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Elon Musk now finds himself out in the cold as both MAGA and liberals have turned on him and his businesses following the dramatic divorce of the billionaire and President Donald Trump.
MAGA faithful and liberals alike were celebrating Thursday night after the president and the world’s richest man traded barbs publicly, and their relationship came to a bitter end after almost a year.
Musk now finds himself a pariah of both the GOP and liberals following the fallout. Liberals turned against him and Tesla after he joined the Trump campaign and then the administration, where he spearheaded ruthless cuts at federal agencies with the Department of Government Efficiency, while MAGA has sided with their party’s leader.
“Nobody elected Elon Musk, and a whole lot of people don’t even like him, to be honest with you, even on both sides,” said Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey.
At Butterworth’s, a French restaurant on Capitol Hill that has become a popular MAGA haunt during Trump’s second term, celebrations were in full swing.
“We’re popping bottles tonight,” Raheem Kassam, editor of right-wing news site The National Pulse, told The Washington Post as he tucked into a tin of caviar with a pearl spoon.
“This is a lesson the MAGA right needed to learn right now,” Kassam, an investor in the restaurant, said. He told the outlet that he was “worried for a time that MAGA would be bought out” by oligarchs and referred to the Republican megadonor Koch brothers. “It’s just so satisfying to see that that is now no longer the case.”
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He also slammed officials working at Musk’s DOGE who he claimed “don’t know how to work in this town.”
While having a cigarette break outside, Kassam looked at a Cybertruck parked on the street nearby. “And so as I stare at his Cybertruck,” he told The Post, “[Musk’s] greenness has finally come back to bite him. … And good riddance.”
Butterworth’s chef Bart Hutchins also weighed in. “Elon Musk is an insufferable nerd, and I hope this marks the end of his engagement with public life,” he said.
Congressional Republicans are also not holding back on their public attacks of Musk to show their solidarity with Trump.
“This is absolutely childish and ridiculous. Enough of this nonsense,” Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina told Axios.
Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania told the outlet that Musk is “starting to look a little crazy.” He added that Musk “was always an important voice, but … it’s going to be a lot more people weighing what Trump has to say than what Musk has to say.”
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It’s a victory for liberals who have been demonstrating against Musk since he entered politics. At the peak of the DOGE cuts in February and March, hundreds mobilized across the U.S. to protest in rallies organized by liberal groups.
Protests also called for a boycott of Tesla, as liberals ditched the vehicles. Some took it further by vandalizing Teslas in violent incidents across the country.
The Trump administration rallied around Musk and his electric vehicle company at the time, with the president turning the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom to promote the cars.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also encouraged people to buy Tesla stock in March amid the backlash. He said that Musk was “probably the best entrepreneur, the best technologist, the best leader of any set of companies in America working for America.”
Tesla yesterday saw its stock plummet nearly 16 percent. By Friday morning, stock was on the rebound after it was reported that Trump and Musk would speak on the phone today. Trump has since commented that he is “not particularly interested” in speaking with the former “first buddy.”
