Elon Musk left the White House. Don't be surprised to see him in campaign ads next year.
Elon Musk's tenure as a White House employee is over. His time in the political spotlight is probably not.
That's not just because he says he'll continue to be in Washington frequently, or because Republicans will continue to call on him for advice. It's also because Democrats are likely to keep bringing him up, continuing to use him as a foil as they look to retake power in the 2026 midterm elections.
"He doesn't get to just go away," Mike Nellis, founder and CEO of the Democratic campaign firm Authentic told BI. "He's indelibly tied to everything that happens in the Trump administration."
As the informal head of DOGE, Musk embarked on a dramatic campaign of firings and shuttering of federal agencies that helped reignite what had once been a dormant Democratic resistance. Musk's favorability with the public sank lower than Trump, according to numerous polls, and that unpopularity eventually spilled over to Tesla.
Six months later, Musk is a mainstay of Democratic messaging, popping up in places he wasn't before. Democrats aren't just taking on billionaires; they're taking on "billionaires like Elon Musk." Republicans aren't just cutting taxes for the wealthy; they're cutting taxes for the world's richest man.
Viet Shelton, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that Musk "is, and forever will be, an instantly recognizable manifestation of the fact that House Republicans don't work for the American people, they work for the billionaires."
"Top of mind for voters are the pocketbook issues," Shelton said. "Democrats are going to win by highlighting the fact that Republicans are failing at lowering costs because they are too busy pushing tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations, while making the rest of us pay for them."
Going after Musk is seen as a political winner, and Democrats are unlikely to just give it up, even if Musk himself isn't hanging around the White House so much anymore. The tech titan spent nearly $300 million to elect Trump and other Republicans in 2024, making it easy to cast Musk as the GOP's prime benefactor.
"He's turned himself into a poison pill for the Republican Party, and they tied themselves right to him, and he's an anchor," Nellis said. "So as long as that continues to be effective messaging, there's no reason to get away from that."
As Musk says he's turning back toward his companies, some lawmakers have taken to insisting that the tech titan is as present as before, but keeping out of sight.
"He's just trying to hide in the shadows," Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin previously told BI, saying that Republicans "realize he's a liability, and they just want to put him in the back closet."
Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, a prominent progressive who led the charge among Democrats to make Musk into a villain, told BI in a statement that Musk was "forced to leave" by public outcry over his work at DOGE and his financial entanglement with the federal government.
"We cannot allow Musk to slink back behind the curtain and continue pulling the strings of the government out of sight," Casar said. "As long as Musk continues to corrupt our government, I will be organizing to make sure Americans know what he is doing and hold him and Trump accountable."
Even if Musk isn't physically present in Washington as much, Democrats can fundraise off of his name, as they have with other major GOP donors.
"He's actually the first billionaire to remove the veil," Nellis said. "The Koch brothers didn't go work in the government. Sheldon Adelson didn't go work in the government. Elon Musk did."
Musk did not return a request for comment. He has lamented the reputational hit his companies have taken, and he said in two different interviews recently that DOGE had become the "whipping boy" for any unfavorable policies enacted by the Trump administration.
"That's what happens when you choose to make yourself a public figure like this," Nellis said. "He could have done this more quietly, and it still probably would have happened anyway, but he went all in, in a way you've never seen a billionaire do before."
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