Elon Musk is in exile

Elon Musk is in exile. He’s forgotten by friends, embattled by enemies. He now quietly (for him) goes about his business, fighting non-government battles after those strange few months he spent standing behind the President’s desk with his toddler son X, who punched Musk in the face while he was seemingly running the country.

Musk’s fate is a case study in what happens when Donald Trump rolls up the red carpet. Trump operated his first term as President more like a season of The Apprentice and less like an administration. It was a revolving door of exile. Reality-show worthy characters like Omarosa Manigault Newman and Anthony Scaramucci came and went with drama that fell just short of an episode-ending boardroom ceremony.

The second attempt has been more controlled and disciplined. Trump’s original cabinet is more or less intact eight months into the term. There has been a little fraying around the administration’s edges, with the sudden dismissals of IRS head Billy Long after two months and CDC head Susan Monarez after a few weeks, but considering the man in charge, it’s been pretty much business as usual, with no major exiles from his court.

With one notable exception: Elon Musk. Musk’s brief turn as shadow co-President already seems a distant history. But it filled our lives with intrigue. Who can forget his “Nazi salute” the day before Trump’s inauguration, accompanied by the very un-Nazi-like utterance “my heart goes out to you”? That induced a moral panic unlike any other we’ve seen in our time. Then in February, wearing sunglasses and a black baseball cap bearing the “Make America Great Again” slogan in gothic lettering, Musk waved the “chainsaw for bureaucracy” on stage, causing millions of angry liberals to soil their adult diapers.

Musk has learned the hard way that America, like a Tesla robotaxi, can pretty much drive itself

For months, the world’s richest man functioned as Trump’s useful idiot, his ketamine-huffing court jester, making showy noises about reducing the size of government through his newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE), introducing us to sub-jesters like “Big Balls,” sleeping on a cot in his makeshift DC headquarters, and causing USAID and State Department employees to weep into their potted plants on the way out the door. While Trump began enacting his aggressive second-term agenda, Musk drew much of the flak. Angry vandals and protesters set Teslas on fire and scratched swastikas into their doors. We didn’t elect this man, the people (some people) screamed. Get him away from our Social Security numbers!

Then, weeks before the summer solstice, it was over. On Memorial Day weekend, Trump said a fond goodbye to Musk, who was wearing a black T-shirt that read “The DOGEFATHER,” in the Oval Office. Trump said that Musk had brought about a “colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington.” It was the “most sweeping and consequential government reform effort in generations.” Also, Trump added, Elon was “really not leaving.” “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Elon is terrific!”

“DoGE is a way of life,” Musk told reporters. “Like Buddhism.”

Immediately after, Musk veered off the eightfold path. He started criticizing Trump’s tariff policies and called the Great Big Beautiful Bill “a disgusting abomination.” In response, Trump threatened to sell the “everything is computer” Tesla that he’d purchased in a showy Rose Garden ceremony. He called Musk “the man who has lost his mind.” Musk, in response, said he was starting a third political party, the “America party,” and said that Trump was named in the Epstein Files.

After a few brief détente tweets, the Musk administration was over, and the Musk Exile had begun. By July, the Wall Street Journal was reporting that Musk was “burning through executives.” Around the time that Musk’s Grok AI on X transformed itself into “MechaHitler,” Musk announced that Linda Yaccarino, the head of X, was leaving. “Thank you for your contributions,” Musk said, in a decidedly non-Trumpian way. Around the same time, Omead Afshar, head of sales and operations for Tesla North America, also left Musk’s orbit. In order to stabilize matters, Tesla’s board of directors offered Elon a $29 billion stock package to stay on at the company, and to stay focused, an amount of money that, even for Musk, had to reduce his attention deficit.

As for the “America party,” it appears that will never get off the ground. The Wall Street Journal reported in late August that “Musk and his team haven’t engaged with many prominent individuals who have voiced support for the idea of a new party or could be a crucial resource to help it get off the ground, including by assisting with getting on the ballot in crucial states.” That doesn’t seem promising. “It’s almost an eerie silence,” said a previously hopeful Libertarian party official.

Instead, rumors abound that Musk, who spent $300 million to help Trump get re-elected, including handing out random million-dollar checks to voters, is planning to throw his support behind J.D. Vance’s 2028 campaign. The world’s richest man, no longer allowed at Trump’s court, is back to courting favors with his checkbook again. Meanwhile, Trump has quietly not cut any of Musk’s government contracts, and Musk himself has been relatively silent in public. His X feed has been reduced to endless complaints about the world’s declining birthrate and wan retweets of “England has fallen” threads.

The most manic episode in American history is over. Elon Musk has gone from shadow President to shadow-banned, but the “I bought this car before he went insane” bumper stickers remain on Teslas all around blue ZIP codes. It’s time for Elon to get back to colonizing Mars. He’s learned the hard way that America, like a Tesla robotaxi, can pretty much drive itself.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 15, 2025 World edition.