Two Cheers for Elon Musk

The White House press secretary is describing as “garbage” the report in Politico that Elon Musk is leaving the administration in the spring. We hope she’s right. By our lights Mr. Musk has begun addressing the overspending that voters decided to end. It is important work, and he is the kind of outsized figure that has the ability to encompass the scale of what needs to be done. The anger being directed at him by Democrats strikes us as unworthy. Mr. Musk was on the road to being Earth’s first trillionaire — and maybe to Mars — before working gratis to help the 47th president put the federal Leviathan on a diet. Mr. Musk’s public persona is pugnacious, and his ownership of X puts him at the center of the hurly-burly. The Tesla founder’s failure to bend a Wisconsin judicial race to his preferred outcome — despite pouring in $25 million — underscores his political limits. Still, he fetched our astronauts home.These columns firmly endorse cutting wasteful federal spending. Yet as a matter of public relations Mr. Musk likely did himself few favors when at CPAC in February he waved around what he called “the chainsaw for bureaucracy.” Mr. Musk, perhaps chastened by a backlash over his zeal to terminate federal employees — even among those aware of the budgetary necessity — last week told Bret Baier that DOGE was using to cut spending “a scalpel, not a hatchet.”Politico relates that “some Trump administration insiders and many outside allies have become frustrated with his unpredictability and increasingly view the billionaire as a political liability.” Anonymous sources call Mr. Musk an “unmanageable force who has had issues communicating” with the administration. Ms. Leavitt insists that “Mr. Musk will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.”These columns have wondered about the nature of Mr. Musk’s role, and one federal judge has weighed the possibility that his hiring violated the Appointments Clause. It’s unclear to us whether the South African native has been sworn to the Constitution, and his status as a “special government employee,” which exempts him from certain conflict of interest strictures, lasts for only 130 days a year. January 20 was some 72 days ago. Mr. Musk vows to cut $1 trillion in spending. The path to that goal has hardly been smooth. DOGE’s efforts to demolish the United States Agency for International Development faced judicial headwinds. Mr. Musk’s breakneck style has collided against constitutional limits of which he has appeared heedless. There is no doubt, though, that there is plenty of fat to trim. Uncertainty around DOGE’s methods has occasionally frustrated its goals. Not every DOGE decision appears to have been farsighted. Still, Mr. Musk’s efforts have spotlighted a government that is too large and too laden with debt. That makes it all the more perplexing to see the rage directed at his Teslas, which have suffered waves of vandalism. Not to mention Governor Walz cheering for the stock to fall. Imagine that — a governor cheering for the collapse of an American stock that’s held in the retirement plan of millions of Americans.Tesla today reports that its sales plunged 13 percent in the first quarter, a development that appears related to Mr. Musk’s turn in the arena. Nobody is going to shed tears for Mr. Musk’s bank account, but two cheers are due for someone who has risked the biscuit for public service — even if conflicts of interest could make Mr. Musk’s service remunerative. At least Mr. Musk is rooting for America to succeed, while his foes are rooting for him to fail. ________Correction: Walz is the last name of the governor of Minnesota. An earlier edition misspelled his last name.

Two Cheers for Elon Musk

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