Just a few months ago, Elon Musk was wielding a chainsaw on stage at CPAC as he bragged about how he was going to dismantle the federal government. The billionaire oligarch helped shut down USAID, accessed private information on U.S. citizens, and tried to steal an entire $500 million building. But now Musk seems to be fully entering his “woe is me” stage. And it’s pathetic to watch.
Musk sat down for two new interviews recently, one with the Washington Post and another with CBS Sunday Morning, which is scheduled to air this Sunday. And it seems like Musk is leaning into the idea that he’s just some poor, persecuted guy who’s being bullied simply for trying to help America. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) isn’t the bad guy, he insists.
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the Washington Post. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Perhaps people are blaming Musk and DOGE for bad things because he promised that countless bad things would happen on his watch. As just one example, the billionaire gloated about “feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” something that experts believe has already led to possibly hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world and will mean that millions more will die in the coming years. And feed it into the wood chipper he did.
We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.
Could gone to some great parties.
Did that instead. https://t.co/0V35nacICW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025
Musk is an unelected, unofficial member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet. And as a special government employee, he doesn’t need to fill out the same financial disclosure forms that everyone else does, even if he’s still legally required to adhere to conflict of interest rules. But Musk has learned that you can get away with so many things if you don’t ask permission and simply insist that the courts try to stop you. And as a government contractor with SpaceX, the access Musk has gained into proprietary information would be invaluable.
The new interview with the Post reveals that Musk doesn’t sound terribly happy with the budget bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week, which would, among other things, cut $800 million from Medicaid. But Musk isn’t displeased with the cuts—he’s unhappy that the bill doesn’t codify the illegal moves he’s made to strip down the federal government.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said, according to the Post.
As CNBC reporter Carl Quintanilla noted Wednesday on Bluesky, the new article in the Post doesn’t mention two of Musk’s most infamous events since Trump was inaugurated: the chainsaw-wielding on stage at CPAC in February and the two Nazi-style salutes on Jan. 20. In fact, Musk’s salutes didn’t get much mainstream TV news coverage even at the time, leaving it to the internet to spread the word.
The billionaire made a similar comment to CBS Sunday Morning about not liking the spending bill in an interview that will air on Sunday. A short video clip has been posted online, where reporter David Pogue clearly empathized with Musk.
“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk says in the clip.
“I actually thought that when this big beautiful bill came along… I mean, like, everything he’s done on DOGE gets wiped out in the first year,” Pogue replied.
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both,” Musk said as both men laughed.
Pogue is the perfect PR-friendly guy to be interviewing Musk, if you couldn’t already tell by how chummy the two men look together. The longtime tech reporter is the same guy who did that softball 2022 interview with the CEO of Oceangate before his Titan submersible imploded on a 2023 trip to the wreckage of the Titanic.
Musk is the CEO of Tesla, and people have started to associate the cars his particular brand of fascism, giving rise to both peaceful protests and property destruction at Tesla dealerships. But, again, Musk took the opportunity to whine to the Washington Post about how it was all so terribly unfair.
“People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” Musk reportedly said. The billionaire has previously phrased it differently, insisting during an interview with Bloomberg News that, “I’m not someone who’s ever committed violence.” But soon enough, Musk pivoted in that same interview into how he was going to seek retribution against the people who had wronged him.
Elon Musk frequently plays the tough guy in interviews. But as soon as he feels enough heat, the billionaire switches to Smol Bean Mode, talking about how he’s never harmed anyone and is just a great guy trying to make the world a better place.
There is something incredibly perverse at play when you step back and think about it. Here is a man who happens to be the wealthiest person in the world, and yet wants to have it both ways. Musk longs to be seen as the most powerful guy you’ve ever seen, who’s celebrating cuts to the federal government that have pushed hundreds of thousands of people out of work. But he also wants to be the real victim—the guy who never gets a fair shake because people are being too mean.
You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Musk. But given fascism’s long history of trying to be both all-powerful protector and perpetually persecuted, we don’t expect you’ll drop the act anytime soon.
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