Elon Musk has made a rare admission about the true cost of his time working as the head honcho of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Responding to a poll showing his poor approval ratings, the Tesla boss said he has ‘at times’ been ‘digging my own grave way better than my enemies do’ – though he didn’t go into specifics.
However, Musk, 53, also called his dire ratings ‘the inevitable outcome of having a political propaganda war waged against me’ while he has ‘almost no countervailing campaign’.
The billionaire’s comment, shared on X, came in response to a ‘popularity tracker’ showing that just 39.6 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Musk, compared with 53.5 percent with an unfavorable view.
Created by pollster Nate Silver, the tracker predicts Musk’s net favorability at -13.8 percent. Donald Trump’s net rating is also in the negatives at -5.1 percent.
Silver began tracking Musk’s approval score in January 2024, when he had a net favorability rating of 5.9 percent.
His popularity started declining after he endorsed Trump in July 2024, and it has tanked since Trump became president in January and established DOGE, which Musk is now stepping down from.
Elon Musk has made a rare admission about his own failings while working as the head honcho of Donald Trump ‘s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
Responding to a poll showing his poor approval ratings, the Tesla boss said he has ‘at times’ been ‘digging my own grave way better than my enemies do’
Demonstrations against Musk and Tesla ramped up after the billionaire began firing thousands of federal workers, including veterans via DOGE as part of the department’s efforts to downsize the government.
During an interview with Fox News last month, Musk said he believed the downsizing efforts were the reason certain people ‘want to kill’ him.
‘It turns out when you take away people’s, you know, the money that they’re receiving fraudulently, they get very upset,’ he said.
‘And they basically want kill me because I’m stopping their fraud and they want to hurt Tesla because we’re stopping the terrible waste and corruption in the government. And, well, I guess they’re bad people. Bad people do bad things.’
Musk’s political postures also appear to be coming at a price for Tesla, whose sales in Europe tumbled 45 percent in January from a year earlier – while its rivals’ sales rose by over 37 percent.
Tesla’s market capitalization has dropped 46 percent since hitting an all-time high of $1.5 trillion on December 17 – it’s currently at 811 billion – erasing most of the gains the stock made after Musk helped finance Donald Trump’s election victory.
In an effort to turn that around, Trump showcased the electric vehicles from the White House in March – and even purchased one of his own.
Speaking alongside his ‘First Buddy’ at a press conference, Trump also said anyone enacting violence against Teslas and the dealerships would be labeled ‘domestic terrorists’.
Demonstrations against Musk and Tesla ramped up after the billionaire began firing thousands of federal workers, including veterans via DOGE as part of the department’s efforts to downsize the government. (Pictured: A Tesla inferno in Rome, Italy on March 31)
Elon Musk and Donald Trump with a Tesla cyber truck on South Lawn of White House
But in mid-March, it emerged that Trump had informed his Cabinet and inner circle that Musk would be stepping back from DOGE in the coming weeks.
The SpaceX boss and world’s richest man will soon be returning to the business world, Politico reported, in a revelation that rattled the stock market and stunned Washington.
Musk’s designation as a special government employee meant he was scheduled to step down in May, but he is now leaving early amid a cloud of controversy.
