In response to billionaire Elon Musk's unlawful takeover of the Treasury Department, about 1,000 citizens and elected Democrats gathered in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to protest. Demonstrators waved signs blasting "President Musk" or "King Elon," noting that no one had elected the Trump advisor to serve as the power behind the throne. This meme of "President Musk" has also spread rapidly on social media, with even Kamala Harris' former running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, joking, "Elon Musk is a terrible president."
Elon Musk is a terrible president.
— Governor Tim Walz (@governorwalz.mn.gov) February 3, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Unfortunately, Musk gets a kick out of this, because the man is a Bond villain minus the intelligence and coolness. Yet the narrative persists, in part, as an effort to raise awareness about what looks very much like a coup, but also in the misguided hope of driving a wedge between Musk and the man who technically is the president, Donald Trump. He may be the only man in the world whose snowflake-fragile ego surpasses Musk's. By pointing out that Musk is overshadowing him, the goal is to provoke narcissistic injury in Trump, causing him to lash out and kick the billionaire video game cheater out the door.
To understand Trump's indifference, it helps to look back at the happiest time in his life: a reality TV stint pretending to be a successful businessman on NBC's "The Apprentice."
It's a smart theory, one based on basic psychology. Yet, after months of taunting Trump with the "President Musk" meme, it doesn't seem to be working. It has forced Trump to do some ego protection work, like unpersuasively insisting, "Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval." However, Trump seems mostly content to step back and let Musk run rampant. Trump even runs interference for Musk, making excuses and propping up distractions, like his trolling claim that he wants to occupy Gaza. And headlines claiming Trump is restricting Musk's antics are misleading. Sure, a court ordered Trump to rein Musk in, but that's no guarantee he'll do it.
So why isn't the notoriously thin-skinned Trump more upset at the younger, richer Musk for stealing his thunder?
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To understand Trump's indifference, it helps to look back at the happiest time in his life: a reality TV stint pretending to be a successful businessman on NBC's "The Apprentice." Before becoming a reality TV host, Trump did try to make it as a real businessman, of course, but failed so spectacularly and often that he may qualify as the biggest business failure of all time. Leaked tax records show that he blew through the half-billion he inherited from his father, sold off huge chunks of his father's genuinely successful real estate business to pay off debts and went bankrupt multiple times.
Real business is hard for normal people, but for someone as lazy and dumb as Trump, it was impossible. Pretending to be a businessman on TV, however, was all gravy. As biographer Ramin Setoodeh and former "Apprentice" producer Bill Pruitt have carefully detailed, Trump did no real work on the hit show. As Pruitt recalls, producers and writers constructed the character of a successful businessman by "carefully misleading viewers about Trump," an act Pruitt calls a "fraud" and a "con." Trump breezed in for a few hours during the extensive taping to read lines, and little more. For his efforts, he was awarded almost another half-billion dollars, but because he's an epically terrible businessman, he was soon deep in debt again.
Trump learned a valuable lesson from this: It's way more fun to be the facsimile than the real thing. He barely showed up at the office in his first term, and clearly hated every minute of actual work. Whether they've explicitly discussed it or not, it appears he and Musk have a deal: One will do the annoying dirty work of illegally smashing up the federal bureaucracy, while the other pretends to be a president for the cameras and fanfare. Trump gets to sign papers and get his picture taken. He gets to do fun reality TV villain stuff, like threatening tariffs, but mostly not enacting them, because that would create consequences he doesn't want to deal with. As with being a fake businessman on "The Apprentice," being a fake president is much better than the real thing. He gets all the ego-fluffing and attention, while not having to think about stuff, much less work.
Of course, it's not just Trump who is content to hand all this power over to Musk, in exchange for a shorter workday. Congressional Republicans seem downright pleased to give all their constitutional power of the purse to a private citizen with zero legal authority to make spending decisions. Some of them may be scared of crossing Musk, but on the whole, the likelier explanation is this is just another sign of how the entire GOP has been remade in Trump's image. Like Trump, most of the GOP members of Congress want all the benefits of office — TV spots, flattery, access to the Senate gym — without having to deal with those annoying responsibilities. Trump's superpower is bringing out the worst in everyone, and congressional Republicans are a prime example.
As with being a fake businessman on "The Apprentice," being a fake president is much better than the real thing.
To be clear, there used to be plenty of Republicans who relished working and exercising power, even if they did it for terrible ends. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is a classic example. A man who was downright tireless in his constant scheming to use power in all its destructive glory, he's now old and nearly retired. The current congressional GOP is better represented by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who would rather spend his time hosting his podcast and trolling on social media than the tedious work of governance. Many Republicans have absorbed the lesson of Trump's example: Playing the part is easier and more fun than actually doing your job.
To be certain, Musk is cut from the same cloth. As "Some More News" laid out in painstaking detail Wednesday, Musk's reputation as a "genius" is created with the same carnival barker nonsense as Trump's reputation as a "businessman." In reality, Musk pays other people to do his work and takes the credit, even going so far as to build up his video game stats by paying other people to play for him. Musk spends all day bragging on X that he's hard at work, even though a person actually working hard doesn't have time to spend on social media all day. But he has put together his army of barely legal sycophants, and they do seem to be expending time and effort harassing federal employees and getting into computer systems to steal classified information and otherwise mess with government operations. People are not getting the federal money they're owed, which shows someone is doing the evil work while Musk tweets.
But that Musk is just another layer of fraud is neither here nor there. What matters is that Trump and Republicans show no embarrassment over having handed over both their power and responsibilities to a bunch of college-aged Musk acolytes who have no legal right to wield that power. Republicans have embraced Trump's view that work is for chumps. As long as they have their fancy titles and all the honors that go with them, why should they care if a group of bandits lays waste to the government they've been elected to take care of?
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