What's Up With Elon?

I was never sure what to think about the short-lived bromance between Trump and Elon Musk. My view of Musk has always been that he's not a very stable guy, and a lot of his views are at least self-contradictory, if not just plain crackpot. For instance,

SpaceX Mars colonization program (also referred to as Occupy Mars) is the planned objective of the company SpaceX, and particularly of its founder Elon Musk, to send humans to live on Mars. The plan is to establish a self-sustaining, large scale settlement and democratic, self-governing colony. The motivation behind this is the belief that colonizing Mars will allow humanity to become multiplanetary, thereby ensuring the long-term survival of the human race if it becomes extinct on Earth.

On the other hand,

Elon Musk recently reignited discussions about global population decline by retweeting a post from Tesla Owners Silicon Valley on X (formerly Twitter). The post featured a graph illustrating projected population changes between 2018 and 2100 for major nations, accompanied by the caption: “Population collapse is humanity’s greatest threat… Elon Musk.” Musk responded with a succinct “Yes,” reiterating his long-standing concerns about the issue.

Wait a moment. Why would we want to colonize Mars -- presumably to relieve population overflow on Earth -- if Earth's population is likely to decline? Or if Earth will become uninhabitable due to the ecological impossibility of a growing human population (which Musk thinks is unlikely in any case), why would we undertake the exponentially more difficult task of terraforming Mars? After all, Earth will remain terraformed with a much lower population, Mars or no. But apparently this fits into other schemes, as was reported back in April:

A shocking new exposé from The Wall Street Journal alleged that Elon Musk, billionaire tech mogul and Trump administration insider, is attempting to quietly build a “legion” of offspring protected by secret settlements and NDAs while using his social media influence on X to approach influencers he hopes will have his children.

The sprawling, 6,000-word article published Tuesday lays bare the tactics Musk allegedly employs to manage the mothers of his many children and his privacy, all while reshaping public policy and chasing a vision of human survival that veers into sci-fi territory.

. . . Musk, according to the Journal, commonly refers to his ever-expanding brood as a “legion” and has been seeking to recruit new mothers via his platform X. Musk has had at least 14 children with four women, including the musician Grimes, but multiple sources told the Journal they believe Musk has fathered many more.

But after supporting Trump in the 2024 election, it looks like Musk thought it might be fun to run the world for a while, and he took a break from business, except that when he did, business went all to perdition:

Elon Musk said on an earnings call Tuesday that he plans to devote more of his attention to running his electric vehicle company Tesla, which reported a stark drop in sales and revenues for the first quarter of the year, amid pervasive concerns about the impacts of tariffs and Musk’s own role in reshaping the government.

Tesla’s total revenue from car sales dipped 20 percent and net income fell an astonishing 71 percent during the first quarter of 2025, the company announced Tuesday.

Musk didn’t directly address any implications about whether his involvement with spearheading steep cuts to the federal workforce and deploying his DOGE data teams throughout the government impacted his company’s sales or his decision to step back from his role with DOGE — though he said, “There’s been some blowback for the time that I’ve been spending in government” with DOGE.

Blowback? Er, blowback from whom?

Typical duties of boards of directors include . . . Selecting, appointing, supporting, reviewing the performance, and terminating the chief executive[.]

As I frequently point out here, people at Musk's level hire PR firms to keep them out of the news, not to get them into it. But for the first part of the year, Musk was cavorting with a member of his "legion" at Mar-a-Lago parties, making public jokes about firing thousands of government employees, and praising the work of DOGE minions like Big Balls, all while wearing silly outfits and sunglasses. The inevitable result was to associate Musk's image with Tesla, his most visible brand.

And as if it weren't enough that associating with Trump alienated half his potential market, the potential for having a new Tesla keyed must certainly have motivated people mulling whether to buy a Rivian instead, irrespective of their views on MAGA. Beyond that, consider how the potential for having their showrooms and stock firebombed affected the dealers' attitude toward Musk's public persona. At some point, some serious people had to have had a serious chat with the guy, who was becoming disturbingly unserious.

But also back in April,

Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly got into a heated shouting match within ear shot of Trump last week over a dispute about the IRS, according to Axios.

On Friday, it was reported that Acting IRS Commissioner Gary Shapley was OUT at the agency after an internal struggle with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

. . . According to reports, Shapley was placed at the IRS on Elon Musk’s request without Bessent’s knowledge.

. . . “Disagreements are a normal part of any healthy policy process. . . And ultimately everyone knows they serve at the pleasure of President Trump,” [White House Press Secretary Karoline] Leavitt said.

Bessent is definitely starting to look like a grounded guy, and not a flake. Elon has always basically been a flake. So now, there's an inevitable parting of the ways:

Elon Musk went scorched earth on President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that is being negotiated in the Senate after passing the House last month by a razor-thin margin.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,” he added. “You know it.”

. . . According to the New York Post and Axios, Musk’s tirade was triggered by four factors, one of which would have a direct impact on his bottom line.

• House Republicans removing electric vehicle tax credits that were part of Joe Biden’s Green New Scam. Musk’s Tesla received billions of taxpayer dollars from the bill.

• He was peeved that the Trump White House would not allow him to remain a special government employee beyond the 130-day time limit set by statute.

• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) refused to use his Starlink satellite system to help run the nation’s air traffic control. The Trump administration cited a potential conflict of interest and technological reasons for blocking the proposal,

• Trump withdrawing the nomination of Musk’s ally Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. As TGP’s Kristinn Taylor reported, Trump had deep concerns over Isaacman’s “prior associations,” likely referring to Isaacman’s past donations to Democrats.

A couple of weeks ago, Musk announced he had "done enough" political campaigning:

“I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” he said in a video interview with Bloomberg News at the Qatar Economic Forum. “I think I’ve done enough.”

When asked if paring back his political financing was driven by any blowback he’s weathered in the Trump administration, Musk said: “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future. I will do it. But I don’t currently see a reason.”

. . . Trump elevated Musk as a key figure in the White House, an arrangement that experts said posed conflicts of interest, since Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, receive billions of dollars in public subsidies, not to mention the numerous investigations launched against his business empire by government regulators.

The story mentions "blowback" once again, and I think this also means blowback from his boards of directors, who've been forced to look at the risks posed by his high public profile. Nevertheless,

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said Elon Musk should fund primary challenges against almost every Republican who voted for President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" last week.

"I don't primary my colleagues, but I feel pretty good about him doing it," Massie told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

"There's a few others that should be spared," when asked to clarify if he meant all 215 House Republicans who supported the legislation. "But people want term limits, right? Elon can bring term limits."

Good luck. Sundance at Conservative Treehouse comments,

Thomas Massie, Chip Roy, Rand Paul and other fellow republican travelers will join with Elon Musk and the alligator emoji network to oppose President Trump as soon as they can get back into the minority.

Elon can do whatever the Tesla and SpaceX boards allow him to do, and I suspect he's already on a shortened leash. His venture into politics has been disastrous for his corporate career; on one hand, the guy is lucky, but on the other, unlike Trump, he lacks the basic instinctive good judgment to capitalize on his good luck. He just doesn't strike me as a grounded guy. I strongly doubt Musk will be in any position to fund any political ventures even within the next year or two. Another bad quarter or two, and his boards will have to take action.

I can't disagree with this post I made in 2022.