New Orleans It was inevitable that Elon Musk would fall out of favor. Trump is legendarily mercurial in his attachments, with an exit often following effusive praise. In this case, it was clearly the world’s richest man having lived out his welcome, more than Trump giving him the heave ho. There are lessons here, but some of them are not reassuring.
One of the most worrisome to me is that Musk’s big bet on a purely financial level may begin paying off. Many other billionaires, equally greedy, but possibly shyer about their ambition, might conclude that in strictly business-like transactional terms, Musk’s bet was a good investment. Starlink, his telecommunications satellite program, has now already been added by the FCC to the $44 billion rural internet and broadband program created by the Biden administration. Under Biden’s FCC, Starlink had been nixed as too slow and too expensive compared to other systems running optic cable. Starlink has also been installed in the White House, while the White House has also encouraged other countries to sign up for the service in order to curry favor with Trump. Desperate countries like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam have all swallowed the hook, among others. His space company stands to exploit billions in NASA contracts.
Sure, not all of this goes straight to Musk’s pocket, but it gets there eventually and will likely surpass his $250 million ante by billions. Why wouldn’t more of the rich go big with candidates in the future for those kinds of rewards? I would bet that many billionaires will think hard about doing so, even if they also learn a second lesson to keep their mouths shut. Maybe he would have cashed in without blowing $250 million, but in my view, not as fast or as big.
Musk was too much Musk for government work and, likely, in the end also for the narcissist Trump. Too many mentions of being co-president, pot shotting at Trump programs and priorities, chainsaw waving, bad mouthing Trump cabinet members and appointees, and just generally messing up, did him in. Claiming he would reduce government costs by a trillion bucks, while not even being able to accurately account for programs and grants he and his DOGEs cut was also a big mouth problem. He didn’t understand government, particularly the importance of services, so many of his slash-and-burn projects were embarrassing and walked back. His indifference to the pain of workers and communities from his actions, peoples’ privacy, and critical, popular programs like Social Security, which he falsely claimed was a “Ponzi scheme” and pocked with dead people were fatal and self-inflicted wounds.
Trump could read the results of Musk’s $20 million losing play in a Wisconsin judge’s race where voters, especially Democratic voters, flooded the polls in opposition to Musk. Poll numbers showed Musk falling like a rock, and Trump sliding down the avalanche after him, as fast as Tesla stock and sales. Trump’s may have sailed into office on Musk’s money ship, but he was never going to go down with that ship.
As we were all taught, “pride cometh before a fall,” and in this case, what went up, Musk come down.