Dowd: Why the tech bro really had to go

Elon Musk came to Washington with a chain saw and left with a black eye Shrinking regime is hard particularly when you do it callously and carelessly and apparently on hallucinogens As with President Donald Trump s tariffs the Department of Authorities Efficiency has created more volatility than value A guy who went bankrupt six times doesn t really care about spending And Trump certainly didn t want to see the headline Trump Cuts Social Protection He just yearned to get revenge on the bureaucracy by deputizing Musk to force out a lot of federal employees and give the impression that they were cutting all the waste As perpetually with Trump the former reality star the impression matters more than the reality especially the reality of his own sins This past week Trump tried to recast the very nature of crime As The New York Times Glenn Thrush wrote President Trump is employing the vast power of his office to redefine criminality to suit his necessities using pardons to inoculate criminals he happens to like downplaying corruption and fraud as crimes and seeking to stigmatize political opponents by labeling them criminals Bizarro world It is sickening that the Justice Department is considering settling a wrongful-death lawsuit by giving million to the family of Ashli Babbitt who was shot on Jan by a Capitol police officer when she ignored his warnings and tried to climb through a smashed window into the Speaker s Lobby in the Capitol If Babbitt was trying to help Trump claw back a stolen poll by urgent into the Capitol then urgent into the Capitol must be a good thing to do and any police officer who tried to stop her and protect lawmakers cowering under desks must be in the wrong To abet Trump s fake reality the craven House Republicans refused to put up a plaque honoring the police officers and others who defended the Capitol that awful day I take it personally because my dad spent years as a police inspector in Washington in charge of Senate guard He would run to the House whenever there was trouble So if on Jan Mike Dowd had been preventing insurrectionists from assaulting lawmakers he would now be in Trump s eyes not a hero deserving of a plaque but a blackguard who was thwarting patriots as Trump calls the rioters he pardoned It is a disturbing bizarro world Trump was rewriting reality again Friday afternoon as one of the largest part flamboyant destructive bromances in establishment history petered out in the Oval Office It had peaked last winter when Musk posted on social platform X I love realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man and again when Trump tried to reciprocate by hawking Teslas in the White House driveway But Friday even these grand master salesmen couldn t sell the spin that Elon had delivered a colossal change Musk has acknowledged in recent days that his dream of cutting trillion had been a fantasy He disclosed changing Washington was an uphill battle and complained that Trump s big beautiful budget bill which could add over trillion in debt undercut his DOGE attempts to save money As Trump disclosed Musk got a lot of the slings and the arrows His approval rating cratered and violence has been directed toward Tesla a brand once loved by liberals and in China which is now tarnished Musk cut off a reporter who tried to ask about a Times article asserting that he was a habitual user of ketamine and a dabbler in ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms even after Trump had given him enormous control over the establishment Punched in the face That could explain the chain saw-wielding the jumping up and down onstage the manic baby-making and crusading for more spreading of sperm by smart people and the ominous Nazi-style salutes When a reporter urged Musk why he had a black eye he joked about the viral video of Brigitte Macron shoving her husband s face Then he explained that while horsing around with his -year-old X he suggested the child punch him in the face and he did Related Articles Letters Donald Trump s cuts to research will set the U S back Bay Area cities called out in sanctuary list find themselves in crosshairs of immigration standoff Harvey Milk s name to be scrubbed from Navy ship RFK Jr says healthy pregnant women don t need Covid boosters Science says threat still meaningful Kristof Really Secretary Rubio I m Lying About the Kids Dying Under Trump The president and the Tony Stark prototype tried to convey the idea that they would remain tight even though Musk would no longer be getting into angry altercations with Scott Bessent outside the Oval sleeping on the floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and hanging around Mar-a-Lago Trump wants the million Musk has pledged for his political operation Musk wearing a black DOGE cap and black Dogefather T-shirt looked around the Oval which Trump has tarted up to look like a Vegas gift shop and gushed that it in the end has the majesty that it deserves thanks to the president Trump gave Musk a golden ceremonial White House key the kind of thing small-town mayors give out and proclaimed Elon s really not leaving He s going to be back and forth I think Trump announced that the father of at least would never desert DOGE absolutely because It s his baby Musk brought the Silicon Valley mantra Move fast and break things to Washington But the main thing he broke was his own reputation Maureen Dowd is a New York Times columnist