19 times Elon Musk made a fool of himself – Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Multibillionaire and bigoted conspiracy theorist Elon Musk spent millions to support Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign—even endorsing him at a cringeworthy campaign rally.
Since then, Musk has gone from a Nazi-saluting high in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s win to a much lower profile in 2026 after a bumpy year of failures and embarrassments.
But Musk is still an extremely relevant figure in U.S. politics, and he’s made it clear that he intends to spend a lot more to prop up the ailing GOP congressional majority and to stave off a blue wave in the midterm elections.
So here are 19 stories about Musk that he would surely rather we all forget.
Musk reportedly harbors fears about an upcoming “apocalypse” and has spent the last few years messaging women on social media, proposing that they have children with him to survive the coming dark time.
He’s described this creepy plan as an effort to replicate “legion”—terminology used by the Roman empire to describe elite military units. He has had at least 14 children with four different women in pursuit of this cause.
Reveling in Trump’s victory, Musk showed up at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2025 with a chainsaw prop.
The idea was to promote the supposed government waste that Musk would cut as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
That effort would turn out to be a disaster, and the cosplay moment was the beginning of it all.
Early in his second term, Trump pushed an absurdist conspiracy theory that the gold stored by the government in Fort Knox had been stolen, which his administration would investigate.
For a few weeks, the conspiracy gained traction on the right—and Musk was the source. A conspiracy website tagged him on X ,and Musk amplified the fake story on his own account.
Musk claimed that his whole reason for backing Trump was his interest in government efficiency. To execute this, he was named head of DOGE, where he was given access to key government agencies, violating protocols, security, and privacy along the way.
Musk and DOGE continually claimed to be saving taxpayers billions by cutting off vital funding, insisting that they canceled contracts that were wasting money—even though these contracts were already being phased out.
Ultimately the entire fiasco gummed up the government, pushed phony savings, and became an embarrassment. DOGE was finally shut down last November, without any of the “savings” that Musk had promised.
Appearing on fellow conspiracy theorist Joe Rogan’s podcast in March, Musk pushed another tall tale. In a discussion of the 2024 shooting at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Musk and Rogan alleged that CNN was tipped off about the shooting and chose to televise it.
Of course, CNN aired live coverage of the rally because Trump was expected to announce his pick for vice president, which would ultimately be JD Vance.
To justify DOGE’s meddling, Musk promoted unverified claims that millions of dollars were being saved—which was not true.
For instance, DOGE claimed in February that $65 billion had been saved after certain contracts were canceled. In reality, most of these contracts had already been paid out, meaning the savings were nonexistent.
Just a few months into Trump’s second term, the inevitable infighting that is the hallmark of Trump’s leadership style emerged.
The feud that surfaced in March 2025 involved a spat between Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. According to a New York Times report, a White House meeting with Trump devolved into a shouting match with Rubio asserting that Musk is a liar and Musk saying that Rubio was just “good on TV.”
The fight immediately became a punchline and was the subject of a Saturday Night Live cold open skit.
For the most part, Musk has been shielded from public criticism. But Trump’s decision to put an unelected multibillionaire in charge of DOGE ended this honeymoon period.
When criticism began to surge, Musk ran to Trump’s allies at Fox News, appearing near tears as he spoke about his leadership of DOGE and told the hosts that he had “great difficulty” running his businesses while interfering in the government.
The peak of Musk’s public humiliation probably came in July 2025 as DOGE began taking on serious water. He and Trump got involved in a very public feud, which involved hurling insults at each other on social media. As Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York noted at the time, “the girls are fighting, aren’t they?”
But Trump took the fight to another level by telling a reporter that he would “have to take a look” into deporting Musk as the two men sniped back and forth.
Still riding high after spending millions to elect Trump, Musk tried to replicate his success by donating to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in 2025. He poured money into a campaign to support conservative Brad Schimel, even handing out giant checks.
It didn’t work. Susan Crawford easily won, cementing the court’s liberal majority.
As Musk continued to become politically involved, his businesses suffered backlash. Owning a Tesla became a massive burden as it affiliated drivers with Musk’s racist right-wing brand of politics.
People stopped buying his cars and began protesting outside of Tesla locations, causing sales to fall.
Musk couldn’t accept the fact that Tesla became a lightning rod due to his politics, so he invented a conspiracy theory. Speaking to investors, Musk falsely claimed that the protests were “paid for” in an attempt to delegitimize the organic people-powered movement.
As controversy around the Epstein files roiled the Trump administration, Musk caught friendly fire. As part of the forced disclosure of the files, an email emerged showing Musk discussing plans to attend a party on Epstein’s notorious private island. At the time of the email, Epstein was already a convicted sex offender.
Musk took to social media to complain about the disclosure and insisted that he wants justice for the victims and survivors.
Last November, Musk launched Grokipedia as an alternative to Wikipedia, which he and other conservatives have derided as “woke” for not adhering to right-wing talking points. Soon after the launch, it was uncovered that many of the entries were inaccurate and racist, including one citation that alleged that pornography contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, designed to promote right-wing ideology, pushed Holocaust denialism. A complaint was filed against Musk’s company in France, and he was accused of “denial of crimes against humanity.” The complaint triggered an investigation by the French government.
Musk, a South African immigrant, has been one of the staunchest supporters of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
In December, Musk pushed the conspiracy that Black immigrants from Africa were brought to the United States not to escape persecution, but because they would become reliable voters for the Democratic Party.
Musk’s social media site X became the subject of a probe by the French government in February. The allegation involved use of the site to generate and spread unauthorized sexual imagery of people, including children.
Several other countries have started their own investigations—but not the Trump administration.
Musk’s bigotry extends to fictional characters in movies. In May, he and other conservatives fumed that Black actor Lupita Nyong’o and transgender actor Elliot Page would be featured in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey.”
It was revealed in February that Grok had allegedly played a central role in a plot to harass a woman with more than 200 nonconsensual sexual images.
Musk is not going away. Even if he had zero involvement in politics, he’s still the wealthiest person in the world, his companies are major government contractors, and he uses X to promote hate, misogyny, conspiracy theories, and misinformation.
Unfortunately, he continues to be relevant—but so are these stories that he wishes would go away.
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