President Donald Trump's decision to let billionaire Elon Musk enforce his agenda by dismantling the government and gutting popular programs will likely come back to haunt him.
That is the opinion of the Washington Post's Philip Bump who suggested that the man who bought Twitter, now called X, seems to be taking his cues from the platform where he has made himself the main character in what has become a rightwing bubble.
According to Bump, either Musk is being disingenuous or he is "ignorant" if he thinks his "unscientific" polls on X represent the desires of the American public — and not just his own echo chamber.
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As he wrote, "In the past, he’s used unscientific polls on his social media platform, X, to establish what he presents as popular opinion. Hopefully, he’s smart enough to be doing so out of cynicism, the priest knowingly asking the choir for their thoughts. It’s quite possible, though, that he does so out of ignorance — that he actually thinks the platform he bought and manipulates is an encapsulation of what Americans believe."
According to Bump, Musk seems to believe Americans want less out of their government rather than better, and that is a fatal misreading.
"While a significant portion of those who did [vote] certainly approved of the idea that Trump would overhaul the government, many were voting for other reasons," the analyst offered before adding, "There’s a reason the bureaucracy exists at the scale it does, which is that constituencies and advocates have convinced representatives that those programs are worth funding. As Musk himself pointed out, when funding stops, complaints start. We can anticipate a staggering number of complaints over the coming months."
The larger error Musk is making is that he is treating the government like he treated Twitter when he bought it, slashed budgets and engaged in massive layoffs, heedless of the long term effects.
"Musk is doing to the federal government what he did once upon a time to Twitter: ripping it apart and firing much of its staff to create the world he wants, rather than the one the end users want," Bump wrote before cautioning, "But this is governance, not a right-wing online social club. If X crashes, users shrug. If the government crashes, people die. The former is not good for business. The latter is extremely bad for politicians."
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