SWAMP RULES — In the beginning, the future looked bright for Elon Musk. The world’s richest man barrelled into Washington fresh off a decisive win for President Donald Trump, on whose campaign he’d spent nearly $300 billion. They’d swept the swing states and won the popular vote — and Musk, long X’s “troll in chief,” had taken his “lib owning” all the way to the White House. “I am become meme,” the billionaire said in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference , grinning behind mirrored sunglasses and a “dark MAGA” hat. On the stage, he revved a chainsaw — a symbol for his government slashing — as the crowd roared. But Musk was a creature of Silicon Valley, a scion of the “PayPal mafia” whose leadership and willingness to take big risks propelled him to unparalleled wealth and influence. Washington, he would soon discover, was an entirely different beast. And in the end, it proved too unwieldy for Musk to truly leave his mark. He was a man used to “breaking things” in order to put them back together in his own image. But the fiefdoms of Trump’s Washington proved shatter-resistant, sending the world’s richest man scrambling back to his other ventures. He sowed the seeds of his own demise on Inauguration Day. Musk, speaking at a Trump rally about his excitement for the next four years, gleefully made a straight-arm salute — a split-second gesture immortalized in the press and on social media. Critics called it a Nazi salute, a comparison bolstered by his ardent support for Germany’s far-right AfD political party. Musk was discouraged by this interpretation, but attempted to brush it off with a wink. “I did not see it coming,” he told the conservative podcaster Joe Rogan in February , pronouncing “not see” like “Nazi.” In the same interview, Musk told Rogan he’d received death threats, a problem he’s touched on repeatedly since then. “They actually want to kill me,” he said. Those concerns only intensified amid a string of attacks on Tesla vehicles — including a man who blew up a Cybertruck outside a Trump property in Las Vegas — which the Justice Department is investigating as acts of domestic terrorism. Still, things in Washington went relatively well for Musk at first. The members of his secretive DOGE team had fanned out across the federal government, shuttering agencies and publicizing overblown but provocative examples of “waste, fraud and abuse” — including allegations that the U.S. had spent $50 million on condoms for Gaza and that the Social Security Administration was rampantly sending checks to dead people (both claims have been debunked). Musk attended and spoke at Trump’s first Cabinet meetings, earning applause from Cabinet secretaries . He frequented Mar-a-Lago and the Oval Office, and had his own space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. Behind the scenes, though, Musk was clashing with some of the Cabinet secretaries whose agencies he was hellbent on hollowing. Reports of tense and sometimes profane interactions between Musk and other top administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent , began to surface in news reports. And Musk and Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade guru, publicly sparred over Musk’s disagreement with Trump’s sprawling tariff regime. As DOGE sowed chaos across Washington, Democrats seized on Musk as the key boogeyman in their anti-Trump messaging . He was an unelected and unconfirmed “oligarch” wielding unprecedented and unparalleled power, they argued. DOGE, they said, wasn’t rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse.” It was terrorizing civil servants, slashing benefits to the most vulnerable Americans and causing irreparable damage to America’s international reputation. That strategy appears to have worked. Musk’s favorability has consistently polled underwater , and deep below Trump’s. In heated town hall moments that quickly went viral, constituents in red congressional districts slammed Republican members of Congress for allowing Musk’s power to grow with such little oversight. The biggest blow came in April, when a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate — to whom Musk had funneled $20 billion — suffered a crushing defeat to his Democratic-backed rival, who had framed the election as a referendum on Musk. By then, it was clear that many Republicans began viewing him as a political liability. The billionaire’s fortunes turned outside of government, too. Tesla sales and stock prices began to tumble, at least in part because of a global boycott. In late April, the company reported that its revenue had dipped 20 percent since Trump took office, and net income fell a staggering 71 percent. Musk promised his shareholders he would reduce his time on DOGE to refocus on Tesla. Musk had initially projected that DOGE would be able to cut $2 trillion in government spending, a figure he would later slash to $1 trillion. DOGE now says it has cut about $175 billion — less than 10 percent of Musk’s initial expectation. Outside analysts have found that government spending has actually increased this year . The billionaire grew increasingly frustrated. He was still following the Silicon Valley playbook, where CEOs had total control over their chiefdoms and rulebreaking was called “innovation.” But Washington was a different world, rife with checks and balances and politicking that couldn’t be solved with a debugger, or mass terminations, or a tweet. He began to retreat from the spotlight . Last week, Musk said he would be taking a step back from donating to GOP political candidates, shocking Republicans who had come to see him as the source of almost unlimited campaign cash. On Tuesday morning, the break was complete: CBS News aired a clip of Musk bashing the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill,” saying he was “disappointed” by Trump’s landmark legislation, which he said would undermine DOGE’s spending cuts. Later that day, he watched his SpaceX rocket, Starship, tumble out of control . FAA ADM MICHAEL WHITAKERN FINED SPACE X FOR THE FIRST EXPLOSION OVER THE CARIBBEAN THAT SPEWED DEBRIS & DISRUPTED FLIGHTS. ALSO GROUNDED SPACE X. MUSK FORCED HIM OUT OF FAA TO BE REPLACED BY INCOMPETENT SEAN DUFFY (PRONATALIST) WHO CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO KEEP PLANES FLYING AFTER SLASHING AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS & OVERSIGHT. excerpts: Musk noted in a post on X it was a “big improvement” from the two previous demos, which ended in flaming debris over the Atlantic. Despite the latest setback, he promised a faster launch pace moving forward, with a Starship soaring every three to four weeks for the next three flights. After back-to-back explosions, SpaceX launched its mega rocket Starship again on Tuesday evening, but fell short of the main objectives when the spacecraft tumbled out of control and broke apart. The previous two Starships never made it past the Caribbean. The demos earlier this year ended just minutes after liftoff, raining wreckage into the ocean. No injuries or serious damage were reported, although airline travel was disrupted. The Federal Aviation Administration last week cleared Starship for another flight, expanding the hazard area and pushing the liftoff outside peak air travel times. The next day, Musk confirmed he would be letting his DOGE run free. “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President [Trump] for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk said on X , referring to his executive branch designation that caps government work at 130 days per year. Assuming Musk worked every day since Inauguration Day, that deadline comes Friday. THE INCOMPETENT CLOWNS WHO LACK COMPREHENSION OF THEIR CUTS REMAIN! IT IS UNCLEAR HOW THEY ARE BEING FUNDED! “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” Musk added. Trump has yet to publicly discuss the departure. A DOGE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at isentner@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @iriesentner .
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