By Tim Higgins

Elon Musk is like a dog with a bone.

What's made him so successful, an unwavering belief that he is right, can also be his undoing -- especially when the world's richest man becomes emotional about the matter.

That's been evident this week in Musk's latest blowup with the White House. His last-minute, failed attempt to scuttle President Trump's " one big, beautiful bill" has likely torched whatever standing he had left in Washington, D.C. In the process he's highlighted the limits of his own political power.

Musk -- however naively -- thought Trump was the man to back his vision for cutting government. Instead, Trump has only one agenda -- his own. And Musk seemingly can't let that go.

"Physics sees through all lies perfectly," Musk posted this week on his social-media platform X. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO's political power in Washington -- which just a few months ago seemed limitless -- was always about proximity to the president.

What made him unique from other Trump advisers was the threat of a messy breakup and Musk going nuclear in a way few can -- or have a willingness to.

Yet, this week looked pretty messy, and Trump won.

Musk called Republicans "the PORKY PIG PARTY," adding in an X post that it was "time for a new political party that actually cares about the people." He even threw support behind a Trump antagonist, Rep. Thomas Massie. The Republican, too, was against the megabill. He was one of only two House Republicans who ultimately voted against the bill Thursday.

Naturally, Musk's antics angered the White House on the cusp of a much-wanted, domestic victory. They also angered investors.

Tesla shares fell 7% in the hours after his tweets prompted Trump to publicly fume about cutting off government support for Musk companies. The president even floated the idea of deporting the businessman who became a U.S. citizen after being born in South Africa.

Musk's supporters had hoped the two had moved beyond their late May breakup after the men looked like they were trying to repair things. "I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week," Musk wrote on X during the wee hours of June 11. "They went too far."

Instead, Musk appears to be cycling through the stages of grief, stuck somewhere between denial and bargaining. He resembles a character in a Taylor Swift music video: trying to exact revenge on an ex, only to wake up a day or two later with ingratiating praise for Trump.

The latest drama came on the eve of Musk's Tesla reporting second-quarter delivery results Wednesday. These were worse than Wall Street expected -- falling almost 14% from a year earlier. It marked the second consecutive quarter of sales declines for a company whose trillion-dollar valuation depends heavily on the belief that Tesla is a growth story.

In other words, Musk has more important things to do than egging on the White House -- even if he feels scorned after pouring roughly $300 million into efforts to put Trump and Republicans into power.

But Musk doesn't take the easy road. His career as an entrepreneur has been built on the premise that the only rule he should follow is the law of physics. That's a great axiom when it comes to engineering reusable space rockets and dancing humanoid robots. But it's -- maybe -- not so great when it comes to politics.

There's another idiom that might have helped him stay close to Trump: Sometimes you've got to go along to get along.

So why does Musk keep digging himself deeper into that hole? Clearly, he thinks he's right.

Musk has framed the need to cut government overspending in extreme save-humanity-like terms. It's similar to how he's painted his motivations for his companies, such as SpaceX aiming to reach Mars and make humanity multiplanetary.

"What good is Doge saving $160B when this bill increases the debt ceiling by $5T? It makes mockery of the work," Musk fumed on Tuesday about his short-lived efforts shepherding Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting efforts. "And how are we supposed to reach Mars if America goes de facto bankrupt?"

He isn't the first business leader to discover that what made them great in business doesn't translate in Washington. He just wears his frustrations so publicly.

Musk's ex-wife Talulah Riley -- who was twice married to him -- has seen those emotions up close. "He feels with incredible purity the emotion that he is feeling at the time, whatever that emotion is," she told a BBC documentary. "He feels things very, very deeply. I've heard it said that he's cold and emotionless, and that could not be further from the truth. He is the most emotional person I know."

That emotion -- and the perceived authenticity it generates with his fans -- has helped feed his social-media power. He rose to political power as Chief Troll, harnessing his 200 million-plus followers on X to help the Trump campaign and frame Democrats as weak.

But once in power as the highly influential "First Buddy," Musk failed to navigate the art of governing, waving around a chain saw that Argentina President Javier Milei had gifted him and fighting with Republicans he needed.

And he might realize that. After an X user chastised the recent chain-saw-waving behavior, Musk seemed to agree. "Valid point," he replied this week. "Milei gave me the chainsaw backstage and I ran with it, but, in retrospect, it lacked empathy."

In Washington, it was never going to be Musk's way or the highway -- no matter how many tweet threats he decreed.

Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 04, 2025 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)

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