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President Donald Trump has stopped mentioning Elon Musk on Truth Social as the administration takes a significant step back from the tech billionaire brought on to trim the federal budget.
Trump was posting about Musk an average of four times per week in February and March on Truth Social as Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency led the firing of employees and shuttering of federal departments, but the president hasn’t mentioned him once since the start of April, according to an analysis by Politico.
Equally, until early April, Musk posted about the president on his X account almost every day but posts where Trump is mentioned have since tailed off.
Musk has stepped back from front-line politics since proving unpopular with the public, according to polling, and he faced ridicule over the outcome of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race last month.
“He’s finished, done, gone. He polls terribly. People hate him,” an anonymous GOP operative told Politico. “He’d go to Wisconsin thinking he can buy people’s votes, wear the cheese hat, act like a 9-year-old. … It doesn’t work. It’s offensive to people.”
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The official White House account and some of Trump’s senior advisers have also stopped mentioning Musk on social media, Politico notes.
Musk became a central fixture of Trump’s reelection campaign last summer and even more so after the president entered office in January, with the world’s richest man leading the charge to gut federal agencies.
His time as a special government employee was limited to 130 days and the tech mogul said he would be turning his attention to his businesses after Tesla reported disappointing earnings in April. “It’s just been a very intense 100 days, where at times I was here full time. So, at the beginning, I was here in D.C. seven days a week for some of the weeks in the beginning, or close to seven days a week,” said Musk.
“And now we’re getting more of a rhythm, and so the amount of time that is necessary for me to spend here is much less.”
Republican Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia told the outlet that Musk is “a patriot” but acknowledged that the billionaire went too far.
“We got too close to the fence. We mowed too far,” Justice said. “We just adjust. That’s the process that’s going on.”
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The president has also stopped using Musk’s name to raise money in emails to online supporters, according to Politico. Musk was mentioned almost daily until early March and since then, only one message including the SpaceX CEO was sent out touting a “Gulf of America” cap he once wore, according to the outlet.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that DOGE’s work “will surely continue,” but did not mention Musk directly in response to the outlet.
Musk has proved an effective target for the Democrats but his retreat from the White House raises questions about their messaging ahead of the midterms.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Viet Shelton said last month that Democrats “are going to win” by reminding voters that “Republicans are failing at lowering costs because they are too busy pushing tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.”
“Elon is, and forever will be, an instantly recognizable manifestation of the fact that House Republicans don’t work for the American people, they work for the billionaires,” Shelton told Politico in a statement.
Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, the co-chair of the House Democrats’ messaging committee, meanwhile, stressed the need to “adjust.”
“As long as he’s there using a chainsaw to all the programs that people back home rely on and need to make ends meet, of course we’re going to make him a central character,” Trahan said last month.
“At some point, he will become a liability for the president, and they will sever ties. And we will adjust as we head into the midterms,” Trahan said.
