On the eve of what most analysts believe will be a grim earnings report from carmaker Tesla, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow took on the disastrous tenure of the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, in his dual role as Donald Trump’s co-president.
“His time in Washington kind of started bad and has just been scuttling worse and worse all the time,” Maddow began. “His Department of Government Efficiency thing is a mix of embarrassment for its errors and its palpable confusion, and horror and anger for how much damage it is doing to the U.S. government, with really nothing positive to show for itself at all.”
“The Trump administration is spending more on a daily basis than the Biden administration was,” Maddow continued. “So even if the whole good idea of DOGE is less government spending, it has absolutely failed at that.”
Musk’s DOGE, and its abject failure to create any meaningful savings, is just one part of the story. Every turn for Musk has included failure, including his dubious and ultimately embarrassing attempt to buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat.
On top of that, there’s been the ongoing debacle of stories of people growing increasingly fed up with Musk, his public spats with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, and his attempts to gain access to top-secret information about U.S. military plans for China.
Tesla’s stock has dropped nearly 50% from its record high, which might give Musk an excuse for turning tail and running out of the Washington, D.C. spotlight. He’s the world’s richest man, so he won’t go very far, but fingers crossed, he steps far enough away to lessen some of the harm he’s done to our country.