Elon Musk discovers Trump doesn’t stay bought

• Elon Musk’s influence has significantly decreased since his time as a major donor to various politicians.
• Musk is now reduced to asking his followers on X to contact their senators and congressmen to vote down Donald Trump’s budget plan, which he claims will increase the deficit.
• The main reason for Musk’s opposition to Trump’s budget plan is that it would cut an EV credit, making it harder to sell Teslas in a market already challenging for the company.
• Musk was also upset that he didn’t get to stay past his statutory limit as an unpaid advisor and that the FAA isn’t using Starlink, according to reports from Axios.
• The decrease in Musk’s influence has led to him facing “less powerful enemies” who can still cause political problems for him, such as the opposition to his EV credit cut proposal.

I have been watching, with some grim amusement, Elon Musk discovering the limits of being just another political donor. While he was at DOGE, he literally could control the Treasury and DOD – he effectively had the IT reins of the entire country, and could simply gut things he hated at will. There was a price for that: it destroyed what was left of his reputation. But it was real, true power – being able to stop payments at will makes you more powerful than the president.

So much for that. These days, Musk is reduced to begging his followers on X to call their senators and congressmen [sic, obviously] to vote down the Big Beautiful Bill. His nominal reason is that Donald Trump’s budget plan will increase the deficit, but reports indicate that Musk is annoyed an EV credit is getting cut. That makes it harder to sell Teslas in an environment where it’s already hard to sell Teslas. Also, Musk may be annoyed that he didn’t get to stay past his statutory limit as an unpaid advisor and that the FAA isn’t using Starlink, according to Axios.

The cracks have been showing in the M …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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