‘Karma is coming’: Telling sign Elon Musk’s White House days are numbered

A string of clues indicate the bromance between the President and the world’s richest man has soured - and that he could soon be given the boot.

OPINION

Hindu sacred texts started teaching the world about karma around 1500 BCE.

A couple of millennia later, Elon Musk is about to as well.

Karma is coming for the world’s richest man and the only known human being to have ever made Donald Trump look a halfway reasonable father. (At least he never put an ampersand in one of his kids’ names).

According to those in the know, the Octomom of the Oval Office’s days pestering Mr Trump to try soylent or defund Sesame Street could be numbered and the countdown has started to his inevitable turfing out of the White House.

The signs of Mr Musk’s impending crash back to earth, Icarus-style have arrived, so set your watches and mark your calendar for July 21 or thereabouts.

The biggest indication of this came late last week, when Mr Musk arrived at the White House for a cabinet meeting wearing … a suit.

Elon Musk wore his infamous ‘Tech Support’ t-shirt during the first cabinet meeting. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Long gone was the painfully nod, nod, wink “Tech support” T-shirt (his own joke) he had worn to an earlier cabinet meeting; long gone was his usual look which can best be described as ‘man teaching a pick up artist course at an airport Marriott in a room full of Jordan Peterson fans’.

Oh no. Just like the sort of blokes you see nervously smoking outside the Supreme Court in Sydney in their Tarocash-still-with-the-tags-on polyblend, Mr Musk arrived at the meeting dressed in a two piece.

And just like those unfortunate sorts, for the Tesla founder, it was a very clear symbolic act of submission and supplication to a president who is reportedly growing less enamoured with his supposed efficiency tsar.

So significant and freighted a moment was Mr Musk’s choice of outfit, even the venerable New York Times reported on it, while The Washington Post even ran a piece saying that he had been “suit shamed” into dressing like he was a gainfully employed adult and not like a single dad who’s really into Strava.

Even before the meeting started, The Suit represented him being brought to heel by the president like a misbehaving cavoodle.

The t-shirt was replaced by a professional suit for Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress and the second cabinet meeting. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

Then, once he was inside the cabinet room, things got worse for the father-of-14 – and what followed was an “explosive” meeting, according to the Times, which represents a “breaking point”.

(Not that Mr Musk is actually in the cabinet, mind, but as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he’s been getting his fingers into all the nooks and crannies of government and messing about with them like a 15-year-old given a vintage Cortina and a wrench. Since late January, he has been feeding large chunks of the government through the wood chipper).

What then happened during the behind-closed-doors meeting sounds like it was the equivalent of a Year 8 slap fight, with a besuited Mr Musk getting into a heated confrontation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

After weeks of reports flagging growing cabinet-level anger at Mr Musk’s Chainsaw Massacring of their department, this powder keg of ego and Rogaine finally exploded.

Mr Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy “lit into Musk”, according to Vanity Fair, with an ally of the President telling the publication “It was, like, one step short of a fistfight”.

(The publication also reports that Mr Rubio and Mr Duffy wouldn’t have gone after Mr Musk without Mr Trump’s chief of staff’s approval).

The meeting ended with Mr Trump essentially leashing Mr Musk and reining him in. The cabinet secretaries, the president announced, were ultimately in charge, and not his space-bothering buddy.

Is the bromance finally cooling? PIcture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

There are growing signs Donald Trump wants Elon Musk out. Picture: Pool via AP

The punditry immediately flagged the president’s slight demotion of Mr Musk in the Washington pecking order as a sign the two mens’ ardour for one another was cooling.

Guys, I’m starting to worry this bromance for the ages might not make it.

Michael Wolff, author of the excellent All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America, recently told the Daily Beast that the president is growing increasingly “irritated” with Mr Musk and that he will only “last” for six months.

That would put the great dumping happening sometime around July 21, the half-yearly anniversary of Mr Trump’s inauguration. I hope Mr Musk’s cavalcade of aides have the tissues and Sambuca ready for a sad, soggy few days.

Meanwhile, Pivot podcast co-host and renowned commentator Scott Galloway told the SXSW conference this week that Mr Musk is “done”.

During the president’s first administration, he pointed out, “92 per cent of Trump’s advisers were fired”.

Mr Galloway said: “[Trump’s] very good at creating human heat shields. If, in fact, he has told his cabinet they’re now in charge and [Mr Musk’s now only] an advisor, it means he’s done”.

But poor old Mr Musk’s rotter of a week does not end there, not by a long shot.

Or $200 billion to be precise, which is how much poorer he is with Tesla stocks in parachute-missing free fall.

Tesla shares are tanking. Picture: Frederic J. Brown/AFP

Shares in the EV maker have dropped more than 45 per cent from their December high, with more than $1 trillion reportedly wiped off the company’s value and his personal wealth taking a centi-billion hit.

It turns out that Mr Musk’s conversion to full blown, final stage red pill MAGA-dom has seen the company’s sales slump, with him managing to alienate consumers and the financial markets faster than that thing that came out of Sigourney Weaver’s stomach.

At one point during a TV interview this week, when asked about the situation, he seemed on the verge of tears.

I hope you like extra large, super-sized savings of schadenfreude, because, karma? She’s coming for Mr Musk.

See you all back here July 22.

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 ‘Karma is coming’: Telling sign Elon Musk’s White House days are numbered