‘Can’t do it any longer’: Sign Elon Musk is in real trouble

The life of the world’s richest man is now spiralling out of control – and his surprising new move tells us everything.

OPINION

Lucky us. We now know how the world’s richest man goes to the loo.

Elon Musk is still worth more than $500 billion – and when he needs to do a number one, he takes a pair of bodyguards to the bathroom with him. (Who knows for a number two).

That was the degree of protection Mr Musk had to live with even before he decided to pivot from your garden variety eccentric-billionaire-with-a-spaceship-collection-and-incurable-ego-mania to a democracy-dismantling zealot currently gleefully giggling as he goes through line items in the Department of Health’s budget with his own personal hacksaw.

And today? Mr Musk’s security risks have, since taking the helm of the totally concocted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), become “so insane” that he and his Xbox have reportedly been forced to actually move into the White House.

The Daily Beast’s very well connected Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles revealed on the publication’s podcast that “he’s been living at the White House, sleeping at the White House and he just gets death threats all the time”.

Ms Coles said: “I spoke to a friend who’d been talking to Elon … his security now is out of control, it’s so insane”.

It gets worse.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly been forced to actually move into the White House. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

This new level of danger extends to “all the people around him” who are now also getting death threats. That’s no small number, given that there are Pacific Island states with fewer people than constitutes his immediate family. You need four hands to count all of his children (at least 14); his tally of ex-wives and mothers of his children comes to five and he has six full and half siblings.

If ever a person needed a spreadsheet …

This extreme ramping up of threats has “surprised” and “shocked” Mr Musk, according to Ms Coles, such that it is making him rethink how much he wants to spend his days and valuable Diet Coke-drinking, Mars-colonising, child-begetting hours mutilating the US government for kicks.

The mutual friend told Ms Coles that Mr Musk “had said he was not sure [running DOGE] was worth it. The impact has been so great on his own life”.

Golly, all of this couldn’t happen to a nicer man.

As it was, even before Mr Musk went to Washington, his protection arrangements were already close to teetering off the Richter scale.

Protesters hold signs and sing chants during a protest against Elon Musk in Boston. Picture: Joseph Prezioso/AFP

Last year, the New York Times revealed that his security detail operated “like a mini-Secret Service, and he is guarded more like a head of state”.

Day-to-day life would see him move about “with as many as 20 security professionals who show up to research escape routes or to clear a room before he enters. They often carry guns and have a medical professional in tow for Mr Musk, who has been codenamed ‘Voyager’ by his security team”.

Court documents show that when Mr Musk was at the San Francisco headquarters of X, two guards would accompany him to the bathroom. Meanwhile, “at parties, bodyguards sweep the area ahead of time and look for anyone not on an approved list”.

Last year, Mr Musk claimed that people had tried to kill him twice in eight months.

And all of that was before he had transitioned from just your bog standard erratic billionaire man-boy who likes things that can go vroom to the moon, to Born Again Trumpist true believer who is merrily taking a sledgehammer to the bureaucratic foundations of an entire country.

Dozens of Tesla dealerships have been vandalised. Picture: Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP

His rebirth as Mr Trump’s eminence grise has come at an extremely high cost. Thanks to Tesla sales and its share price having stumbled head first off a cliff, he has lost more than $200 billion of his personal wealth in the space of weeks.

There are also protests outside Tesla dealerships across the US and in the UK and Germany. Dozens of dealerships have been vandalised, shot at, set on fire and hit with molotov cocktails, and swastikas have been painted on Tesla facilities in at least two states.

Owners of his cars have had their vehicles egged, covered in excrement and had penises drawn all over them. Repeatedly.

In less than a year, Mr Musk’s car brand has become so politically tainted he has managed to flip the Tesla market on its head from crunchy, granola-loving Bernie bros to dyed-red MAGA Kool Aid drinkers who go to bed spooning the Patriot Act and their life-size JD Vance body pillows.

Has a company and a brand ever self-combusted so monumentally as this?

Mr Musk has now achieved the impossible – to get a majority of Americans to agree on something, miraculous given they can’t even decide on whether Nazism was all that bad.

Polling this week shows that more than half of people (53 per cent) dislike him. Meanwhile, 65 per cent of Americans disagree with what DOGE is doing.

Huh. It would seem that eliminating more than 75,000 jobs has consequences. Curious.

Clearly officials are taking the increased risk Mr Musk faces seriously.

In February, CBS revealed that the US Marshals Service had officially deputised his private security team, “granting them certain rights and protections of federal law enforcement agents”.

However, things could be coming to a hairpluggy head – that same friend told Ms Coles that Mr Musk has said, “‘I’m doing this for four months, I can’t do it any longer than that because it’s just going to mess with my business’.” (The clock started with Mr Trump’s January inauguration, by the by).

Elon Musk is reportedly facing death threats. Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

Mess? This is not so much a few broken eggs or some spilt milk, but one of those city-sized dumps where the methane catches fire.

No wonder that last week, Mr Musk appeared to be on the verge of tearing up when talking about his company’s Exxon Valdez-like tanking.

But for now, Mr Musk and Mr Trump are bunking down under the same roof, the oddest of odd couples, the wannabe demagogue whose wife has gone AWOL and the self-identifying demigod who is mooching around the East Wing’s China Room wearing his “Mars or bust” jammies.

I’m sure this will end very well.

Daniela Elser is writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘Can’t do it any longer’: Sign Elon Musk is in real trouble