The Memo: Musk rivals Trump as most controversial figure on political stage

President Trump may be only the second most controversial person in his own administration.

Three weeks into Trump’s second term, Elon Musk has taken center stage — as big of a villain for liberals and Trump critics as he is a hero for MAGA conservatives.

The divide was evident at Wednesday’s first hearing of the House Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee on Capitol Hill. The panel’s name is an obvious nod to Musk’s quasi-official Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Republicans, like subcommittee Chair Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), praised Musk’s efforts to scrutinize how Americans’ “hard-earned tax dollars are spent” and promised to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with him.

Democrats, like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), pledged to “rein in this rogue actor known as Elon Musk.” Others went even further — notably Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who warned that he was going to show a “d--- pic” before unveiling a photo of Musk himself.

Even so, the goings-on in the committee room paled beside Musk’s appearance in the Oval Office the previous day — a moment that provided a neat encapsulation of the positive and negatives the businessman brings to his patron, the president.

On one hand, Musk's appearance, standing to the right of a seated Trump, wearing a MAGA hat and accompanied by his young son, made compelling television.

Musk’s lengthy remarks insisting he had found vast federal waste and that he wanted to put American government back on the right track dovetailed with Trump’s professed agenda.

At moments, as when Musk talked in bewilderment of the bizarre importance of a limestone mine to the process by which government employees can retire and then start receiving benefits, he was persuasive.

Yet at other times, the world’s richest man seemed to be a far more problematic figure for such a high-profile role.

Perhaps Musk’s weakest moments came on the most serious issue — the question of his conflicts of interest, as he becomes centrally involved in operating a government with which his companies have billions of dollars in contracts.

The prime example is SpaceX, Musk’s space exploration company, which has more than $20 billion in government contracts.

Musk insisted that this was not cause for concern because “first of all, I’m not the one filing the contract. It’s the people at SpaceX or something.”

That sounded like specious reasoning given that Musk owns 42 percent of SpaceX. Fortune estimates his holding to be worth $136 billion.

It’s not just SpaceX, either. 

Drop Site News reported Wednesday that the State Department had listed Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla as likely to receive the department’s largest forthcoming contract, for $400 million worth of “Armored Tesla.”

During his Oval Office appearance, Musk said DOGE was committed to “maximal transparency” via its website and its social media feed on the platform X, which he also owns.

In fact, at the time Musk was speaking, the official DOGE website had no content beyond a slogan. The social media feed has an abundance of claims and a relative dearth of verifiable information.

The website has now been updated with a form to apply to work with DOGE and statistics about the size of the federal workforce. 

It still contains essentially no information about what DOGE is actually doing, beyond a promise that it will list “savings” by Friday.

The dividing lines around opinions of Musk are mostly partisan — but not exclusively so. 

An Economist/YouGov poll last week found a plurality of the American public views him unfavorably, 49 percent to 43 percent. Democrats overwhelming break against him, but he is also viewed unfavorably by a big number of independents — 51 percent, compared to the 34 percent who view him favorably.

The same poll found that the share of Republicans who want Musk to have “a lot” of influence on the Trump administration stands at 26 percent — a drop of 21 points since the same organizations conducted a similar poll soon after Trump’s election win.

Musk’s tepid popularity is one reason why Democrats are going out of their way to focus plenty of angry comments on him. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has alleged that Musk and DOGE are operating in a matter akin to that of a shadow government.

At times, the businessman and his acolytes have appeared to play into their hands. The push for DOGE volunteers to get access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems has stoked fears about Musk and his allies being able to see sensitive financial information about many millions of Americans.

The Treasury Department effort is one of several instances where the courts have stepped in to pause, at least temporarily, action linked to Musk. 

Similar rulings have been issued in relation to the buyout offered to federal employees, and to the attempt to all but collapse the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Musk had gleefully written on social media he was “feeding … into the wood chipper.”

Musk, who has a long history of intemperate statements on X, responded to the judge who paused access to the Treasury Department by calling for his impeachment. 

In a separate post, Musk proposed that “the worst 1 percent of appointed judges, as determined by elected bodies, be fired every year. This will weed out the most corrupt and least competent.”

Trump has, so far, been publicly supportive of Musk.

But at times during Tuesday’s joint Oval Office appearance, it was hard to discern what Trump was making of it all.

If the downsides of Musk come to definitively outweigh the positives, the current closeness won’t last.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.