Elon Musk, who owns one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, has spent many millions of dollars on politics as he helps Donald Trump slash the federal government and continue the administration’s attack on immigrants. Now, Musk is saying that he is losing the “propaganda war,” potentially through his own choices.
Recent polling shows people don’t like Musk. On Friday, numbers pundit Nate Silver posted on X that Musk’s popularity is at negative 14 points. Trump, for comparison, is at negative 5 points. The chart shows that Musk’s popularity markedly decreased when Trump took office, with 39.6 percent of respondents viewing him favorably as of this month.
Musk blamed this decline on liberals waging a successful propaganda campaign against him, and suggested that Republicans are not boosting him in kind. But he also more or less admitted he is making himself unpopular.
“The inevitable outcome of having a political propaganda war waged against me while I have almost no countervailing campaign and, at times, digging my own grave way better than my enemies do,” Musk replied to Silver, adding two crying-laughing emojis at the end, an emoji he uses frequently.
As Rolling Stone reported earlier this week, Musk’s pillaging of the government is infuriating everyday Americans and Trump aides alike.
“Talking to the guy is sometimes like listening to really rusty nails on a chalkboard,” a senior Trump administration official told Rolling Stone. “He’s just the most irritating person I’ve ever had to deal with, and that is saying something.”
Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency have been furiously slashing the federal government, purging workers, and aiding Trump’s crackdown on immigration. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, with more firings on the way. And on Friday, Politico reported that longtime Musk buddy Antonio Gracias is leading a DOGE immigration task force that has wormed itself into the Department of Homeland Security. Gracias has also made misleading claims about non-citizens receiving Social Security based on data that a court barred DOGE from accessing.
Musk embarrassed himself recently in a foray into state politics when the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate he supported by reportedly sinking $25 million into the campaign lost the election. People did not like that he offered $1 million checks to voters at an event supporting candidate Brad Schimel. A poll by Blueprint Research found that 69 percent of voters disapproved of the move. The poll also put net approval for Musk’s handling of DOGE at negative 19 points.
Last weekend, tens of thousands of Americans and activists around the globe came out to protest Trump and Musk’s destruction — including DOGE’s cuts to Social Security. And if the protests weren’t clear enough, people have been vandalizing Tesla vehicles and dealerships. Someone even vandalized a 12-foot-tall statue of Musk. Why someone would put a 12-foot-tall statue of Musk on their property is unclear.
A factor in Musk’s role in the social media-obsessed Trump administration is that he owns X, allowing him to have major influence online and shape the discourse. For example, the Social Security Administration is reportedly moving all of its public communications to X in addition to dramatically cutting regional staff and offices, according to Wired.
Musk raised alarm bells recently when he called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
“We are no longer planning to issue press releases or those dear colleague letters to inform the media and public about programmatic and service changes,” Social Security Administration regional commissioner Linda Kerr-Davis told workers earlier this week, Wired reported. “Instead, the agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public … so this will become our communication mechanism.”
Appropriately, the Social Security Administration took to X to dispute the story. “This is false. Social Security will continue to communicate through any and all mediums,” the agency posted.
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