This is allegedly a journalist’s look into Musk’s point of view on why he is leaving Washington, but echoing the classic New York Times style, Jeff Bezos’s competitor includes the above purple prose fluffing up their subject in the fifth paragraph while sticking critiques like “Musk’s claims about finding massive savings and slashing waste in government have been shown to be exaggerated” in the fifteenth. Get ready for a slew of ‘Musk refocuses on what’s really important’ stories to try to turn around his calamitous carbon credits company that manufactures a couple of cars and his government contract-dependent exploding rocket company whose shareholders are loath to ponder what their world may look like under a Democratic president. Elon realizes he fucked up and this is his attempt to do damage control.
Trump’s largest donor in 2024 had promised $100 million to the Republican Party to aid their efforts to win 2026 elections, and the New York Times reports that $100 million has not been sent yet. Elon is reportedly disillusioned over his dual losses of DOGE and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race he wasted $25 million on, and the fact that supporting the Republican Party means further alienating his primary Tesla customer base has to be penetrating even the thickest parts of his skull at this point. The weakest man humanity has ever produced walked out of his safe space into the real world and learned that people have no tolerance for his bullshit and now America’s chief manchild is by all accounts, reconsidering how active he wants to be in politics.
Musk has already split from Trump over his stupid trade war, giving you an idea of how unfathomably idiotic it really is (which reportedly was one of the main causes for the distance between Trump and Musk now), and Elon also criticized the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” over how it will add to the national deficit, echoing Moody’s in their recent downgrade of US debt and the bond market freaking out over how the rules around US government debt have changed. Elon has dropped the dark MAGA shtick and now is attempting to ingratiate himself back into the business community and the customer base he has alienated. If he succeeds, that would be a very depressing commentary on how easily Americans can be fooled.
His relationship with Katie Miller, Chief White House Ghoul Stephen Miller’s wife, is uh, notable. Back in February, Wired published a report with this quote in it from a longtime Republican operative who knows the couple personally: “If you can find out anything about Stephen Miller’s social life, I don’t wanna know the answer.” The report was predominantly focused on how Musk had found allies in the Millers in his bid to destroy the government, and Katie functioned as his “comms sherpa” in D.C. according to a White House official. The reported closeness of Musk to the couple and that quote potentially implying gross stuff led to a lot of people speculating about gross stuff.
CNN now reports that Katie Miller, who was also a special government employee, is leaving to go work with Elon Musk. Her Twitter banner seemingly confirms this as she made it a photo of a SpaceX rocket taken before it presumably exploded.
This reporting has reignited the gross stuff speculation. I really need to emphasize that’s all this is–speculation. Many of you may have heard your more internet-poisoned friends joking about this since all this Elon news broke, and the genesis of it is that quote from the Wired report implying…something, and allowing people’s imaginations to run wild. I am not going to engage in that speculation, partially because I like not getting sued, but mostly because I don’t want to introduce any of these speculative gross images into my brain and escape containment in the deep dark recesses where I have them hidden right now.
The headline here is that Musk is shaken by his time in Washington, telling Ars Technica that “I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics.” To put it in parlance that Elon’s ten-year-old brain could understand: he got pwned. Like Trump and his trade war, Musk became alarmed when he left his safe space of right-wing propaganda and pliant mainstream journalism more willing to give him a backrub than ask him tough questions, and he crumbled under the weight of reality. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll last month showed his favorability rating underwater by 22 percent, and even his “disapprove strongly” rating exceeds his total net approval by 11 percent.
Elon Musk spent $288 million to join the administration and most Americans disapprove of basically everything he did
[image or embed]
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell.com) May 29, 2025 at 8:13 AM
The Miller stuff is unknown, but there does seem to be some kind of drama there. The New York Times included what they called “sniping” in their report, saying this post about DOGE cuts by Stephen Miller alleging that “The Big Beautiful Bill…reduc[es] the deficit” is a shot back at Musk for criticizing the bill for very clearly blowing out the deficit. The only thing we ever know for certain in the Trump White House where time is measured in Scaramuccis is that eventually the rats will either flee the ship or turn on each other, and at least one of those things seems to be at the base of Musk scurrying back to his companies that his boards may or may not want to fire him from. Great work Elon!
GET SPLINTER RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
The Truth Hurts
