‘America can’t stand him’: US turns on Elon Musk after stunning $39 million election fail
The world’s richest man has just been dealt a stunning blow as he looks set to finally leave Washington with his tail between his legs.
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OPINION
Happiness. Love. Style. There are plenty of things money can’t buy – even ungodly, vast mountains of the lovely greenback-y stuff.
Just ask the billionaire who recently nearly cried on camera, is single and generally dresses like he’s off to an OnlyFans Anonymous meeting.
Now we’ve just learnt that there is another thing Elon Musk’s more than $476 billion can’t buy him: An election. (That, and any T-shirts that don’t give tech bro-Ed Hardy, fighting-for-weekend-visitation-rights vibes).
The last 24 hours have capped off what has been the most stunning downfall and reversal in fortune in American political history, the same country that produced Richard Nixon.
Mr Musk has just been dealt a brutal slapdown by Americans, who went to the polls in a state election that had become a referendum about the Tesla boss’ unchecked, unelected catapulting into Washington power.
Despite the father-of-14 (words you never have to type about anyone else who does not also own a horse and buggy) having dumped an eye-watering $39 million into trying to get a MAGA loyalist elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, including literally handing out $1.57 million ($US1 million) in cheques, he lost spectacularly.
Hahahahhahahahahahahaha. Teeeee heee teeee heeeee. Wait, I’ve got another one. Bahahhahahahaah.
America has spoken and the people, along with Donald Trump now too, seem to want nothing more to do with Mr Musk.
What happened is this: This week saw a series of state elections, the first real litmus test of public feeling towards Mr Musk, Mr Trump’s so-called First Buddy, which sounds like a terrible late 90s movie starring the Olsen twins and a wisecracking french bulldog.
The results, especially in Wisconsin, have been a ringing blow for Mr Musk and his Trump-sanctioned assault on government – and they reflect the very clear surge of public anger towards fatherhood’s worst advertisement.
Let’s be clear here – Mr Musk quite literally tried to buy the Wisconsin election that saw Democrat-leaning Susan Crawford going up against ‘Trump4eva’-underpants-wearing Brad Schimel.
In February, Mr Musk began dumping money into Mr Schimel’s campaign coffers like a faulty backhoe, only to then go a shocking step further in a move that may or may not be legal.
He actually got his chequebook out, paying Wisconsinites $US100 ($157) to sign a MAGA-linked petition, which then put them in the running to win $US1 million.
The election in question might have been for a judgeship in a cheese belt state where they measure their GDP in gouda, but no one has been pretending it was anything but a vote on Mr Musk.
The unleashing of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) winged boy-monkeys on the government during the first months of Trump 2.0 brought a whole new level of cruelty and fear into American life.
(Heard the one about the Maryland father who was deported to an El Salvadoran prison thanks to an administrative error and now they won’t bring him back?)
The result?
Susan Crawford won easily, picking up 55 per cent of the vote to Mr Schimel’s 45 per cent.
In fact, her margins were even better in the counties which had Mr Musk’s filthy-lucre-stained fingerprints all over them, with the consensus being that people weren’t so much voting for Ms Crawford as letting their fury about Mr Musk be heard loud and clear (can I have
another bahahhaha maybe?)
Translation: America can’t stand him. The country that invented the chicken-fried steak and the slanket clearly has some taste after all.
The implications of Mr Musk’s Wisconsin loss go further than his freshly-dented ego.
It was only 73 days ago that the Tesla founder was installed in Washington as the head of DOGE, and set about hacking up the federal government.
And it was a scant 23 days ago that the president merrily turned the White House front lawn into a Tesla showroom, so devoted was he to Mr Musk and so supportive of his bureaucratic brutalism.
But the rest of the world?
What followed was the public’s slack-jawed shock, then horror, and then a global backlash of unprecedented proportions.
Tesla stock price is now in free fall.
Mr Musk has lost hundreds of millions of dollars personally.
There are ongoing protests outside Tesla dealerships around the world and some of them have even been firebombed.
The Tesla brand has become reviled by anyone outside the MAGA tent and his Cybertruck has been labelled “America’s most hated car”.
For some strange reason, the voting population of the US are not that crash hot on an unelected weirdo getting to flop around Washington creating mass havoc like a bored toddler left in a Wedgewood showroom.
While not that long ago there was even speculation that Mr Musk might himself run for the presidency, now he is looking like one of history’s biggest losers in every sense of the word.
(One more: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA).
This election in Wisconsin was very much a temperature-taking of how a swing state won by Mr Trump in 2024 might be feeling, and it was the first vague indicator of how things might look come next year’s midterm elections.
The answer will do nothing to help the president’s indigestion tonight.
It took less than 12 hours after the Wisconsin result was in for this bromance to come asunder.
Politico has reported that, with the ink still wet on the Dems’ win, Mr Trump was already telling his inner circle that Mr Musk was on the way out, and that he was set to return to actually running his flailing businesses.
While supposedly this had been long planned (sure, Jan), what the Wisconsin election makes clear is how much of a liability Mr Musk has become for Mr Trump, especially at a time when his own approval ratings are drooping like one of his suits.
The bigger picture of not only MAGA’s loss in Wisconsin but also the Dems having recently won state legislative seats in Iowa and Pennsylvania is that Republican alarm bells are now ringing, ringing, ringing about next year’s midterm elections.
In practical terms, Ms Crawford’s win could also put two house seats into play, raising the prospect that the Dems have a shot at retaking the house in 2026.
More broadly, this week’s Wisconsin result delivers a real hammer blow to Mr Trump’s belief that he supposedly had a wide-ranging remit to unleash his particular brand of Greenland-annexing, tariff-showering, stock market-crashing madness.
No wonder Mr Musk is currently in his White House bedroom disconsolately shoving dirty T-shirts into an empty Doritos box.
Maybe now he will have the time to put a few Tesla dealership fires out and get around to journaling about his sad feelings.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
Originally published as ‘America can’t stand him’: US turns on Elon Musk after stunning $39 million election fail
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