Despite the fact that everyone foresaw a role for Elon Musk in the incoming administration, few likely predicted that his role would be this visible and this destructive, at least destructive with respect to how the government had been constituted and what it will be going forward. This morning, NOAA – the organization that does a lot of the weather predictions for the government, and weather research, including hurricane monitoring, began readying for layoffs, NOAA! Who said that NOAA was even overstaffed? Last week it was NASA. It is highly unlikely that voters saw this coming. To the extent that some voters anticipated some lay-offs at the IRS, perhaps most didn’t care. When the government starts laying off astronauts just to be laying people off? It gets to people, and it sure appears to be getting to Americans as seen in the latest poll numbers where Elon Musk, the strangely omnipotent and omnipresent government employee but not employee, is spiraling down in the eyes of regular Americans.
These polls matter because it is all but impossible to evaluate Musk’s performance without it falling on President Donald Trump as well. To the extent that they both matter, the numbers aren’t subject to much interpretation. As quoted by Rawstory, CNN’s Harry Enten says:
“This gives you an idea of how angry the folks are at Elon Musk. Look at this: Elon Musk’s net favorable rating, we’ve been tracking this. This is Quinnipiac University [poll] back in December of 2024 – he was underwater, but just underwater by five points. Look at where he is now: In February 2025, the American people are turning against Elon Musk. His net favorable rating way down there, past now minus-10 points [to] minus-12 points. The bottom line is this: The voters are angry with Elon Musk, they’re angry with the cuts to the federal government. You saw in the town hall last night, and they’re taking it out against Elon Musk in the polls as well, where his numbers are falling.”
BREAKING: CNN lead data analyst Harry Enten just revealed that polls show Elon Musk and DOGE are destroying Trump’s approval rating. Americans are turning on Trump in record numbers.
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) February 21, 2025
Enten can talk taking it out on Musk all he wants but I’m not buying it. There is no divisible line between Trump and Musk. They appear together all the time, Trump has not once limited Musk or reversed anything Musk’s DOGE has done. Americans aren’t happy hearing about cuts at NOAA, NASA, the NIH, or any of the other absolutely beloved agencies, one that scream American Exceptionalism – and they will take it out on Musk, to be sure, but for every point Musk goes down, expect Trump to suffer the same eventually. There’s no way around it.
The other consideration is that Americans have no indication at all that Trump actually can control Musk. We all assume that Trump can put his foot down at any point (I assume such) and yet there hasn’t been the slightest hint that Trump has considered doing so. Thus it is that there is the appearance that Donald Trump has abdicated some of the presidential responsibility and left it to Musk. It is enough to begin to wonder whether Donald Trump has something that keeps him from restraining Musk, is Trump free to put his foot down? There has always been speculation that Trump may be controlled to some extent by outside forces. Here, again – there is more reason to believe that the public won’t stand still and confine its opinions on matters to Musk. No, it’s all coming out of Trump’s support eventually.
Oh, and Musk isn’t done, he has more cutting to do, and the government’s performance hasn’t truly suffered noticeably… Yet. It most certainly will eventually. At some point we are going to see a plane crash, a terrorist attack, weather coverage, or disease progression surprise us, get loose somehow in an unanticipated way, and we’ll eventually hear that it was due in part to the fact that the remaining federal employees were stretched such that it made doing the job at top levels impossible. Just wait, it is coming.
And you thought that the polls were down now. Just wait. Trump is treading dangerous ground by abdicating this much responsibility and allowing Musk this much control. It is already really hurting Trump. Musk doesn’t care – he doesn’t have to worry about the public’s perception. Trump does.
God Bless:Â I can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter-X at @JasonMiciak and please follow me on Bluesky.
Friends, donations have dried up this week and we haven’t gotten any new subscribers. If you’ve already helped, thank you so very much. If you can help a bit, it would be appreciated. We are in a slough of despair with the generalized Democratic depression on top of Q1 revenue rates being the lowest of all year. Thank you. Ursula
Eggcellent
Who should be surprised when the party that says ‘Government doesn’t work’ sets about making it so.
Exactly. These cuts aren’t popular now. Let me tell you when they will really really become unpopular:
1.) About June 30th when flights are $1200 because there are far fewer of them compared to years past because the FAA Control Towers cannot handle the volume they once did now shortstaffed.
2) June 30th when people still don’t have their tax refund back because the IRS has too few staff.
3) June 30th when families start visiting National Parks only to find certain areas shut down or unstaffed due to cuts.
4) June 30th when Medicare is so backed up that appointments become harder to get because payments aren’t going through, causing some MDs to drop Medicare patients.
And so much more. Hopefully we don’t have a plane crash, or a hurricane that almost sneaks up on us bc the planes cannot go out anymore and forecasters are shortstaffed, hopefully we don’t lose cancer breakthroughs bc NIH wasn’t around to evaluate funding for research… The impacts could go on and on bc our government did so much that we never see and these cuts were cuts just to cut and had nothing to do with actual “waste.”
jason