Elon Musk Is Making Republicans Sweat and Giving Democrats a New Target
Elon Musk has made himself a constant presence in Washington since President Trump’s inauguration. Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
His unusual governing arrangement with President Trump is opening Republicans up to being yoked politically to Mr. Musk, who polls show is broadly unpopular.
He held court in the Oval Office in a T-shirt and blazer with a child clinging to his shoulders. He takes private meetings on Capitol Hill, offering his phone number for senators to voice their complaints, as if they are his constituents. And last month, he brandished a chain saw as he promised to cut spending, to rapturous cheers from conservative activists.
Seven weeks into President Trump’s second administration, Elon Musk has not just upended the government. His omnipresence in Washington has also swiftly become an unpredictable factor that could reshape politics across the country.
Already, the billionaire’s signature slash-and-burn style and showy spending cuts have reverberated far beyond the Capitol, making even lawmakers from deep-red states begin to sweat. He has shown a willingness to shape elections directly, both by spending locally and by threatening to wield his fortune to stifle dissent within the Republican Party.
And he has given a glimmer of hope to Democrats in search of a message they can use against Mr. Trump, playing a starring role in new advertising for their candidates and by several of the party’s major campaign arms. Democratic operatives gleefully swap private polling suggesting Mr. Musk could prove a serious liability for the president.
Mr. Musk brandished a chain saw during an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., last month. Credit... Eric Lee/The New York Times
While many presidents have relied on family members or close friends as advisers, never before has the country seen an unelected billionaire and newcomer to electoral politics gain such a powerful and prominent perch in the White House.
Mr. Musk’s support for Mr. Trump — which came with close to $300 million in financial backing — may well have helped him win the presidency. But their unusual governing arrangement is opening Republicans to being yoked politically not just to Mr. Trump, but also to Mr. Musk, as his Department of Government Efficiency pushes for what could prove to be unpopular cuts to federal programs and government jobs.
Some Republicans are already acknowledging the potential political hazards, voicing a mild but notable word of caution about one of Mr. Trump’s biggest priorities.
“In my state, it’s always about jobs and the economy,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, who said she had fielded anguished calls from constituents in West Virginia. “And anytime anybody loses a job, it has political risk for whoever’s in power, there’s no doubt.”
The risks for Republicans extend beyond the possible effects of his cuts on voters. Mr. Musk is an eccentric figure who has long been unrestrained by filter or convention, protected by his wealth and his elite status in the technology industry. In a single interview with Joe Rogan last week, he made puns about Nazis, speculated about A.I.-powered sex robots and slammed the idea of Social Security — giving Republicans who have long looked away from Mr. Trump’s more outlandish public statements something new to avoid.
Now, those ideas appear to have an open door to the Oval Office, through a partnership that is raising eyebrows even among some of their supporters.
“I don’t really know what that relationship entails, with he and the president,” Ms. Capito said. But, she added, she supported the idea of right-sizing government.
“I think we’ll just ride it and see, see what happens,” she said.
Democrats are eager to ride it, too.
Elected officials, strategists and activists across the party are embracing a Musk-first strategy as a way to rally their supporters, sway independents and establish an early line of attack against Republicans.
A Pew survey in late January and early February found that 54 percent of respondents held an unfavorable view of Mr. Musk. Credit... Samuel Corum for The New York Times
“It’s an easy story: Elon Musk and the billionaires have taken over government to steal from the American people to enrich themselves,” said Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat and one of his party’s earliest critics of Mr. Musk. “That’s the message. It’s true, it’s persuasive, and if we repeat it over and over again, they won’t win.”
Public polling suggests Democrats have reason for optimism. A Washington Post poll last month found that 49 percent of American adults disapproved of the job Mr. Musk was doing in the federal government, while 34 percent approved. A Pew survey released Feb. 19 found that 54 percent of respondents held an unfavorable view of Mr. Musk and just 3 percent had not heard of him. And a Marist College poll released Monday found that half of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Musk. A slightly smaller share — 44 percent of respondents — had an unfavorable opinion of his department, but only 39 percent had a favorable opinion of it.
