MSNBC’s Ari Melber didn’t shed any tears Friday over Elon Musk’s complaints about all the negative feedback he received for his work with the Trump administration.
The anchor of The Beat, noting that the tech billionaire said in a recent interview that he’s “stuck in a bind” regarding how much credit and blame he gets for the Trump administration’s actions, replied bluntly:
“Welcome to public service.”
Musk, in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, said, “It’s not like I agree with everything the administration does. I’m a little stuck in a bind where I’m like, well, I don’t want to, you know, speak out against the administration. But I don’t want to because I also don’t want to take responsibility for everything the administration is doing.”
On MSNBC, Melber said Musk just didn’t grasp the nature of his work.
“The difference between Musk and virtually everyone else who signs up to work for a president is most people treat it like the serious, full-time job that it is,” Melber noted.
“They take an oath to the Constitution. They understand as long as you’re in that job, you do do the thing he said he didn’t want to do. You have to go along with the values and plans of the person you work for—in this case, the president. Or, if you reach a breaking point, you quit.”
Melber said Musk is “trying to have it both ways.”
“He has clearly basked in some of the power and attention of being tied to the president and donating a lot of money to the president when they were running last year, while also wanting to make the break in ways that benefit or matter to him,” Melber said of the tech billionaire, who opposed Trump’s budget proposal, his tariffs, and visa crackdowns for highly skilled workers.
Musk’s role in the administration as a “special government employee” ended Friday, after he had to severely lower his expectations for the amount of government spending that DOGE could cut—a turn of events that caused him to feel disillusioned.
Meanwhile, Musk’s popularity took a major hit, as evidenced by lagging Tesla sales and vandalism. An April poll found only 35 percent of Americans approved of his management of DOGE.
