Elon Musk Tells Friends He's Sleeping at the DOGE Offices in DC
At an exclusive black-tie dinner hosted by the Alfalfa Club last week, Musk told associates that he'd even been invited to spend the night in the White House itself in the Lincoln Bedroom.
The news shows how deeply Musk has embedded himself in President Donald Trump's orbit—and how closely he's following his tried and true playbook from Tesla and Twitter (now X).
During busy periods at Tesla, Musk was known for sleeping on the factory floor. 'It was my primary residence,' he claimed during an interview with Ron Baron in 2022. He said the move was strategic, as he wanted employees to see him. 'This is important because if the team thinks their leader is off somewhere having a good time, drinking Mai Tais on a tropical island, which I definitely could have been doing…since the team could see me sleeping on the floor during shift change, they knew I was there, and that made a huge difference, they gave it their all.'
The vision of a leader drinking cocktails on a tropical island resurfaced after Musk became Twitter's biggest shareholder in the spring of 2022. In text messages to his friend, the podcaster and angel investor Jason Calacanis, Musk said Twitter's newly appointed CEO Parag Agrawal was on a 10-day vacation in Hawaii. At the time, Musk had been toying with the idea of joining Twitter's board of directors, but was growing increasingly frustrated with Agrawal. He doubted the two could work together.
'Btw, Parag is still on a ten day vacation in Hawaii,' Musk told Calacanis. 'No reason to cut it short… in your first tour as ceo (!!!),' Calcanis responded, presumably with a hint of sarcasm. 'Shouldn't he be in a war room right now?!?' Musk then said: 'Does doing occasional zoom calls while drinking fruity cocktails at the Four Seasons count?' (The messages were later revealed as part of the discovery process in a lawsuit between Musk and Twitter).
Ultimately, Musk decided he could not save Twitter with Agrawal at the helm, and he bought the company instead.
After the acquisition was complete, Musk began sleeping at the Twitter offices in San Francisco. Employees saw him pacing the floor late at night and being escorted to the bathroom by his security guards. He even tried to get a bathroom installed next to his office so he wouldn't have to trek across the floor during his stays.
Musk's lieutenant Steve Davis, CEO of the Boring Company, who has reportedly been recruiting staff to work at DOGE, also temporarily moved into Twitter HQ with his wife and newborn baby.
Earlier this week, the US Office of Personnel Management, which is already stacked with Musk lackeys, sent an email to federal workers titled 'a fork in the road.'
'The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work,' the email read. It directed employees to return to the office five days a week, and commit to a culture of excellence, or effectively resign and continue receiving benefits and pay through September.
The memo closely echoed a note Musk sent to Twitter staff shortly after buying the company. In that note, sent November 16, 2022, Musk told staffers they'd need to commit to working long, intense hours to realize his new vision for the company—otherwise they should resign. 'Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,' he wrote. 'This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.'
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Matching those amounts wouldn't be trivial for Elon Musk, because like most of the world's richest people his wealth is tied up in stocks that can't easily be unloaded all at once. Still, based on Wednesday's share prices, he could pay for the entire 2024 election cycle by liquidating just one fifth of his reported $130 billion stake in Tesla. We have a sense already of how Musk might use this money. "Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth," he said on Monday. He's suggested he'd donate to Republican representative Thomas Massie, a persistent critic of Trump's. And there's still another $100 million Musk previously promised Trump that he could decide to withhold. 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Musk's cult of personality rivals Trump's own Musk's overall popularity may have dropped dramatically since the election. But his pull with Republican voters specifically was still very high as of early June. That's testament to his ability to build and maintain a fanatical fanbase. Like Trump, he has a knack for inspiring loyalty and whipping up his supporters against new targets, as well as a keen instinct for controversy. And also like Trump, he doesn't need to be popular with all Americans to cause trouble for his enemies. He only needs enough dedicated partisans on his side. 'Elon has wooed enough of Trump's supporters to be an actual threat politically,' Musk's old friend Philip Low told Politico. "[Trump] doesn't realize the battle that he has on his hands." Musk's ownership of X, formerly Twitter, will help him there. Having already turned the social network into a hub of the MAGA media universe — and reportedly tweaked its algorithms in favor of his own posts — he now has enormous control over the conservative information stream. Given how many Americans now essentially live in a parallel media universe, maintained by fake news entrepreneurs and skewed social media algorithms, that gives him influence over what Trump's base even believes to be reality. Granted, Trump remains the unquestioned ruler of the GOP. And when polls pit Musk against Trump directly, Republican voters largely side with the king. Yet Musk's combination of financial and social capital makes him a powerful ally to anyone within the party hoping to chart their own course. From fiscal hawks opposed to Trump's spending spree to centrists with one eye on their purple state majority, there are plenty of people in Congress who won't always back Trump 100 percent. 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What might he have learned or witnessed during that time that could damage Trump politically? We got a taste of that when Musk accused Trump of being "in the Epstein files". That's nothing new: we've known since 2015 that Trump was in Jeffrey Epstein's address book (which is not evidence of wrongdoing), and his ties to the child-abusing financier are long documented. Yet as Trump knows all too well, in today's politics truth has only a passing relevance to how much chaos a lurid allegation can cause. None of these factors are a slam dunk for Musk. His born-again MAGA conversion has trashed his former reputation as an apolitical business genius, and toxified his image among Democratic voters. Getting more involved in politics would only prolong investors' disquiet about his ability to focus on running Tesla and SpaceX. Trying to dish dirt on Trump could also tempt revenge in kind, which could be dangerous given the sheer range of allegations about Musk's personal life. Most of all, to misquote a line from the early 19th century writer Hilaire Belloc that Musk seems to be fond of: whatever happens, Trump has got the nukes, and Musk does not. Then again, when has the near certainty of adverse consequences ever stopped Elon Musk?
