “and it’s not about theoretical blame, it’s about real-world damage that he and Trump have caused that will be litigated all through the midterms.”
