Elon Musk appeared alongside President Trump for a press conference in the Oval Office Friday, perhaps for the last time, with a noticeable black eye that he says he got from his young son.
“I said, ‘Go ahead, punch me in the face.’ And he did,” he said.
Musk is emerging from his five-month stint as head of DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, with more than just a shiner. His company, Tesla, is hemorrhaging market share in key countries around the globe and recorded its first year-over-year quarterly sales decrease in almost five years. His reputation has plummeted, with a majority of US residents saying they dislike him. And his claims to have saved the government a trillion dollars by slashing “waste, fraud and abuse” seem to have mostly been a failure. One researcher tied Musk’s elimination of humanitarian aid funding to 300,000 deaths overseas, mostly children.
Musk has been feeling the blows, too. Sources in the Trump administration told Reuters that the billionaire has been “exhausted and exasperated,” especially by the blowback against his companies. Tesla’s board reportedly initiated a search for a replacement CEO, a claim the directors have denied.
But in …