“Instead of meeting with him in person, I’m talking to him on the phone, but it’s the same net effect,” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told the New York Post on Wednesday. “He’s not out of it altogether. He’s just not physically present as much as he was.” Now, if Musk were a career civil servant, an arrangement like this would be prohibited. Of course, if anything, Musk is living proof that you could show up to “work” in an office every day and not get a lick of work done: This is a man whose White House office had a giant TV screen and consoles set up for him to play video games.
Musk and Trump’s return to office order implemented in February has since been an unmitigated disaster, with particular harm inflicted on veterans working remotely in the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as the Department of Agriculture, where many employees work on-site across the country. Thousands of workers who have been effectively serving their communities, as well as a range of vulnerable groups like domestic violence victims, have been forced out by this order. But not Musk! Must be nice.
Wiles also maintained that Musk’s DOGE child goons will continue to “work” in the White House—that is, mining our private data and using AI to find and terminate any agency or study that’s so much as uttered the word “diversity.” Wiles explained, “The people that are doing this work are here doing good things and paying attention to the details. He’ll be stepping back a little, but he’s certainly not abandoning it. And his people are definitely not.”
I’d be remiss not to note that the New York Times estimates DOGE will cost the U.S. $500 billion from lost tax revenue due to cuts at the IRS alone—not to mention all the revenue lost to all the other costly, extremely avoidable mistakes Musk and his cronies have made.
Musk joined the Trump White House as a “special government employee,” meaning he isn’t supposed to work more than 130 days per year. While Trump and Musk have both previously suggested Musk would take a step back from the administration around May, the timing of it all has been conspicuous: When Musk’s Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate decisively lost in April after Musk heavily campaigned for him, the outcome of that election seemingly exposed the full extent of Musk’s political toxicity; within hours of the race being called, Politico reported Musk would imminently depart the Trump administration. And, I’ll say it: This administration has flouted every rule and norm in existence—if Trump wanted Musk to remain an active fixture in his administration, Musk probably would.
More recently, Musk told the Tesla board he’d soon be significantly scaling back his White House duties to focus on salvaging Tesla’s tanking stock. As of this week, Tesla’s year-to-date losses stand at a whopping 44%; Tesla’s stock has fallen 50% since December, and already plunged 36% in the first quarter of 2025 alone. I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what any of that means, but I can infer it’s bad. All of this comes as Tesla faces massive backlash over the fact that its CEO and founder is effectively an out-and-proud white nationalist and top figure in an openly fascist presidential administration. Not even the administration’s threats to charge anti-Tesla protesters with domestic terrorism have quieted the uproar against the company.
Speaking of Musk’s future at Tesla, an interesting little update on that: On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla’s board is actively recruiting a CEO to replace Musk. My first thought when I read this was that it’s a political gambit from Musk, who recognized that amid all the backlash against him, publicly taking a step back from Tesla (for now) would be the smartest path forward to salvage its finances. Instead, early Thursday, Musk raged against the Journal, unequivocally denying its reporting: “It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!” Musk wrote in a lengthy tweet. “WSJ is a discredit to journalism,” he said in a separate post. Robyn Denholm, the chair of Tesla’s board, too, has denied the Journal’s reporting and maintained that Tesla’s board “is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”
This, frankly, is great news for me, as someone who absolutely fucking loathes Tesla. With Musk, who all polling indicates is one of the most hated figures in America, at the company’s helm, I can’t wait to see how much lower its stock can drop.
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