Whatever happened to Elon Musk? Tech boss drifts to margins of Trump world

It's easy for me to be critical, both because he's distant and because I have no skin in the game. That noted, I think his genius status was misapplied, unearned, and his lack of visible empathy for the real world makes this important: he is a powerful foolish man, he isn't a constructive force at the moment. He's sucking a lot of value out of the system.

(It assumes that the outcome was intentional, to a great degree. On one hand that's not a safe assumption; unexpected things happen all the time and people make mistakes or don't plan carefully. But it's complicated - the actors can see what is happening and change their direction and adjust. The assumption also depends on them being sophisticated actors, which Trump and Musk certainly are and they have highly sophisticated advisors. And in serious, high-value situations, we can more safely assume intent - Musk wasn't choosing what to have for dinner, which might not involve a lot of thought, but world-changing and life-changing actions. And regardless of intent, they still benefit from the outcomes and are responsible for the consequences of what they do.)

One great benefit of Musk's activities is being the fall guy for Trump: Doing the dirty work, keeping Trump from getting too dirty himself, and then Musk taking the stain with him when he leaves. Much of the coverage of many government activities attribute them to Musk; even the Democrats blame him at times to avoid attacking Trump (Dem leaders' tactics are to avoid alienating Trump supporters - seriously). We'll see how much the Trump camp blames him for the failures and unpopular things.