A survey released by the progressive-leaning Navigator Research showed that Mr. Musk is less popular than the president — particularly among Mr. Trump’s less educated and less engaged supporters — and better known than many in the administration. One poll by a Democratic organization in February found that Mr. Musk had significantly stronger name recognition than Vice President JD Vance.
Mr. Musk’s imprimatur alone makes the administration’s initiatives less popular, another private survey found: When his name was explicitly linked to his marquee effort, the Department of Government Efficiency, voters expressed a more unfavorable view of the program.
Mr. Musk has already become a big factor in political battles outside Washington. In Wisconsin, Democrats quickly seized on a $1 million donation by his political action committee on behalf of a conservative candidate running for a hotly contested State Supreme Court seat. Wisconsin Democrats are now framing the entire contest as “The People vs. Musk.”
In Virginia, Democrats in the House of Delegates are running advertisements featuring Mr. Musk’s face and accusing Mr. Trump of cutting benefits and driving up costs. Mr. Musk is also figuring in at least one high-profile Democratic primary. In the New Jersey governor’s race, candidates like Representative Mikie Sherrill frequently evoke Mr. Musk on the stump. Footage of Mr. Musk making a gesture that looked like a Nazi salute also appears in an ad by an outside group supporting Ms. Sherrill. She and Representative Josh Gottheimer, another contender, have also been attacked for receiving donations from SpaceX’s corporate political action committee in previous campaigns.
And House Majority Forward, a super PAC supporting Democrats running for the House, released ads this week targeting 23 vulnerable Republican lawmakers with a message that prominently featured Mr. Musk and made no mention of Mr. Trump. One of the ads says the Republicans would gut Medicaid, force the closure of rural hospitals and eliminate health insurance for low-income children to “fund massive tax cuts for Elon Musk and billionaires.” It ends with video footage of Mr. Musk shouting and waving a chain saw at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
In February, House Majority Forward advised Democrats running for Congress to focus on how Mr. Musk’s cuts could harm popular programs like Social Security and Medicare. “While we shouldn’t chide Musk, Trump and others for being rich, audiences should know that the programs working families and seniors rely on are in danger so those in the administration can get rich,” the group wrote.
Still, there are some signs that the politics around Mr. Musk are already shifting in Washington. Republicans on Capitol Hill have pressed him to help them better explain his actions, and some of them insist they are standing up for constituents worried that their jobs or their funding could be on the chopping block.
Mr. Trump said on Thursday that his cabinet secretaries, not Mr. Musk, had the authority to carry out cuts. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times
“We are making sure to elevate our voice and elevate, you know, the good work that’s being done in the state,” said Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama.
Even that gentle pushback — which Ms. Britt bookended with praise for Musk and his cost-cutting effort — is rare in a Republican Party that has learned to march in lock step with Mr. Trump.
Other Republicans have expressed reservations about the role Mr. Musk might play in government budget talks — particularly with the possibility of a shutdown looming.
“Everybody, particularly Elon, needs to take into account how unproductive it is,” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said of a potential shutdown. In an interview, he said that most of what Mr. Musk was doing with the Department of Government Efficiency made sense, but that there were “unique characteristics to our democracy that don’t make all of the things work.”
There are some indications that Mr. Trump himself could be moving to rein in Mr. Musk. Though he showered him with praise during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, Mr. Trump on Thursday said that his cabinet secretaries, not Mr. Musk, had the authority to carry out cuts.
“We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet,’” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post.
But as his cuts affect the lives of a wider swath of Americans, Democrats are preparing to make their opponents pay a price, in this year’s elections and then in the midterms.
“This isn’t a debate about a bill in Congress that never passes and never actually impacts people,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. “If you don’t get your V.A. benefits or your Social Security check, or your disease doesn’t get researched, they now own it.”
Even in an unpredictable political environment, Mr. Ferguson said, “Pottery Barn rules still apply.”
